William Butler
Yeats
William
Butler Yeats was born in 13 of june of 1865 in Georgeville, near the Saymount
Castle, in Dublín (Irland). He was the son
of the paintor John Butler Yeats
y Susan Poyexfen Yeats,
a familiy angloirish
protestant. His grandfather, also called
William Butler
Yeats, was the rector
of the Irland Church, meanwhile his father was a nationalist esceptic and atheist.
(<cf.http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Butler_Yeats>)
Yeats is
generally considered to be one of the twentieth century's key English-language
poets. Yet,
unlike most modernists who experimented with free verse, Yeats was a
master of
the traditional verse forms. The impact of modernism on Yeats' work can be
seen in the
increasing abandonment of the more conventionally poetic diction of his
early work
in favour of the more severe language and more direct approach to his
themes that
increasingly characterises the poetry and plays of his middle period,
comprising
the volumes In the Seven Woods, Responsibilities and The
Green
Helmet.
His later
poetry and plays, Yeats wrote in a more personal vein. His subjects
included
his son and
daughter and the experience of growing old.
In 1929, he
stayed at Thoor Ballylee for the last time. Much of the remainder of
his life
was outside
Ireland, but he did lease a house, Riversdale in the Dublin suburb of
Rathfarnham in 1932. He wrote prolifically
through the final years of his life,
publishing
poetry, plays and prose. In 1938, he attended the Abbey for the last
time to
see the
premier of his play Purgatory. The Autobiographies of William
Butler Yeats was
published
that same year.
After
suffering from a variety of illnesses for a number of years, Yeats died
at the
Hôtel
Idéal
Séjour, in Menton, France on 28 January 1939, aged 73. The last poem he wrote
was the
Arthurian-themed The Black Tower.
Soon
afterward, Yeats was first buried at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, until, in accordance
with his
final wish, his body was moved to Drumcliffe, County Sligo in September,
1948, on
the Irish Naval Service corvette L.E. Macha.
His grave is a famous attraction
in Sligo.
His epitaph, which is the final line from one of his last poems, Under
Ben
Bulben is "Cast a cold Eye On life,
on death; Horseman, pass by!" Of this location,
Yeats said,
"the place that has really influenced my life most is Sligo." The
town is also
home to a
statue and memorial building in Yeats' honor.
(<cf.http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Butler_Yeats>)
"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 .The poem uses religious symbolism to illustrate Yeats'
anguish over
the apparent decline of Europe's
ruling class,
and his occult belief that Western
Civilization (if not the whole world) was
nearing the terminal
point of a 2000-year
historical cycle.
The
poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War. The
various
manuscript
revisions of the poem also have references to the French and Irish
Revolutions as well as
to Germany and Russia.
It is highly doubtful 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.
(<
cf.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_%28poem%29
>)
The Poem
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?
(<cf.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_%28poem%29
>)