The Second Coming
W. B. Yeats’s apocalyptic vision of a civilization spinning out of control — “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” Full poem, summary, and analysis.
Theme
irish
2 poems
irish
When You Are Old
Written for Maud Gonne when Yeats was in his twenties, this three-quatrain lyric asks the beloved to picture herself old by the fire — and to see, too late, that one man loved her soul rather than her beauty.