The Second Coming [WB YEATS poem set to music]
Channel: tobydarling
Date: 2014-01-08

Here is a poem by WB Yeats, written in 1919, which I have set to music.

Free midi of arrangement available on request.

The video shows Sharpham House in Devon.

THE SECOND COMING (Yeats)

Intro: Cm Bb Dm Gm Bb Cm Gm
Cm Bb Dm Gm    
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
Bb Cm Gm
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Cm Bb Dm Gm
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Bb Cm D7
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
G C G C
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
G C D7
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
G Cm G Cm
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Bb Cm Gm
    Are full of passionate intensity.
G Cm G Cm
    Surely some revelation is at hand;
 Bb Cm D7
   Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
G C 
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
G C
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
G C D7
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
  G C G C
 A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
 G C D7
   A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Bb Cm Bb Cm
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Bb Cm D7
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

G C G C G C D7 x2 instrumental

Cm Bb 
The darkness drops again but now I know
Dm Gm
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Bb Cm G D7
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
G C G C
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
G C D7 G C G C G C D7 G
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?