WB YEATS POETRY
Poetry link to a wide range of Yeats poetry
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-butler-yeats
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-butler-yeats
THE SECOND COMING
by WB 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?
The Second Coming short animation - Trish McAdam - 2014 https://youtu.be/juc5eDEq2js
This visual response to WB Yeats’ 1919 poem, The Second Coming, is inspired by the word "Millenarian" given to the filmmaker by an unknown member of LUX Critical Forum Dublin for a LUX 13 screening London, Nov 2014
Later screened at MEx15, a Symposium and exhibition launching the new national database of Irish Artists Moving Images and MEx15 exhibition at the Illuminations Gallery after that, April 2015
http://visualartists.ie/jobs-ops/talks-lectures/mex15-symposium-and-exhibition-launching-new-national-database-of-artists-moving-images/
This visual response to WB Yeats’ 1919 poem, The Second Coming, is inspired by the word "Millenarian" given to the filmmaker by an unknown member of LUX Critical Forum Dublin for a LUX 13 screening London, Nov 2014
Later screened at MEx15, a Symposium and exhibition launching the new national database of Irish Artists Moving Images and MEx15 exhibition at the Illuminations Gallery after that, April 2015
http://visualartists.ie/jobs-ops/talks-lectures/mex15-symposium-and-exhibition-launching-new-national-database-of-artists-moving-images/
NO SECOND TROY ( Responsibilities 1916)
WB Yeats
WHY should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?