Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Was Yeats Prescient?
Somehow this poem, The Second Coming by WB Yeats, seems especially prescient. The first stanza seems especially poignant and appropriate to me.
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?
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?
Labels: Thoughts
# posted by Zebraman @ 2:39 AM 
Comments:
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reminds me of another Irish poet:
And you know its time to go
Through the sleet and driving snow
Across the fields of mourning
Light in the distance
And you hunger for the time
Time to heal, desire, time
And your earth moves beneath
Your own dream landscape
Oh, oh, oh...
On borderland we run...
Ill be there
Ill be there...
Tonight
A high road
A high road out from here
The city walls are all come down
The dust, a smoke screen all around
See faces ploughed like fields that once
Gave no resistance
And we live by the side of the road
On the side of a hill
As the valley explode
Dislocated, suffocated
The land grows weary of its own
Oh, oh, oh...on borderland we run...
And still we run
We run and dont look back
Ill be there
Ill be there
Tonight
Tonight
Ill be there tonight...i believe
Ill be there...somehow
Ill be there...tonight
Tonight
The wind will crack in winter time
This bomb-blast lightning waltz
No spoken words, just a scream...
Tonight well build a bridge
Across the sea and land
See the sky, the burning rain
She will die and live again
Tonight
And your heart beats so slow
Through the rain and fallen snow
Across the fields of mourning
Lights in the distance
Oh dont sorrow, no dont weep
For tonight, at last
I am coming home
I am coming home
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And you know its time to go
Through the sleet and driving snow
Across the fields of mourning
Light in the distance
And you hunger for the time
Time to heal, desire, time
And your earth moves beneath
Your own dream landscape
Oh, oh, oh...
On borderland we run...
Ill be there
Ill be there...
Tonight
A high road
A high road out from here
The city walls are all come down
The dust, a smoke screen all around
See faces ploughed like fields that once
Gave no resistance
And we live by the side of the road
On the side of a hill
As the valley explode
Dislocated, suffocated
The land grows weary of its own
Oh, oh, oh...on borderland we run...
And still we run
We run and dont look back
Ill be there
Ill be there
Tonight
Tonight
Ill be there tonight...i believe
Ill be there...somehow
Ill be there...tonight
Tonight
The wind will crack in winter time
This bomb-blast lightning waltz
No spoken words, just a scream...
Tonight well build a bridge
Across the sea and land
See the sky, the burning rain
She will die and live again
Tonight
And your heart beats so slow
Through the rain and fallen snow
Across the fields of mourning
Lights in the distance
Oh dont sorrow, no dont weep
For tonight, at last
I am coming home
I am coming home
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