This blog is a response to a task assigned by Dilip Barad sir, Department of English (MKBU). In this blog two poems of W.B.Yeast are analyzed. Click here for more details.
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| Yeats photographed in 1903 by Alice Boughton |
Poem: The Second Coming
~ W. B. 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? (Yeats-1920)
Analysis:
‘The Second Coming’ is a poem written by Irish poet W. B. Yeats in 1919, first printed in The Dial in November 1920 and included in his 1921 collection of verses Michael Robartes and the Dancer. In this poem Yeats discusses the second coming of God's other son. According to biblical myth a second son of God is supposed to be born.
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| Widening gyre |
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| Second Coming |
In the first stanza Yeats talks about “widening gyre” which means the time that moves and people wait for the second birth of the son of god. Falconer which is a bird that is used for hunting now that bird is not in the control of the human who controls it. This suggests the situation of the war that now the people have forgotten the real message of the god and second coming. Opposite of the divine comes in the 20th century. Due to the war innocence is died and the people are waiting for god to solve the problem but they don't do that themselves . They wait for the good that will come and solve every problem in the world. In the war nothing is in control, many lives are taken away and people are fighting for their own sake. These lines suggest the destruction of social structure.
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| blood-dimmed tide |
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| Falcon |
The second stanza starts with the revelation that through ‘Spiritus Mundi’ means the universal memory the poet is getting the image of the “second coming”. It looks like half human and half lion. Through these revelations the poet tries to convey the destruction of the war, people were waiting for the divine power to come but what comes is a demon in the sense of the war. Poet tries to satirise the idea of the second coming and waiting for some divine force and what people do is just war. It is a human tendency that they wait for someone to come and solve the problem but what they will do is just chaos.
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| Lion body and the head of a man |
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| Second Coming as Beast |
Poet gives the metaphor of a pitiless sun that only brings sorrow to the people. Poet asks that for many years people only wait for this beast to come, not anything else. Poet tries to express the anxieties and social disorder during that time and ask what will the second coming bring to mankind?
Poem: On Being Asked for a War
~ W. B. Yeats
I think it better that in times like these
A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter’s night. (Yeats -2015)
Analysis:
‘On being asked for a War Poem’ is a poem by William Butler Yeats written on 6 February 1915 in response to a request by Henry James that Yeats compose a political poem about World War I. Yeats changed the poem's title from ‘To a friend who has asked me to sign his manifesto to the neutral nations’ to ‘A Reason for Keeping Silent’ before sending it in a letter to James, which Yeats wrote at Coole Park on 20 August 1915. The poem was prefaced with a note stating: "It is the only thing I have written of the war or will write, so I hope it may not seem unfitting." The poem was first published in Edith Wharton's The Book of the Homeless in 1916 as ‘A Reason for Keeping Silent’. When it was later reprinted in The Wild Swans at Coole, the title was changed to ‘On being asked for a War Poem’. (Wikipedia)
The poem contains only six lines but in these simple six lines the poet says so much about his contemporary situation. The poem can be read in many contexts even in present time the poem has its own importance. In the very first line the speaker conveys that times like these means ‘War Time’ poets should be silent. It looks like the response to the person who asks the poet to write a poem about the war. Speaker says so many things even by being said to be silent. In the poem we find two words “right” and “truth”, both words have their own significance. When the statesman says it is the right thing, at least it seems right for some time but the poets know the truth because they have the sense to see the world in the real way. So when all the rights of speaking are given to the politician to say what is right and wrong, the speaker says through “being silent” means he speaks against it that there is some force that is stopping them from expressing themselves.
In the last three lines the speaker says that statesmen have a power to interfere with the truth and present it in a different way. And the people for whom the speaker uses the terms line like a young girl who is lazy with going above the words of the statesmen so she would believe whatever the politician says and the old man who is about to be dead, he too does not have a sense to see through words of the politicians. Through these lines the speaker says that everyone is in the influence of the politician, if a poet would speak against it then before any politician the people would go against the poet. A very good example is Gujarati poem "Shabvahini Ganga" by Parul Khakhar. When she speaks something against the political power, she had to suffer so much criticism from the society. Click here for Wikipedia entry.
शबावाहिनी गंगा
~ पारुल खाखर
आवाज आई 'सब कुछ चंगा-चंगा'
राज, आपके रामराज्य में अंत्येष्टि गंगा।
राज, तुम्हारे मौसा चले गए, लक्कड़भरा चले गए,
राज, हमारे दाग चले गए, रोवनहारा चले गए,
घर-घर कडंगा नाचते हैं
राज, तुम्हारे रामराज्य में अंतिम संस्कार वाली गंगा।
राज, तुम्हारी सुलगती चिमनी धुंए से भरी है,
राज, हमारा दिल फट जाता है, जलती हुई छाती फट जाती है
और सारंगी बजाती है 'वाह रे बिल्ला-रंगा'!
राज, तुम्हारे रामराज्य में अंत्येष्टि गंगा।
राज, तुम्हारे दिव्य वस्त्र और तुम्हारी दिव्य रोशनी
राज, पूरा शहर तुम्हें
पुरुष के रूप में देख रहा है, कहो 'राजा मेरा नंगा'
राज, तुम्हारे रामराज्य में अंत्येष्टि गंगा। (Khakhar)
Khakhar, Parul. “Shav-vahini Ganga | Ganga, the Carrier of Corpses | શબવાહિની ગંગા | शव-वाहिनी गंगा , By Parul Khakhar - Agitate.” Agitate Journal, 2021, https://agitatejournal.org/shav-vahini-ganga-ganga-the-carrier-of-corpses. Accessed 28, January 2024.
Yeats, William Butler. “On being asked for a War Poem by William Butler….” Poetry Foundation, 1915, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57313/on-being-asked-for-a-war-poem. Accessed 28 January 2024.
Yeats, William Butler, and WB Yeats. “The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats.” Poetry Foundation, 1920, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming. Accessed 28 January 2024.
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