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?
-WB Yeats
an article which describes the current applicability of this work ...[theguardian.com]
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2 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.I wonder if Yeats realised the ambiguity in the nature of the phrases in this poem, when he was actually creating them. I suspect that it is the case that he did, because he removed and changed any references to specific events. We tend to forget that the cyclical nature of human and natural events means that they are in the main not new experiences to mankind, just dressed up in new garb. Lifting lines and phrases from this piece and using them to fit current events which have happened since 1919 makes it appear that Yeats predicted these events, but it wasn’t prescience of any specific events he had, but an insight into how human nature never basically changes and that we are predictable beings, caught up in a “gyre” or vortex of repeated behaviours.
Marionville
Level 10
May 30, 2020
3
As the article pointed out, your observation is accurate, yet it also serves to remind us that the right now is not dissimilar to the then, and will occur in the future. The poet is still remarkable in his ability to express what universal truth he captured.
@Philip21. Yes..he is one of my favourite poets. I have a great love for his poetry and song and also his brother Jack’s paintings. I love the Sligo coast where Bill and Jack spent a lot of their childhoods...it’s truly beautiful and I go over there several times a year.
