| Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989. |
| NUMBER: | 454 |
| AUTHOR: | W. B. Yeats (1865–1939) |
| QUOTATION: | Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, “The Second Coming,” lines 1–8, The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats, ed. Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach, pp. 401–2 (1957). |
| SUBJECTS: | Doomsday |
| BIOGRAPHY: | Columbia Encyclopedia |
| WORKS: | William Butler Yeats Collection |
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