The Second Coming

A poem by William Butler Yeats.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• war
• death
• middle
• east
• israel
• lebanon
• second
• coming
• hitler
• nazi
• saddam
• bush

[Goes211]

Nice poem, but it was written along time ago. Proving that history just goes in an infinite circle and there is no such thing as a "second coming". Agree? or do you believe the world is ending?

[soakedinale]

war is like the tides. they would seem to repeat over and over, but each wave is unlike any that came before it and unlike any that will come after. the world is not ending, just following its inevitable course.

[monicasm123]

After twenty centuries of stoney sleep The millenium is reached Then the pityless beast Whose time has come stirs forth from the desert sun Slouching through the unravelled center And into the affairs of man will reenter. The falcon and the falconer lose control as the beast exerts its relentless hold. Twenty long centuries now returned from exile Its face is frozen in a sardonic smile In a nightmare birth Beneath the harsh desert sun The second coming has begun

[mikemosocw]

awful american accent, read without meaning.

[MckyMseNTarotCrds]

@monicasm123 I've heard Yeats wrote many versions. Are these lines from one of them?First I thought you were just offering an analysis of what you see happening after the poem ends. But then I noticed the rhyming, which is very cool, but so unlike the form of the version I know. Please tell me what these lines you wrote are from. They're cool, but if they're Yeats, I'm glad he cut them. I love the poem the way it is. This would be a cool afterword perhaps.

[geoffck6969]

I'm truly not trying to be rude, but your voice is much to flat and monotone to give this Yeats classic any life. My rating is a genorous E for effort. Sorry. Folks, if you want to hear a reading that captures the essence of this poem, visit SpokenVerse and watch his reading.

[GammaStrahlenLamm]

I consider this pictorial interpretation of the poem rather an enactment of personal american fantasies.

[hobgoblinlkjfdsa]

@mikemosocw I would it isn't a strong reading, but if you think the accent is a problem you are a stupid nationalistic bigot.

[Ivan32304]

@mikemosocw  Can you show us how it should be read? I'd like to hear that.

[ninnyhammer101]

emo?

[rungnuoctrong]

The Second Coming = 12/26/2004

[happydays450]

The Irish poet, Patrick Lewis Strachan, has I think predicted even darker days ahead in his poem, Midnight's Resurrection. In chapter 5, titled The Man In The Mask, the ending reads like this:

And behind that bleak and woven face

A time bomb ticks like an epicedium beat.

But now the time of the beast

Has come about at last...and his throne is masked by a democratic seat.

The whole poem is genuinely creepy and very sad, and written in 1994, it predicted 9/11 and the Iraq war.

[SuperBluehaze]

It was not written after the second world war at all, but around 19 10, when Yeats wife was going in trances. Great recitation; well done.

[TheHelpPerson]

1:29

pwnd?