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The Second Coming
Entry Category: Uncategorized
Entry Mood: (No Mood)
Published On: 09-06-2007 11:07 AM
Entry Mood: (No Mood)
Published On: 09-06-2007 11:07 AM
The Second Coming, by W.B. Yeats (the poet's poet):
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 Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the 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?
Comments? Interpretations?
I find this possibly the most apprehensive poem I've ever read. The images and sounds meld beautifully to create the sense of spinning, of losing control. The sounds of the words whirl until, by the tenth line, the reader is metaphorically on her knees, looking up at the revelation presented in line eleven. And could there possibly be a more striking, dread-inspiring image than that presented in the last two lines?
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 Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the 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?
Comments? Interpretations?
I find this possibly the most apprehensive poem I've ever read. The images and sounds meld beautifully to create the sense of spinning, of losing control. The sounds of the words whirl until, by the tenth line, the reader is metaphorically on her knees, looking up at the revelation presented in line eleven. And could there possibly be a more striking, dread-inspiring image than that presented in the last two lines?
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You should check out some of Yeats' drama. Some of it is... very interesting.
That is near to what I have feared. Yeats has a great grasp upon the reality of the events leading up to the Second Coming. Deception will run rampant.
The Beast, or Anti-Christ, is called the man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2. There it also states that he will set himself up to be worshipped in the temple of God. In Matthew 24:15, Jesus foretells of the same event. Later in Matthew 24:23-25, Jesus reveals that many false Christs and false prophets will deceive many through the miracles that they perform. He says that they will have the "power to deceive the elect", meaning that these false Christs (antichrists) will be able to fool even the true followers of Jesus.
Those last two lines of Yeats' poem alude to the great deceptive abilities of the one who must come on the scene before the Second Coming.