The Second Coming

[Rough Beast Sloucher]

The Second Coming
By William Butler 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 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?

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

Joni Mitchell took that poem and turned out this:

 

[Curious George]

The Second Coming
By William Butler 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 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?

Nice and esoteric...

Why do you enjoy this poem?

 

[David T]

Awesome poem. I like for the same reason I like all along the watchtower. You really can't dissect it. I take that back you can try to dissect it, but that's like putting a flower in a blender on puree to understand its beauty.

 

[Rough Beast Sloucher]

Nice and esoteric...

Why do you enjoy this poem?

Enjoy is not the right word. It touches something in me that is beyond description. As with all good art it does not itself contain the meaning. Rather it points to it.

 

[Rough Beast Sloucher]

Awesome poem. I like for the same reason I like all along the watchtower. You really can't dissect it. I take that back you can try to dissect it, but that's like putting a flower in a blender on puree to understand its beauty.

Have you noticed that All Along the Watchtower turns back on itself endlessly.. In the first stanza the two are speaking and their identities are given. At the end of the third stanza they are only approaching and still anonymous. Brewer and Shipley would perform this song in concert by repeating the first stanza after the third.

 

[Rough Beast Sloucher]

Joni Mitchell took that poem and turned out this:

The poem was written just after the end of the terrible First World War. The sense of it is the loss of innocence and belief in traditional values. Joni wrote her song around 1990. I am tempted to see in her expansion on the poem a sense of the loss of the innocence and values of the era Joni grew up in. She was a child of the sixties and by the end of the Reagan era, that innocence and those values seemed lost forever.

 

[David T]

Have you noticed that All Along the Watchtower turns back on itself endlessly.. In the first stanza the two are speaking and their identities are given. At the end of the third stanza they are only approaching and still anonymous. Brewer and Shipley would perform this song in concert by repeating the first stanza after the third.

Yep , that's actually how I read it when I read it the first time. I have become very fascinated by Dylan. He writes that song, he's Bob Dylan, but his immersion into american folk eventually draws him into religion. He has his hotel California experience and runs out with his hair on fire as well.

I could talk for hours on end about folk music it's voice it's roots it's spiritual nature all of it. My particular favorite writer on nature from an earlier time is john Muir same folk voice.

Out of that early 60s era also is Joan baez. She's cavorting around with Thomas Merton, not sexually just hanging with him. I mean we don't even have a Merton in the house today. Pitiful.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

The poem was written just after the end of the terrible First World War. The sense of it is the loss of innocence and belief in traditional values. Joni wrote her song around 1990. I am tempted to see in her expansion on the poem a sense of the loss of the innocence and values of the era Joni grew up in. She was a child of the sixties and by the end of the Reagan era, that innocence and those values seemed lost forever.

I'd say she does that. I think the more rhythmic arrangement makes it much more memorable, for me, the poem never scanned well, but it really works for me in the song. The sound of the siren literally makes my hair stand on end...

 

[Curious George]

Enjoy is not the right word. It touches something in me that is beyond description. As with all good art it does not itself contain the meaning. Rather it points to it.

And toward what meaning do you see it pointing?

 

[Rough Beast Sloucher]

And toward what meaning do you see it pointing?

World War One had just ended and millions were dead to no real purpose, including many young men. The stable understandable world that was thought to exist before the war was seen to have been an illusion. The much touted march of progress, technological, social, intellectual, had became a headlong rush into madness. The Second Coming had been a metaphor for a perfected civilized world that could be achieved by Man himself. But the horror that had just been visited on civilization made a lie of that expectation. There would be a Second Coming but what could it be? What nightmare has awoken? What rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

 

[Curious George]

World War One had just ended and millions were dead to no real purpose, including many young men. The stable understandable world that was thought to exist before the war was seen to have been an illusion. The much touted march of progress, technological, social, intellectual, had became a headlong rush into madness. The Second Coming had been a metaphor for a perfected civilized world that could be achieved by Man himself. But the horror that had just been visited on civilization made a lie of that expectation. There would be a Second Coming but what could it be? What nightmare has awoken? What rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

It seems you have questions not answers. I guess I was asking who or what you see as the rough beast-given your user name

 

[Rough Beast Sloucher]

It seems you have questions not answers. I guess I was asking who or what you see as the rough beast-given your user name

The rough beast is not any individual. Poetry is not literal. Instead of the Second Coming being the wonderful world it was assumed was coming about, the terrible shadow of the War has killed that expectation. What will come instead? Something rough and beastly.

My username is just a joke. Like the rough beast is going to be a big green teddy bear?

 

[Curious George]

The rough beast is not any individual. Poetry is not literal. Instead of the Second Coming being the wonderful world it was assumed was coming about, the terrible shadow of the War has killed that expectation. What will come instead? Something rough and beastly.

My username is just a joke. Like the rough beast is going to be a big green teddy bear?

Different people will think different things. As you pointed out poetry is not literal, it is often layered. So some can see a person some can see a thing. It is in the readers mind. I wondered what you had thought. Consider it a compliment. Someone cares what you think.