"The Second Coming"

    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?



,,,,,Well, we are now done with, I hope, discussions of what is appropriate dress in a trendy restaurant and also a debate as to whether or not Hannah is a good girl.  I know that one of the blogs dealing with dress codes had a new record of 23 comments...each reader apparently struggling to have the last word. I believe it was Unca Phil who won that contest.  Anyway, we each had a go at it.  Who knows, there may be another  juicy family or political problem that would break the comment and last word records.  I know son, Joel, is very good at having the last word even though it might be rationale thin. 


.....The "Second Coming" was written by Yeats in the aftermath of the first world war.  At the time  the economy was sluggish and the Great Depression was coming.  Hopefully the "Second Coming" does not refer to the situation in our country and in the world at the present time.  So many people have lost their jobs and their homes.  Fortunately, I am not one of them.  The money I receive each month from my school, from the VA, and from Social Security is sufficient to allow Rhoda and I to live a good life.  We can afford to go out to dinner a couple of times a week; and we can go to a movie anytime we choose.  Also, should we desire, we can go on a cruise each December.  However, Rho has second thoughts about my cruising inasmuch as I broke both hips on two different cruises!  Cruises are not very hip friendly.  And hopefully, though Yeats writes "...things fall apart, the centre cannot hold..." his vision of "the rough beast" will not materialize in these years.