Poems

makarios68 · 11-01-2008, 05:57 PM

The Second Coming by WB Yeats:

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?

Written just after WW1, this is Yeats' apocolyptic vision of the future, based on his horror at the scale of death and destruction from the world's first 'technological' war.

He has a dim view of mankind's ability to keep a reign on advancing technology ("the falcon cannot hear the falconer").

The shape with "lion body and the head of a man" is the Sphinx, who in mythology slumbered for 2000 years, suffering constant nightmares (meant to symbolise 2000 years of man's blood-stained reign on the world).

It is considered by many to be the finest poem of the 20th century. Without any direct reference to scenes of horror, this is for me one of the scariest things i've ever read.

For Yeats, the Second Coming is not the saviour of mankind; but the opposite.

11-01-2008, 05:57 PM	#11
makarios68 Count Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: England Posts: 1,300	The Second Coming by WB Yeats: 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? Written just after WW1, this is Yeats' apocolyptic vision of the future, based on his horror at the scale of death and destruction from the world's first 'technological' war. He has a dim view of mankind's ability to keep a reign on advancing technology ("the falcon cannot hear the falconer"). The shape with "lion body and the head of a man" is the Sphinx, who in mythology slumbered for 2000 years, suffering constant nightmares (meant to symbolise 2000 years of man's blood-stained reign on the world). It is considered by many to be the finest poem of the 20th century. Without any direct reference to scenes of horror, this is for me one of the scariest things i've ever read. For Yeats, the Second Coming is not the saviour of mankind; but the opposite.