'The Second Coming' by William Butler Yeats (Poetry Analysis Video)
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 9 сен 2024
- This video contains a close Analysis of William Butler Yeats', 'The Second Coming', with a discussion of the poem's historical context, major themes, and Yeats' use of poetic techniques.
'The Second Coming' is a video in the 'Poetry Analysis Series' from Litpoetry and is designed for students of poetry at both the beginner and advanced levels.
Want to know more about poetry?
Then follow us here at Litpoetry as we go on a journey of discovery; reading, analysing and discussing some of the most important poems ever written.
Litpoetry's aim is to foster the love of poetry in a world where people find it hard knowing where to get started.
We aim to provide you, the audience, with a firm foundation of knowledge and understanding to foster a love of this magnificent art.
Poetry is worth it because the reading and writing of poetry is a revolutionary act that has the potential to transform both the reader and our world.
******************************************************
This work is copyrighted, © James Laidler (Litpoetry)
Litpoetry Script writer & Presenter: James Laidler
Litpoetry Video editor and Designer: James Laidler
Email: j.laidler@bigpond.com
James Laidler: Poet/Writer/Teacher. Published works including the verse novel, 'The Taste of Apple', / the-taste-of-apple , &'the YA novel 'Pulling Down the Stars', / pulling-down-the-stars
Featured Poem:
'The Second Coming' by William Butler Yeats (Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats - 1989) www.poetryfoun...
Poetry recital recorded and performed by 'Simon Jackson Voice Over': www.simonjacksonvo.com (Simon can be commissioned for work on www.fiverr.com or through his website)
Very short film Clips used under 'Fair Use' for educational purposes in a transformative fashion include:
Breathe - An 8K storm time-lapse film
by Mike Olbinski • Breathe - An 8K storm ...
Assorted Clips taken from paid subscription to www.WeVideo.com and its subscription stock footage and also from Wallpaper Engine subscription
Music Backing Tracks used in Video Production:
'Dutar Soundscape' by DL Sounds
(This track has been used under Litpoetry's User Licence purchased directly from DL Sounds www.dl-sounds.com) drive.google.c...
'The Anunnaki Return' by Jesse Gallagher / audiolibrary_ • Video (No royalty - Copy Right Free)
#poem #poetry #whauden
Art of silence by uniq / uniqofficial
Music provided by www.plugnplaym...
Copyright Notice:
Litpoetry makes these videos with the intention of educating others in a motivational/inspirational/technical way. Litpoetry does not own the clips and music we use in most cases. Our understanding is that it is in correlation to Fair Right Use, however given that it is open to interpretation, if any owners of the content clips would like us to remove the video, we have no problem with that and will do so as fast as possible.
Please email Litpoetry if you have any concerns at j.laidler@bigpond.com
FAIR-USE COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER * Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, commenting, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favour of fair use.
1)This video has no negative impact on the original works (It would actually be positive for them)
2)This video is also for teaching purposes.
3)It is positively transformative in nature.
He wrote it in 1919 so in addition to WW1, a man made monster, he was also addressing the chaos wrought by the flu pandemic, an event outside mans control, in which more died than in the preceding conflict. Also, on a more personal level for Yeats, this year witnessed the start of the Irish War of Independence, a bloody and divisive war.
Came just to listen the poem however the analysis kept me intrigued. Took me back to high school this is so much deeper than I had imagined st that age
What an incredible explanation 👏👌
Thanks, Ashish!
Indeed! The best I've heard.
An excellent analysis, thanks a lot! How very pertinent this poem is to the state of the current world!
Glad you enjoyed it!
This helped me out a lot!! Thank you so much for putting up such a good explanation. Hope you can add more videos for the modern/post modern poets as well.
Thank you so very much my brother, a brilliant analysis of a poem relevant for our time.
Thank you. I have always had a gut feeling about this poem. That is, I felt it inside more than I could describe. Though I disagreed with you on some of the more subtle images, you have given me a better structure of the poem, and so, a better grasp. Thank you
no problem
Same it gives me a visceral response that I can’t explain.
This was excellent. Thankyou.
Glad you enjoyed it!
a delicate interpretation of history by biblical stories! What a relevance
Hi James,, Just used part of this video with my Year 12s as we revise the novel Things Fall Apart for the VCE English exam in a coule of weeks, Thanks!
Glad it was helpful!
We, the falcon, really have lost sight of our Falconer. High time we listened for his call and return to his steady arm and guidance.
I refuse to bow to any bird tamer! With the exception of a Bob Ross type character.
Central themes in my opinion:
1) All good things fall apart, alas "the center cannot hold".
2) Near anarchy is loosed upon the world...This speaks to man's natural gravitas towards chaos, war, revolt and uprising. (Equally applicable in 2023).
3) The ceremony of innocence is drowned...
This speaks to youth coming of age and realizing the world is a bad and dangerous place. And realizing that most human made systems are inherently flawed. Leading them to question government and humanity (now full circle to point #2).
4) The best lack all conviction...
When good people devolve into apathetic creatures.
5) While the worst are full of passion and intensity...
Look at how historical traumatic human events have brought out the worst people in our societies. See also: Pandemic 2019.
6) Surely a "revelation" is at hand, a second coming...
Is this the returning of Christ, and Armageddon? Or is the "revelation" what Yeats speaks to next...Which is that we are going to wipe ourselves out.
