Agnes and I are on vacation, but the good poems don't stop just because we're on the road. This week, in honor of the current political atmosphere, we bring back this classic poem from William Butler Yeats ...
The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats
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 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?
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity." I couldn't have said it better myself.
Have a good day. Come back on Friday for another collection of editorial gems. More thoughts then.
Bilbo
This one is an outstanding poem, with interesting allusions.
ReplyDeleteI wish there was a little less intensity among the worst.
ReplyDeleteAnd fewer pf them. Yeats's poems are really to think about.
Wow, that's a great poem. I'd never read it though I knew the line "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold."
ReplyDeleteThanks for the introduction.