US President Joe Biden quoted Irish poet William Butler Yeats during his address at the 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, September 24.
In the fifth minute of his roughly 25-minute speech, Biden said: "I recognize the challenges from Ukraine to Gaza to Sudan and beyond: war, hunger, terrorism, brutality, record displacement of people, a climate crisis, democracy at risk, strains within our societies, the promise of artificial intelligence and its significant risks. The list goes on.
"But maybe because of all I’ve seen and all we have done together over the decades, I have hope. I know there is a way forward.
"In 1919, the Irish poet William Butler Yeats described a world, and I quote, where 'Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,' end of quote.
"Some may say those words describe the world not just in 1919 but in 2024. But I see a critical distinction.
"In our time, the center has held."
You can watch Biden’s Full Speech at the UN General Assembly on September 24 here:
After announcing in July that he was standing down from the 2024 US Presidential election, Biden’s address at the UN on Tuesday was his last as President of the United States.
Biden, who regularly touts his Irish roots, has frequently quoted Irish poets throughout his lengthy political career, saying over the years. He is known in particular for quoting Seamus Heaney's "The Cure at Troy" and Yeats' "Easter, 1916."
Speaking during his induction into the Irish America Hall of Fame in 2013, Biden said: "My friends in Congress are always kidding me because I'm always quoting Irish poets.
"Everybody thinks it's because I have some scholarly bend - it's not. I used to stutter so badly and my uncle, Ed, who was a well-educated man and lived with us as a bachelor, had two volumes of Yeats on the bureau."
Biden explained how he would read Yeats in front of his bedroom mirror to learn how to not contort his face while speaking in order to overcome his stutter.
The then-Vice President referenced both "The Cure of Troy" and "Easter, 1916" during his remarks.
Thus, it's no surprise that Yeats showed up in Biden's final UN address.
The line Biden quoted comes from Yeats' poem "The Second Coming," which the Irish poet wrote in 1919 - three years after Ireland's 1916 Rising, a few months after the conclusion of the First World War, and around the time of the start of Ireland's War of Independence.
The poem was first printed in 1920 and was later included in Yeats' 1921 collection “Michael Robartes and the Dancer."
The poem continues to be referenced in various media a century later, with The Paris Review saying in 2015 that it "may well be the most thoroughly pillaged piece of literature in English."
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?
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