Does it feel to you, right now, as though everything is falling apart?
This feeling is not new!
Throughout recent history, poets have captured the unease of a world unraveling.
Below are three powerful poems—spanning over a century—each addressing this theme in its own way. Whether through political turmoil, spiritual crisis or the creeping anxiety of modernity, these poems express the fear, despair and uncertainty that arise when everything we know feels like it is falling apart.
The Second Coming
By W.B. Yeats (1920)
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?
Dover Beach
By Matthew Arnold (1867)
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;—on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Despair
By Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1911)
A wailing cry goes through the world,
A sigh profound and deep,
A longing, burning, ceaseless pain
That will not let us sleep.
A cry of souls that sit in chains,
A fettered, living death,
A grief no tears can satisfy,
A sigh with every breath.
The world is racked with restless pain,
It heaves in blind unrest,
And through it all, a muffled cry—
“I suffer! Let me rest!”
But there is no rest—no peace—no sleep,
No refuge from despair;
The grief that walks beside our way
Is ghostly everywhere.
And all the throbbing hearts of men,
And all the aching eyes,
And all the weary, hopeless hands,
Are lifted to the skies.
But answer comes there never yet
From lips of wind or wave,
Save that our dull and heavy ears
Hear silence from the grave.
Each of these poems reflects the deep unease of living in a world on a precipice. They come from different eras, but all share a timeless sense of dread, loss and uncertainty.
In moments of crisis, poetry gives voice to the emotions that often feel too big to express. These works remind us that despair and fear are not new, but part of a long history of human experience.
Which of these poems resonates with you the most? Let us know in the comments.
^^^
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) was an Irish poet and playwright, one of the greatest literary figures of the 20th century, known for his mysticism and exploration of historical and political themes. Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) was an English poet and cultural critic, best remembered for his melancholic poetry and essays on Victorian society. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) was an American writer, feminist, and social reformer, best known for her short story The Yellow Wallpaper and her advocacy for women’s rights.
Painting: Ludwig Meidner’s “Apocalyptic Landscape” (1912).