POEM OF THE DAY : THE SECOND COMING - WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

THE SECOND COMING 

WILLIAM  BUTLER YEATS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon can not hear the falconer 

Things fall apart ,the centre can not hold

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere.

The Second Coming has been written by the famous Irish poet W.B.yeats. W.B.yeats is a modern poet.He was a symbolist. He was influenced by the French symbolists  like Baudelaire,Mallarue,verlaine and so on. Of all English -language poets it seems that yeats is one who has written most thoughtfully abouts the problems and the sadness of old age.

 Although the whole poem has been written on the world 's awful condition it can be divided into two parts ,for critical  analysis .The poem consists altogether twenty two lines. The first eight lines of the  poem present  a terrifying picture of the world's situation as year"s saw in 1909. Second Coming  suggests the coming of Jesus Christ for second time .The title the"Second Coming " signifies the end of the world on human civilization .It has a biblical reference : Christ promised his disciples that he would come to the world for the second time when the human civilization would come to an end .The opening stanza signifies for the poet almost the approaching end of the world.This makes him feel that probably ,Christ is coming for the second time as he promised to his disciples at the  time of his departure.In the opening stanza the poet uses some symbolic words like gyre,falcon ,falconer .The symbolic meaning of gyre is cycle of civilization or history.The poet has also used the word falcon in place of man and falconer in stead of God.  In the cycle of human civilization the falcon and falconer  are moved. There has been a gap in their relationship . They will come closer each other. The phrase "widening gyre" suggests the possibility of the falconer meeting or catching the falcon is getting slimmer and slimmer .The cycle of history  is widening.It is an alarming development

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Mr Mahesh Bishi , 

ENGLISH LITERATURE & LUNGUISTICS, 

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POEM OF THE DAY : SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD - WALT WHITMAN

SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD, 1

WALT WHITMAN - 1819-1892

 

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

 

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,

Strong and content I travel the open road.

 

The earth, that is sufficient,

I do not want the constellations any nearer,

I know they are very well where they are,

I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

 

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,

I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,

I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,

I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)

This poem is in the public domain. 

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POEM OF THE DAY : DARKNESS - LORD BYRON

 DARKNESS

GEORGE GORDON BYRON - 1788-1824

 

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars

Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,

And men forgot their passions in the dread

Of this their desolation; and all hearts

Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:

And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,

The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,

The habitations of all things which dwell,

Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,

And men were gather'd round their blazing homes

To look once more into each other's face;

Happy were those who dwelt within the eye

Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:

A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;

Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour

They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks

Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.

The brows of men by the despairing light

Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits

The flashes fell upon them; some lay down

And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest

Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;

And others hurried to and fro, and fed

Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up

With mad disquietude on the dull sky,

The pall of a past world; and then again

With curses cast them down upon the dust,

And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd

And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes

Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd

And twin'd themselves among the multitude,

Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.

And War, which for a moment was no more,

Did glut himself again: a meal was bought

With blood, and each sate sullenly apart

Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;

All earth was but one thought—and that was death

Immediate and inglorious; and the pang

Of famine fed upon all entrails—men

Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;

The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,

Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,

And he was faithful to a corse, and kept

The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,

Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead

Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,

But with a piteous and perpetual moan,

And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand

Which answer'd not with a caress—he died.

The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two

Of an enormous city did survive,

And they were enemies: they met beside

The dying embers of an altar-place

Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things

For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,

And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands

The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath

Blew for a little life, and made a flame

Which was a mockery; then they lifted up

Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died—

Even of their mutual hideousness they died,

Unknowing who he was upon whose brow

Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,

The populous and the powerful was a lump,

Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—

A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.

The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,

And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;

Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd

They slept on the abyss without a surge—

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,

The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;

The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,

And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need

Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

 

This poem is in the public domain.

 

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WHY SHOULD YOU READ SYLVIA PLATH?

WHY SHOULD YOU READ SYLVIA PLATH? 

ISEULT GILLESPIE

1,213,886 views

Mar 7, 2019

TED-Ed

15M subscribers

Explore the haunting and intimate works of poet Sylvia Plath, who digs into issues of mental health, trauma and sexuality in works like “The Bell Jar.”

Under her shrewd eye and pen, Sylvia Plath turned everyday objects into haunting images: a “new statue in a drafty museum,” a shadow in a mirror, a slab of soap. Her breathtaking perspectives and unflinching language made her a touchstone for readers seeking to break the silence around issues of trauma, frustration and sexuality. Iseult Gillespie shares why Plath's writing continues to captivate.

Lesson by Iseult Gillespie, directed by Sarah Saidan.

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Thank you so much to our patrons for your support! Without you this video would not be possible! MJ Tan Mingjie, Yansong Li, Jason A Saslow, Joanne Luce, Kyle Nguyen, Taylor Hunter, Noa Shore, Lex Azevedo, Merit Gamertsfelder, Bev Millar, Rishi Pasham, Jhuval, SookKwan Loong, Bruno Pinho, Javier Aldavaz, Rodrigo Carballo, Boytsov Ilya, EdoKun, Misaki Sato, Craig Sheldon, Andrew Bosco, Catherine Sverko, Nik Maier, Mark Morris, Adi V, Peter Liu, Leora Allen, Hiroshi Uchiyama, Michal Salman, Gilly , Ka-Hei Law, Maya Toll, Ricardo Rendon Cepeda, Renhe Ji, Andrés Melo Gámez, Tim Leistikow, Shawar Khan, Chris , Megan Douglas, Barbara Smalley, Filip Dabrowski, Joe Giamartino, Clair Chen, Vik Nagjee, Karen Goepen-Wee, Della Palacios, Stephanie Perozo, Marc Bilodeau, Ivan Tsenov and Claudia Mayfield.

 

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POEM OF THE DAY : YOU ARE - SYLVIA PLATH

"YOU'RE", A POEM BY SYLVIA PLATH

2,337 views

Apr 13, 2020

Feminist Confessional

177 subscribers

"You're" by Sylvia Plath, read by Melita White of Feminist Confessional http://feministconfessional.wordpress...

 

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Feminist Confessional

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POEM OF THE DAY : The Journey of the Magi - T.S. Eliot

 

The Journey of the Magi

T.S. Eliot 

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

This poem is in the public domain.