A Poem for Our Times--by William Butler Yeats ("The Second Coming")

Check out the first stanza, especially the final line.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

       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 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: a waste of desert sand;
    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
    Wind 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?

Yeats on the Irish Rising, Easter 1916. "A Terrible Beauty Is Born."

Easter Monday of 1916 is when Ireland rose up (or more accurately, some dedicated people in Ireland rose up) and began the process of breaking away from England. The great poet William Butler Yeats wrote this poem, proclaiming the birth of "a terrible beauty." Yeats had some ambivalence about the people involved and what had happened. Here is the final part of that great poem:

Easter 1916 (final section)

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death.
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead.
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a 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.

General Post Office (GPO), Dublin, April 1916

William Butler Yeats and John F. Kennedy: The Light Shines in the Darkness

Below is part of a great poem written by WB Yeats. When I think of the killing of John F. Kennedy, I think of parts of this poem. Thanks be to God, evil has not prevailed.

The light shines in the darkness . . .
And the darkness has not overcome it! (John 1:5)

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
       THE SECOND COMING (parts)

    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 . . .
    
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The End of an Era? W.B. Yeats and the Apocalyptic Vision

William Butler Yeats had an apocalyptic bent in many of his poems, and when 9-11 happened, I immediately thought of his writings. Here are a few lines from his poem "The Second Coming"--

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.

Are we at the end of the world as we know it? I know that this question has been asked over and over through the millennia. Most often the answer is no. But occasionally the answer is yes, we are at the end of something and the beginning of something new. The crash of the world economic engine this month has made me ask the questions: Is this it? What is our future? How do I protect my family?

Sometimes, as the country song goes, impossible things fall, mountains are moved. Caesar is murdered; Rome yields to the barbarians; cultures are torn to the ground by war, disease, or forces we don't even understand. Are we at that point right now?