r/HeyWhatIf

8 archived posts · Oct 2017 – May 2026

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Hey What If: Answers to Hypotheticals

r/HeyWhatIf

Ask a hypothetical question, or try and answer hypotheticals that have already been asked.

Created Oct 1, 2015

4Members (last snapshot)

8Archived posts

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

The New Colossus

by Emma Lazarus

I was angry with my friend;

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,

Night & morning with my tears:

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night.

Till it bore an apple bright.

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole,

When the night had veild the pole;

In the morning glad I see;

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

A Poison Tree

By William Blake

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?

The Second Coming

by William Butler Yeats

III

Earth, receive an honoured guest:

William Yeats is laid to rest.

Let the Irish vessel lie

Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark

All the dogs of Europe bark,

And the living nations wait,

Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace

Stares from every human face,

And the seas of pity lie

Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right

To the bottom of the night,

With your unconstraining voice

Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse

Make a vineyard of the curse,

Sing of human unsuccess

In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start,

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise.

In Memory of W.B. Yeats

By W. H. Auden

It exists in all different places.

It transcends all time and spaces.

I know, oh woah, it's complicated

It saved me; I know it can save you.

That sounds dumb but trust me; it's been proved.

I know, oh woah, it's underrated.

I think I like it.

Pop is when you hear a song

and cannot help but sing along.

It's when you hate it but you still appreciate it.

Pop belongs to everyone (oh oh).

Pop is on the radio

and who decides we'll never know.

Somebody told me I should follow where the money goes.

I think I like it.

Poor kids come from nothing but they can

have it, too; it's egalitarian.

I know, oh woah, it's hard to make it.

Drive rich cars and live in some mansions;

still have heart under all the fashions.

I know, oh woah, you gotta chase it, but

Pop is when you hear a song

and cannot help but sing along

It's when you hate it but you still appreciate it.

Pop belongs to everyone (oh oh).

Pop is on the radio

and who decides we'll never know

Somebody told me I should follow where the money goes.

I think I like it.

Yeah, I still like it.

I think I like it.

Pop Music

By Poppy (FBUH)

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Ozymandias

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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