7) Spirits Mundi troubles my sights...
This alludes to a "group think" single conscious world mentality. Which troubles the narrator. Group think can be dangerous and is laced with emotion, whereas individual thought can be more analytical and less emotional.
8) The lion body = represents all of mankind in a single body.
9) With the head of a man = represents each individual person within that body and how we are all pieces of a collective "whole".
10) A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun = Mankind is spiraling out of control, and is devolving to meet it's destiny. Which is inevitable self- destruction.
11) Indignant desert birds = No allusions here, he is talking about Buzzards, circling the dying carcass of mankind, waiting on their impending meal...Which is us, the human race. The Buzzards are preparing to clean the meat from our bones.
12) 20 centuries of stony sleep = Our human arrogance has blinded us to the fact that we are unknowinglt marching right into the end times. The meat grinder, if you will.
13) And what rough beast, it's hour comes round at last slouches towards Bethlehem to be born = The rough beast is us, people, slouching under the weight of the pending apocalypse (our final hour has now come). And why Bethlehem? Because that is where Christ was born, and the bible, in Revelation tells of end times. Man has now made the book of revelations a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it is of our own doing, not the doing of a bearded man in the sky.
Yeats = Visionary
I appreciate the analysis and your sharing of it.
My pleasure!
I have read that the Pandemic of 1918 - 1919 was also an influence of Yeats. His wife was quite ill at the time of the writing of the poem.
That's a very interesting point, Anthony, thanks!
Lovely analysis. One of my favorite poems of Yeat's, alongside Sailing to Byzantium. Will enjoy making some of my own videos on Yeats. Cheers.
Go for it!
‘Collective unconscience’ [sic] 😆 Though lots of interesting perspectives on construction.
Is there perhaps occult reference to Horus when mentioning the falcon? With Yeats such an enthusiastic member of the Golden Dawn, it’s quite striking that this always seems to be ignored when people analyse his poems.
Thank you, this helped preparing for my exams
A's in JESUS NAME
The commentary is incredible, many thanks
thanks Celia😀
Thank you so much
No problem and thanks for your kind email :)
Thank you so much 🙏
Excellent work !
To me this is the ultimate apocalyptic poem
Thank you 🙏
You explained it well
hi, i love your videos, they have actually helped me in school a lot. I was just wondering where you got the cool gifs in the background
I get them from everywhere. It's really difficult to source clips that are copyright free
One of the great masterpieces of world literature. And yet a remarkably easy poem to understand, for those open to its message.The poem's theme is the consequences of secularism and the rejection of Judeo-Christian values. We, humanity, are the falcons who in a post-religious world have distanced and cut off ourselves from the falconer, God. With what result? A gradual then sudden descent into madness, irrationality, and cruelty under the guise of a new Age of Enlightenment. This is exactly what happened in the Russian Revolution and the subsequent Soviet totalitarian state. And this is where the West is heading today. Dostoevksy issued similar warnings 50 years before Yeats. Bonus points: Cruelty and mayhem is the norm in human history. 2,000 years of biblical values was the aberration that more or less held such evil at bay. Now that we have jettisoned those values, life will return to its primitive natural dark ways.
That really helped me alot, thank you 💜
no problem
Thank you 🙏🏼
This guy talks about the book of Revelations as if it's all roses and rainbows. He should re-read it, as there's all kinds of strangely headed beasts, false messiah drama, death and destruction which this poem could be referring to.
Thank you 😊 so much sir.
no problem😀
@@LitPoetry need more poems of yeats from you sir.
A perfect commentary on today's geopolitical mess
Brilliant poetry, and brilliant analysis.
thanks!
Good god man! Where is the masculine energy?
Well explained ✨
sadly, there are many gyres where the good perish, where does that leave humanity? the ceremony of innocence is a dagger in the back of the blind
Do the sphinx represent coming of Jesus?
Shouldn't gyre rhyme with hire?
Perhaps in some Irish/British accent it does.
I' have always had trouble with the Second Coming, given what we have seen happen to the First coming .A physical Jesus would be killed in less than a week. Better if we all carried him in our hearts
.I am returning now as Love,
like a lamplighter that ignites
every wakening heart,
a tender glow to invite you
to remember who you are.
I am alive again in new bodies of light
each a spark set upon its course
to radiate in the night
what I am made of.
As this light grows brighter,
exposing all the shadows,
it parts the clouds to clear the skies of heaven,
clears the mind of doubt.
I am the flame that burns away the lie;
I am the voice that opens up the eye.
I come in a form that will never die.
I am one with the Father
I am one with the Mother.
I am the radiant Son.
December, 12, 2012
The onset of AI ?
Global Varmint, yeah! 😂
Some say _gyre_ , others say _ghyre_ . How come?
It feels like he predicts Hitler with it too.
Give your life to Jesus today,tomorrow may be too late
Yeats was NOT a christian. Note: 20 centuries of Stony Sleep...
True, but he wrote within a Christian paradigm and is influenced by it
Or perhaps the beast is AI.
Predicting the anti-Christ ( and anti-Christianism): the anti-Christian beast? The anti-Christ also rhymes with the hatred, so prevalent today, of a certain culture.
The poem is cool. But everything else alien and lies.
Stupid poem.How are people who have English as a second language understand this?
Could you read about Islam, please brother?
Allelujah to that! No poetry lesson is complete without some good'ol Islamic readings!