William Butler Yeats
William Yeats is a little difficult to understand. After reading his poem “The Second Coming”, I was lost with the specifics. I’m sure if he even had specifics, but it felt like there more points he was trying to make evident than there were. One of the first things I gathered was he was referring to the second coming of Christ. He mentions anarchy and the “blood tide” and innocence being drowned, which to me sounds like the chaos mentioned in the book of Revelation. In a sense, all of the tragedies that have been going on in our world today could be seen as the chaos mentioned in the Bible. But as for Yeats, he does a good job painting the picture of what he feels this will be like during the Second Coming, but his last two lines…
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
Don’t really seem to fit the rest of it. Again, maybe he was going for more than just a visual in the first stanza, but it could have ended with the 6th line and still had a strong ending.
In the last stanza, he mentions the second coming repeatedly, for emphasis on its importance I suppose, and later speaks on Christians’ readiness for His return. He compares Christian to babies being asleep in a cradle and also speaks on several different beasts that will be roaming the earth during the rapture. He never says why the beasts are relevant or how he feels about the Christians’ “stony sleep” so I’m trying to figure out why he wrote this. Was it to express chaos in a poem to parallel how things would be during the rapture? Or is there an underlying message that I messed? The topic at hand is an important one, feel free to correct me or INFORM me as to what is happening in this piece. I don’t think Yeats is on my list of people I like to read, but his work is interesting.
4 comments:
LaDonna,
Part of the problem is that you are assuming Yeats is talking about Christ's second coming, while actually he is seeing signs of the second coming of paganism--it is the beast that is coming, to rule for 2000 years before the next cycle of peace and Christ can return. You seem to project your own religious beliefs and assumptions onto Yeats, which gets you into trouble here.
LaDonna,
I enjoyed Yeats' poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" because I was able to imagine the waters edge because I have grown up on a lake and have seen and experienced a lot of the same things described in the poem.
Ladonna,
I had the same problem with the second coming as you did. Its hard to detach ones personal faith when reading the work of another. I read it as the second coming as well while Dr. Glance points out what is really coming is paganism.
Once again that religion is not letting you truly see the work for what it is. It may be wrong to say but a good rule when reading poetry is to take all your laws and beliefs about life and throw them out the window then you could see works for the arts they are.
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