William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)was awarded the Nobel Prize for poetry in 1923."The Second Coming" was written in 1919, shortly after the first world war, and when British soldires in Ireland were seeking to quell the republican movement.
gyre(line 1):a circular or spiral motion
Sprititus Mundi(line 12):the Soul of the Universe, sourse of images
lion -man(line 14):the Egyptian sphinx

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.

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 i{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?
(posted by farid)

Posted:Tuesday, March 04, 2003 |