The poem
The gyres! the gyres! Old Rocky Face, look forth; Things thought too long can be no longer thought, For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth, And ancient lineaments are blotted out. Irrational streams of blood are staining earth; Empedocles has thrown all things about; Hector is dead and there's a light in Troy; We that look on but laugh in tragic joy.
What matter though numb nightmare ride on top, And blood and mire the sensitive body stain? What matter? Heave no sigh, let no tear drop, A-greater, a more gracious time has gone; For painted forms or boxes of make-up In ancient tombs I sighed, but not again; What matter? Out of cavern comes a voice, And all it knows is that one word 'Rejoice!'
Conduct and work grow coarse, and coarse the soul, What matter? Those that Rocky Face holds dear, Lovers of horses and of women, shall, From marble of a broken sepulchre, Or dark betwixt the polecat and the owl, Or any rich, dark nothing disinter The workman, noble and saint, and all things run On that unfashionable gyre again.
this poem makes extensive references to yeats's esoteric idea of "Gyres" which he represents as intersecting conic sections. the wide, open end represents chaos and as the conic section approaches a point the world becomes more orderly, but the intersection of another conic section pointing in the opposite direction represents the fact that even as the world approaches order, it is already beginning to spiral back out towards chaos.