The Second Coming -- W. B. 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 convictions, 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?

But you've not even met! :O

LaVisHh said:

I don't know about meeting, but this is the best line in the poem:

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

And i thought you were talking about this:

The Second Coming by Prince


It won't be long
All of God's children must learn 2 love
It won't be long (I said it won't be long)
Before the Second Coming, yeah
It won't be long, no, it won't be long

How many more good men must die before there's gun control
U've got 2 love your brother if U want 2 free your soul (Soul, soul, soul)

It won't be long (It won't be long)
All of God's, all of God's children must learn 2 love

Yeats is amazing! (Incidentally, Joni has a great recorded version of this Poem.)

With all of the sex threads going, I was sure this was about multipe orgasms.

IceNine, knowing your views on god, I’m curious to read what this poem means to you. Not looking for a theological debate (I rarely go there, anyhow), but a literary conversation. Are you a big Yeats fan?

Lammastide said:

You mean, has IceNine converted to Yeats?

.

Lammastide said:

I really love Yeats... the whole cyclical nature of history is intriguing. I particularly love the idea of the second coming not being the coming of a Jesus figure, but a cruel monster to rule for the next 2,000 years.

IceNine said:

Hmmm... that's interesting. Yeats was a Gnostic (and a damned good-looking one ), so while he certainly didn't mean a return of Christ in a physical sense, I've considered he was talking about the next revelation of the Godform -- a sort of universal enlightenment among mankind. I considered the beast he referenced to be merely a totally unknown, new millenium.

By the way, have you read much about The Order of the Golden Dawn or Thelema? (If, as rumor has it, you're also EvilWhiteMale, I assume you're at least secretly familiar. ...But don't worry; I'll never tell.)
[This message was edited Mon Mar 24 20:59:34 PST 2003 by Lammastide]