Was Yeats Onto Something?

[BaalChatzaf]

The Poem by William Butler Yeats:

The Second Coming

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.

(NB: this surely sounds like today's headlines)

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 around 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?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Maybe he is onto something?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Maybe he is onto something?

Bob,

Nah.

Not unless you believe in Jewish mythology. (Christian too.)

Michael

[Barbara Branden]

"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."

Yes, Yeats was on to something.

Barbara

[BaalChatzaf]

"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."

Yes, Yeats was on to something.

Barbara

Arrrgggg. Smarrrt as paint ye arrrre. You got the point.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Sorry folks.

I see good all around me. And passionate heroes too. Yes, the best of us.

I left my Byron cape and suit in Brazil.

Try the trenches of WWI, or the concentration camps of WWII, or Stalin, or Mao, or Pol Pot, or (and the list goes on) if you want real blood-dimmed tide.

Michael

[Ross Barlow]

I once read this poem to a friend of mine who was blind. (He had been sighted up until his mid-teens, then he lost all sight due to diabetes complications.)

I love the poem, so I read it with considerable enthusiasm. When I finished, he exclaimed, “I can see it! I can see it!” Great imagery conveyed by the written/spoken word.

-Ross Barlow.

[kiaer.ts]

Sorry folks.

I see good all around me. And passionate heroes too. Yes, the best of us.

I left my Byron cape and suit in Brazil.

Try the trenches of WWI, or the concentration camps of WWII, or Stalin, or Mao, or Pol Pot, or (and the list goes on) if you want real blood-dimmed tide.

Michael

It is a wonderful poem. And it strikes me as ironic that you recommend the First World War...did you not know that was Yeats's inspiration?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ted,

I did not know. Now I do.

As an historical portrait, I can relate to the poem.

As a depiction of the modern world, I can't relate at all. Sure there are some disasters, atrocities and some loudmouths, but we are in the middle of a glorious Information Revolution.

I have real difficulty with:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

I don't sympathize with this sentiment because I don't believe it is accurate. I started feeling that way when I started becoming a mainstream news junkie. But when I cut back, I started seeing magnificent achievements whose producers were full of "conviction" and "full of passionate intensity" all around me, far more than the loudmouthed worst among us.

We actually live in a wonderful world.

Michael

[kiaer.ts]

Ted,

I did not know. Now I do.

As an historical portrait, I can relate to the poem.

As a depiction of the modern world, I can't relate at all. Sure there are some disasters, atrocities and some loudmouths, but we are in the middle of a glorious Information Revolution.

I have real difficulty with:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

I don't sympathize with this sentiment because I don't believe it is accurate. I started feeling that way when I started becoming a mainstream news junkie. But when I cut back, I started seeing magnificent achievements whose producers were full of "conviction" and "full of passionate intensity" all around me, far more than the loudmouthed worst among us.

We actually live in a wonderful world.

Michael

Just keep in mind that it is a poem which expresses a theme, not an essay arguing a point, or a manifesto pushing a program. As a poem it succeeds quite well.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Just keep in mind that it is a peom which expresses a theme, not an essay arguing a point, or a manifesto pushing a program. As a poem it succeeds quite well.

Ted,

I agree with this. I was merely responding to the insinuation regarding modern hostilities in Bob's cryptic question, "Maybe he is onto something?"

Michael