Spiritus Mundi

One of my favorite writers on the Internet, Jeff Wells, finally wrote a new post for his blog, Rigorous Intuition. It is an interesting development for anybody that has been following this blog and whether or not you follow the blog, I would recommend checking out his post just to read the comments. As you will see, his writing always generates quite a stir amongst people. For that reason alone, I hope he keeps it up.

One commented, "Lyle," points out a poem written by William Butler Yeats:

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center 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: somewhere in sands of the desert

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

Reel 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?