Right Under My Nose, the Database that Knows...Litfinder

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer..." These words are hanging around my head like a damp towel. I know the line, I can remember reading the words in a cloistered section of the Milwaukee Public Library, but I just can't remember who wrote them. Cummings, Eliot, hmmmmm. It's frustrating and I just can't seem to shake away the cobwebs.

Just when I thought there was no hope, it happened. Litfinder happened. I pay my taxes. Those moneys go to funding my local public library. The people at said library use those funds to purchase databases and indexes to answer troubling questions like this: who wrote the words: "Turning and turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer..."

So, here's the deal with Litfinder: Not only can I enter the few keywords that I can remember from the poem and find out the title, but I can also get the full-text. No joke. And it's not just for poems; essays, primary sources, monologues and oodles more. It's all free and I can do this from the warmth and familiarity of my own home.

My library card and PIN is all it takes.

W.B. Yeats wrote The Second Coming in 1920.