poetry mashup

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

I met two travellers from an antique land,

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, who said—

“Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,”

“If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

And watch the white eyes writhing in His face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

In what distant deeps or skies,

Burnt the cancer of His eyes?

With what blood dared He expire?

How our hand dared quench His fire?”

“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

All went lame; all blind; drunk with fatigue

The hand, its dread grasp, and the heart that fed.

The darkness drops again; but now I know.”

When the stars threw down their spears

And water'd heaven with their tears: 

Did He smile our work to see?

Did He who burnt the Lamb burn thee?

Sources:

W. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"

Percy Shelley, "Ozymandias"

Wilfred Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est"

William Blake, "The Tyger"