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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Grumpy Celt" data-source="post: 1901358" data-attributes="member: 1019">No other poem, for me at least, sums up the perpetual snare that is human existence. A statement that is true at all times, everywhere. "The Second Coming" by W.B. YeatsTurning 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 convictions, 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?-And what is that rough beast, its hour come round at last, that slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? The sullen morality of those who lack all conviction and the hypocrisy of those full of passionate conviction but lacking all morality. The rough beast is you and I.</blockquote>