By W B Yeats Vocabulary gyre a spiral turn falcon a bird of prey falconer a person who trains falcons to capture prey mere total absolute anarchy total chaos and war dimmed ID: 504384
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Slide1
The Second Coming
By W. B YeatsSlide2
Vocabulary
gyre: a spiral turnfalcon: a bird of prey
falconer:
a person who
trains falcons
to capture prey
mere:
total, absolute
anarchy:
total chaos and war
dimmed:
made darker
loosed:
unleashed
conviction:
deep belief
in something
, such as morals
revelation:
a great realization
Second Comin
g: return
of Jesus
vast:
huge
Spiritus
Mundi:
the
shared spirit
or soul of all
peopleSlide3
pitiless:
without sympathyreel: whirl aroundindignant: upsetvexed: distressed
rough:
harsh, crude
slouches:
walks slowly, awkwardly, slumped over
Bethlehem:
town where Jesus was bornSlide4
Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart, the center 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 outWhen a vast image out of Spiritus MundiTroubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of theDesert.
Turning around in a spiral that keeps
getting wider, the falcon cannot hear his trainer. Things fall apart. Total chaos and rebellion spill into the world. A tidal wave of blood drowns everything innocent. The best people no longer believe in anything, and the worst are extremely passionate about their beliefs, even if they are wrong.
Surely some kind of great truth will be
revealed. Surely Jesus Christ will return to Earth in the Second Coming! As soon as I say this, I see a huge image, which everyone
on Earth can also see, and it troubles me.Slide5
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?Somewhere in the sands of the desert,
a beast
with a lion’s body and a man’s
face— with
an empty, unsympathetic look in
its eyes
, is slowly getting up and walking,
while angry
vultures circle it, out of
control.
Darkness
falls again. But now I know
that this
beast, which has been sound asleep
like a
statue for 2,000 years, has been woken
up, and
a nightmare is going to start. What
is this
harsh, crude beast? It walks
menacingly towards
Bethlehem, where it will be
born.Slide6
William Butler Yeats is buried
in the Protestant churchyard, Drumcliff, Co. Sligo, Ireland. Yeats' Grave at
Drumcliff
. Yeats was born in Dublin into an artistic family.