Thursday, November 19, 2009

passionate intensity


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.
Excerpt from The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats [1865-1939] written in the aftermath of the First World War in 1919.