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For no reason whatosever,

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?

This is the only Yeats poem I had been familiar with before this class (and still the only one I am familiar with), having read it in an English class a couple of summers ago, and recognizing the reference to the famous rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem (probably having read it in a Stephen King book or something.)

I think that I have an opinion on Yeats and I think that opinion is as follows:
I think I understand the meaning of some of his poems. I certainly do not understand the meaning of others of his poems. But whether I understand them or not, I like how almost all of them sound.

This appreciating the shape and rhythm and sound of a poem apart from its meaning seems to be important.

Glancing through some of the other works of the other poets on the syllabus, I certainly hope it is important, or else I will be utterly lost.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 2:10 PM | shower me with attention