What does this quote mean the blood dimmed tide is loosed?

Answer 1

This quote, from W.B. Yeats' poem "The Second Coming," suggests a sense of chaos and violence in the world, where traditional values and order are breaking down. The phrase "the blood-dimmed tide is loosed" portrays a society in turmoil and on the brink of destruction.

Answer 2

This is a line from a poem by Yeats, called The Second Coming. : "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. : 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? " This is a disturbing poem about the end of the world. The line that you are asking about, "the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned," evokes the image of bloody water flooding over innocent people and drowning them. You might use this quote if some particularly horrible situation has just begun - war or massacre, for example.