To the editor:

The intense verbal brawling among the Republican hopefuls to be the presidential nominee brings to mind the famous lines from the William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) poem “The Second Coming.” He had the disastrous World War I in mind when he wrote it, but we would do well to pay heed, given our current political environment.

His first eight lines read as follows:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center 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.

Lee H. Lybarger

Delaware