THE SECOND COMING song lyrics,

words by William Butler Yeats,

rearranged by Joel Sattler [with some additions]

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

The falcon cannot hear the falconer

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

Things fall apart the center cannot hold

Turning and turning

in the widening gyre

Flying high and higher

over the barbed wire

Things fall apart

the center cannot hold

Mere anarchy

is loosed upon the world

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

Mere anarchy is loose upon the world

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

The blood dim tide is loose and everywhere

The blood dim tide is loose

and everywhere

The ceremony of the innocents

Are soon to be there

The best lack all conviction,

while the very worst

Are cursed with passionate

intensity

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

Surely some revelation is at hand

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

The ceremony of the innocents is drowned

Surely some revelation

is at hand

Surely the second coming

is at hand

A vast image rears up

from the desert sands

A shape with a lion body

and the head of a man

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

and twenty centuries of stony sleep

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

Are vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle 

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

And what rough beast at last

Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born? 

This is the second coming

This is the second coming

This is the second coming…..

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Original version by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939):

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.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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