W.B. Yeats - The Second Coming
1920
1920
This poem has been on my mind lately, I would really like to hear everyone's opinion/interpretation of it.
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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 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?
5 comments:
My interpretation .... how about HOW I read it?
Turning and turning ...
Things fall apart ...
The ceremony of innocence is drowned...
The LEVIATHON !
And the Leviathon- Hobbes 1651.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand. - (A desperate wish for an external salvation)
And then the mystery of the sphinx .... What walks on four legs, then on two, then on three ... man and his ages.
Slouching towards Bethlehem ... place of origin ... do we not all return to our place of origin as death advances?
We may fear death or love our lives .... let us love our lives until the last moment.
That is the second coming ... the cosntant rejuvenation of the spirit.
gyre Pronunciation (jr)
n.
1. A circular or spiral form; a vortex: EX:"rain swirling the night into tunnels and gyres" quoting Anthony Hyde.
2. A circular or spiral motion, especially a circular ocean current.
Used aptly I believe by this Mage, he saw in those early days of the 1900s Fascist ways rising,and His image given by Spiritus Mundi/Gaia was of the Sphinx, which like Little Sparrow notes regards the Ages of Man, I think that we have to recognize his puns regarding Another About to Born, A Christ? A Buddha? Or an AntiChrist? I think the use of the word Gyre is interesting, as today it is used mainly in regards to ocean currents,, which today some think may be damaged by Global Warming. Things Fall apart and a blood tide is loosed!! Yeats was inthralled with the idea of Masks, the AntiSelf/Opposite or the Daimon that gives inspiration. His ideas of the gyres was unique in my mind, very much like my Tulpa idea I think sometimes, He understood the Illusion and could call the next God to be BORN a "Rough Beast",,,, a vision of a cloned human? There is so much here in this poem,,, it haunts me.
I have to say, I haven't read much Yeats, which is odd.
Odd because I love poetry, I was an English major in college, and I have read plenty of the British Romantic poets (particularly Blake), plus the modern American poets (particularly Wallace Stevens)... but somehow I haven't read Yeats. Odd also because I'm Irish-American and I'm very in love with Ireland and feel a deep connection to it.
I've only read his most famous poems (like this one), and superficially. So I have to read some more Yeats, thank you for bringing this to my attention. :-)
'Sailing to Byzantium' is one I love.
Anyway, as I said: I have read this particular poem before, and always assumed he was referring to his own political climate: the Irish Revolution, WW I, a feeling of hopelessness about the future of mankind etc. It's a feeling I can definately share, given our own current political and environmental situation.
The sphinx... I'd be so curious if you would ask your extraterrestrial pals about the sphinx. I bet there's a lot more to that strange, otherworldly monument than we know.
My mind is too fractured and pre-occupied at the moment, but I wanted to say hello to some of my treasured and missed blogging buddies.
I hope you are having brighter days these days as well.
Many blessings.
Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold.
A favorite quote. I didn't even know it was Yeats! I'm a goat judge, after all.
Are you seriously asking me to interpret such a deep poem? I can't swim in those waters. If it's not animal husbandry, I'm lost.
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