The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon can not 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 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 know 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?
My love for prose,poetry, and literature is based on many points of interest. One of the most important aspects of a well written piece, to me, is it’s ability to be timeless. The famed Irish poet W.B.Yeats accomplishes this with his “The Second Coming”. I know this is considered to be a “modernistic poem” so I am sure it couldn’t have been written by a poet before the march of the Romans and the Crucifixion of Jesus, before or during the Crusades (1096-1291) or during the reign of Genghis Khan (1162-1227). No I guess not. Maybe it was written during the 1930’s with the rise of Hitler and the coming Holocaust or the poet was inspired to write this dark poem as the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima gave us a look at the destructive atomic power we could so easily unleash. No? Well maybe it was written a few years ago with the rise (again) of Nationalism and the politics of fear and divisiveness of the last presidential election and current “leadership” tweets from the birdcage of Washington. Too easy to believe the poem was written recently.
“The Second Coming” was written in 1919 by William Butler Yeats. As you can easily read, he uses Christian imagery. The poem has been said to describe the atmosphere of post war Europe. It was written at the beginning of the Irish War of Independence. The impact of “The Second Coming” during the past century is immense in art and media. Lines and imagery from the poem have been used in novels, news headlines, and songs among other venues.
Factiva compiled analysis that shows “lines of this poem were quoted more often in the first seven months of 2016 than in any of the preceding thirty years”. It would be easy to peel the layers of that political onion, but I will hesitantly refrain.
The point I am trying to make here is as follows; no matter when your now is, this poem will always somehow be viable to that now.
Nick Tabor, writing in the Paris Review in April 2005 states it best and I quote. “The Second Coming is proof that a perfect poem can still go viral in a distinctly predigital way: that it’s become part of the cultures water supply”.
From what angle am I seeing all this? If you read my earlier posts/blogs, you’ve read that I have begun to share my reflections of my journey through the Universe within me. I am endeavoring to use the key of intuition to open my self awareness within. I use literature as a wall to lean on while I reflect. In my next post I will share how this poem,as dark as it appears, is a great wall for me to lean on while I explore the Universe and its wonders that are without me (us) as they are within me (us). Spiritus Mundi the goal?
Stay tuned!
Thank you for reading.
Mark