Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News Editorials & Other Articles General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

malaise

(294,051 posts)
Tue Feb 3, 2026, 11:07 AM Tuesday

How appropriate is this to describe Donvict's regime at home and abroad?

The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats

Turning 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 conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

———-
I don’t think the best lack conviction

Add

4 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
How appropriate is this to describe Donvict's regime at home and abroad? (Original Post) malaise Tuesday OP
K&R Blue Owl Tuesday #1
A mighty poem Kid Berwyn Tuesday #2
A great poem malaise Tuesday #3
What Percy Bysshe Shelley said holds for all who think about the power of words -- and thought. Kid Berwyn Tuesday #4

Blue Owl

(58,557 posts)
1. K&R
Tue Feb 3, 2026, 12:00 PM
Tuesday

Powerful stuff! I hope recent events are enough to urge the 99% to unite as one and stand up to the 1%, crushing their depravity in favor of peace, goodness, love, and justice for all. I'm visualizing it.

Kid Berwyn

(23,605 posts)
2. A mighty poem
Tue Feb 3, 2026, 01:33 PM
Tuesday

The Second Coming

By William Butler Yeats

Turning 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 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?

-----------------

Thus Surrealism.


Kid Berwyn

(23,605 posts)
4. What Percy Bysshe Shelley said holds for all who think about the power of words -- and thought.
Tue Feb 3, 2026, 02:27 PM
Tuesday

They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age. Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

-- A Defense of Poetry

Latest Discussions»General Discussion»How appropriate is this t...