William Butler Yeats

[SiobhanClancy]

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 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?

[MaineDem]

1. I love his words.

I write it out in verse-
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be
Wherever green is worn
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

[SiobhanClancy]

2. Easter 1916...

that one always brings tears to my eyes.

[aquart]

4. Well, tears. The Ballad of Father Gilligan destroys me.

The old priest Peter Gilligan
Was weary night and day
For half his flock were in their beds
Or under green sods lay.

Once, while he nodded in a chair
At the moth-hour of the eve
Another poor man sent for him,
And he began to grieve.

'I have no rest, nor joy, nor peace,
For people die and die;
And after cried he, 'God forgive!
My body spake not I!'

He knelt, and leaning on the chair
He prayed and fell asleep;
And the moth-hour went from the fields,
And stars began to peep.

They slowly into millions grew,
And leaves shook in the wind
And God covered the world with shade
And whispered to mankind.

Upon the time of sparrow chirp
When the moths came once more,
The old priest Peter Gilligan
Stood upright on the floor.

'Mavrone, mavrone! The man has died
While I slept in the chair.'
He roused his horse out of its sleep
And rode with little care.

He rode now as he never rode,
By rocky lane and fen;
The sick man's wife opened the door,
'Father! you come again!'

'And is the poor man dead?' he cried
'He died an hour ago.'
The old priest Peter Gilligan
In grief swayed to and fro.

'When you were gone, he turned and died,
As merry as a bird.'
The old priest Peter Gilligan
He knelt him at that word.

'He Who hath made the night of stars
For souls who tire and bleed,
Sent one of this great angels down,
To help me in my need.

'He Who is wrapped in purple robes,
With planets in His care
Had pity on the least of things
Asleep upon a chair.'

-- W.B.Yeats

[MaineDem]

6. Off topic, sorta but...

Didn't you just go to Ireland? I'm assuming asking if you had a good time is rhetorical? :)

[SiobhanClancy]

9. I had such a happy time..

I literally cried when it was time to go to the airport for the thought that I might never make it back over again:(

[Mr. McD]

3. When You Are Old by: William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;


How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;


And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

[cmf]

7. This one is my all-time favorite

I can still recite it by heart.

[roughsatori]

5. I have that one memorized

It is a good party trick to recite it on demand.

Yeats wrote much wonderful poetry, but "The Second Coming," though an anthology warhorse, is my favorite. Not one syllable is wasted, the use of rhythm, assonance, and consonance are masterful. Goosebumps every time.

[cmf]

8. I've been thinking about The Second Coming lately

Could be current events. Could be that I've been reading The Stand.

[Plaid Adder]

10. Fun with WBY

In case this thread gets too heavy for you WBY fans, try this fun game I learned about at a conference: replace one word in the title of a Yeats poem with the word "hamster." You'll be surprised at how hard you laugh:

"Crazy Jane Talks to the Hamster"
"He Wishes for the Hamsters of Heaven"
"Hamster 1916"
"An Irish Hamster Forsees His Death"
"The Circus Hamsters' Desertion"
"To The Hamster Upon The Rood of Time"
"Song of the Wandering Hamster"

and so on.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[Squeech]

11. Before there was Yeats

"The Second Coming" kinda seems to me like the sequel to this one:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

-- William Shakespeare

[SiobhanClancy]

12. The Tempest

That is beautiful,and I think you may be right.

[Snellius]

13. Gore quoted "Second Coming" in his April 2002 speech

I'm tired of this right-wing side-wind. I've had it. America's economy is suffering unnecessarily. Important American values are being trampled. Special interests are calling the shots. And it sometimes seems as if, in the words of the poet, "The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity."

http://election.rhetorica.net/gore/stand_up.htm

I wonder who could be the Anti-Christ Gore saw in Yeat's poem?