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?
-- William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"
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7 comments:
Hmmm... Everything ok up there? The Second Coming is a great poem, for sure. I hope you're ok, no falcons etc gyring around you.
What's your art class up to these days?
:p
i was doing some online reading and this thing smacked me in the forehead. it's just so apt in so many ways. i'm always astounded when authors and poets can put their finger on something that turns out to be timeless.
and i was thinking how selfish Achebe was to use the line, Things fall apart, for the title of his incredible novel.
art class is finished for the year. i am now finishing marking, going through portfolios, cleaning up the still-disaster of the art room, and planning for the extracurricular arts classes I want to continue in the second semester.
I will certainly miss the art classes.
So right now is the end of your first semester? They are taking their semester finals now?
What will you be teaching in the spring?
yep, second semester starts monday. my students wrote their exams monday and tuesday, and i confess i haven't marked them yet - i'm afraid they failed.
second sem. i teach science, biology and computer jibberish... technically keyboarding, but really it's a mish-mash of useful computer knowledge. WAY less fun than art.
hey, i'm teaching that poem to my undergrads this term! i'm dreading having to explain to them the symbolic significance of yeats' gyres. he wrote this whole thing about them explaining them ... but it's practically impossible to understand. *sigh
it's so funny that you're struck by yeats. he's one of my fav poets. when the ol' dissertation isn't going as well as it could be i often claim that i feel like the "rough beast" in 'the second coming', "slouching toward Bethlehem to be born".
check out "the fascination of what's difficult". i think it might become the frontispiece to my diss.
HE FASCINATION OF WHAT'S DIFFICULT
THE fascination of what's difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart. There's something ails our colt
That must, as if it had not holy blood
Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,
Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt
As though it dragged road-metal. My curse on plays
That have to be set up in fifty ways,
On the day's war with every knave and dolt,
Theatre business, management of men.
I swear before the dawn comes round again
I'll find the stable and pull out the bolt.
On a more lowbrow note, did I mention that I initially thought the title of this post was "Yeast knows"?
yeast, as much as i love some of it's implications (beer, bread), also has hideous connotations. please never mention that five-letter word to me again. ever.
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