When the US entered WWI in 1917, Woodrow Wilson, the country's president at the time, assured the American people that it would be the "War to End All Wars." We know how well that turned out. After all, the world has been such a peaceful happy place since 1918.
One of the great poems generated in the wake of the Great War (it wasn't called the First World War until a bit later -- who knew what was to come for sure?):
William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming (1919)
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?
Today's Rune: Harvest.
Birthdays today include those of James Joyce and James Dickey. And let's not forget Stan Getz.
Happy Groundhog Day!
5 comments:
Solving old problems creates new ones which in turn keeps the engineers busy. In other words: there is no end. I've been a bit absent lately after being forced into the world of "New Blogger" with a Google account. Nothing's easier for me--just different. I'll drink a toast to James Dickey and "Deliverance." I can hear them dueling banjos as I speak.
You posted Yeats. I love Yeats. Thank you.
One of my favourite poems. Yeats rocks!
An Irish poet. Ireland was neutral in WW II in the fight against Hitler. After all, who would want to fight with the English against world tyranny?
You know, this has always been one of my favorite poems of all time as well...
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