W.B. Yeats "The Second Coming"
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 Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the 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?
This poem is actually talking about the second coming of Jesus.
We get the feeling that it is Jesus at the last line. "Bethlehem".
The tone is not positive at all, and it even gives a horrific mood.
a is a spinx, which is a symbol of
riddles or mysteries.
Jesus is almost described as a fraud. The last few lines are saying something like this.
rocking a cradle to put you to sleep when a rough beast is coming back to get you.
2 comments:
Did you know that this is the poem from where Achebe took his book title Things Fall Apart? It is! - pretty cool, eh?
Of course, you are correct, though...this poem is definatly a dark and inaccurate picture of our Savior, Jesus Christ. The image of the Sphinx is almost demonic in feeling.
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