"The Second Coming" - William Butler Yeats

[orangecrush]

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity"


Could Trump be the "Rough beast" that slouches toward Bethlehem?

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold"

Exactly where we are

[orangecrush]

2. It hit me

the same way.

"The center cannot hold"

absolute truth.

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. That line was used as a title for an episode of Ken Burns Vietnam. Perfectly apt

[orangecrush]

4. Thanks, I haven't seen it yet

But plan to.

[longship]

5. It is a damned good series.

No doubt Ken Burns' best by far. He worked on it for a decade! He couldn't have done it without Viet Nam's cooperation, which makes it all the more remarkable.

Highly recommended. You will want to view it more than once.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

6. When I was a sophomore in high school

My English teacher, Brother John Sheehy, who was Irish, read this poem in his wonderful accent. I can still hear it in my mind's ear. He taught us to appreciate poetry, basically by reading it to us so beautifully.

Incidentally, for those who are Latin-deprived, Spritus Mundi means "Spirit of the World".

[orangecrush]

8. Thank you

For sharing the wonderful memory, and for helping the Latin deprived, such as myself!

[longship]

7. A great poem.

Apocalyptic, but I also find myself going to it these days.

Yeats speaks truth even these many decades later.

[orangecrush]

9. I have a nice anthology

Of Yeats among my stacks.

I am not college educated, but love reading, and found myself reading the poems over and over, and looking up the many allusions contained in them.