William Butler Yeats "The Second Coming" Poem animation
Heres a virtual movie of
William Butler Yeats (1865 -
1939)
Reading his much loved poem "
The Second Coming " "The Second Coming" is a poem by William Butler Yeats first printed in The
Dial (
November 1920) and afterwards included in his
1921 verse collection
Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poem uses
Christian imagery regarding the end of the world as allegory to describe the atmosphere in post-war
Europe.The poem was written in
1919 in the aftermath of the
First World War.[1] However, the various manuscript revisions of the poem refer to the
French and
Irish Revolutions as well as those of
Germany and
Russia; as a result, it is unlikely that the poem was solely inspired by the
Russian Revolution of 1917, which some claim
Yeats viewed as a threat to the aristocratic class he favored.[ William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was born in
Dublin. His father was a lawyer and a well-known portrait painter. Yeats was educated in
London and in Dublin, but he spent his summers in the west of
Ireland in the family's summer house at
Connaught. The young Yeats was very much part of the fin de siècle in London; at the same time he was active in societies that attempted an
Irish literary revival. His first volume of verse appeared in 1887, but in his earlier period his dramatic production outweighed his poetry both in bulk and in import.
Together with
Lady Gregory he founded the
Irish Theatre, which was to become the
Abbey Theatre, and served as its chief playwright until the movement was joined by
John Synge. His plays usually treat
Irish legends; they also reflect his fascination with mysticism and spiritualism.
The Countess Cathleen (1892),
The Land of
Heart's Desire (1894),
Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902),
The King's Threshold (1904), and
Deirdre (1907) are among the best known. After 1910, Yeats's dramatic art took a sharp turn toward a highly poetical, static, and esoteric style. His later plays were written for small audiences; they experiment with masks, dance, and music, and were profoundly influenced by the
Japanese Noh plays. Although a convinced patriot, Yeats deplored the hatred and the bigotry of the
Nationalist movement, and his poetry is full of moving protests against it. He was appointed to the
Irish Senate in 1922. Yeats is one of the few writers whose greatest works were written after the award of the
Nobel Prize. Whereas he received the Prize chiefly for his dramatic works, his significance today rests on his lyric achievement. His poetry, especially the volumes
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921),
The Tower (1928),
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), and
Last Poems and
Plays (
1940), made him one of the outstanding and most influential twentieth-century poets writing in
English. His recurrent themes are the contrast of art and life, masks, cyclical theories of life (the
symbol of the winding stairs), and the ideal of beauty and ceremony contrasting with the hubbub of modern life.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright
Jim Clark
2011
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?