{
 "id": "w-b-yeats/the-second-coming",
 "title": "The Second Coming",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "W. B. Yeats",
 "poet_slug": "w-b-yeats",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Michael Robartes and the Dancer",
 "book_slug": "michael-robartes-and-the-dancer",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": "Michael Robartes and the Dancer",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1920,
  "venue": "Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/robertes00wby"
  ]
 },
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   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49609",
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   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49609",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32233",
   "https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.92252",
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   "https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Dublin_University_Review/fE8wAQAAMAAJ",
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   "https://www.google.ie/books/edition/The_Dublin_University_Review/TFAwAQAAMAAJ",
   "https://www.google.ie/books/edition/The_Irish_Monthly/EMoaAAAAYAAJ",
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  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-21"
 },
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  [
   {
    "text": "Turning and turning in the widening gyre",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The falcon cannot hear the falconer;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The ceremony of innocence is drowned;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The best lack all conviction, while the worst",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are full of passionate intensity.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Surely some revelation is at hand;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Surely the Second Coming is at hand.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A shape with lion body and the head of a man,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The darkness drops again; but now I know",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That twenty centuries of stony sleep",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}