Dear Abby

[yellow_crane]

he 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?

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I agree that this is a great image, but exactly what is the rough beast in question: the Apocalypse personified? Jesus?

The Apocalypse is supposedly the will of God and therefore unquestionable divine, not just good. Is Jesus a 'rough beast'?

Humans have always wished for some huge all-conquering THING that would come and impose Perfection and Justice on the unfair and iniquitous universe. There is somethin apocalyptic in many religions, I think starting with Zoroastrianism and Manicheaism.

I see this as similar to such myths of perfection as the Unicorn, Prince Charming, and the Man on a White Stallion. NIce to imagine, but bloody unlikely and totally not in keeping with any logical analysis of the universe.
 

Poetry in its nature is not analitical , it brings forth emotion and image explores the shadows of mind and heart where the poorly understood things have their reign.
Analisis of poetry seaparates the thing from its nature.
What did this poem mean to you?
I had diffrent thoughts, the power of this poem exites the hearer deeply and all the unsaid things of the poem are filled in by the images the mind produces in the listening.

To me the world at war andthe uncertainty of the future ,prophacys of the antichrist, came to mind and the great beast that would imitate Christ .

Yeats was deeply spiritual, not meaning religious here.

He was a leading member of the Golden Dawn, and I think what he meant had to be considered from the bowels of the character of his belief, casually compared to 'his faith,' which was more Christian persecutee rather than Christian.


People who deal with occult (meaning hidden, understood only by the initiated, and not meaning satanic) from the whole spectrum of possible occult currents are of the Old religion, that which was before Christianity came, the pivot probably signposted by Constantine.

Many in the occult sciences see a lot of politics in Christianity--for one thing, when you cry for monotheism, you are closing down all the small shops.

"twenty centuries were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle . . ."  

Clearly here he refers to what he sees as an inimical history of violent political chaos, the true result of the "rocking cradle" (Baby Jesus).  This line, to me, decries the coming of Christianity.  

The "rough beast" refers to its culmination, which he paints in dour hue, and it is that which finally manifests for the Christians as Jesus.

The most powerful word in the entire poem is "slouches."

It puts a demand of shame upon the bearer, who is the center of the nightmare.

[Plane]

Interesting ,Yellow Crane,  that Yeats did not know that Christ had a manger and didn't have a cradle.

Yet you cannot be wrong , what the poem means to you, it does mean to you .

Even if to me it means somthing diffrent to me entirely I am not wrong either.


Poetry is not immune to analisis , but it is usually not the best way to understand a poem.
http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/l.asp?p=1&l=top500&order=title

"Hope" is the thing with feathers-
That perches in the soul-
And sings the tune without the words-
And never stops-at all-

And sweetest-in the Gale-is heard-
And sore must be the storm-
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm-

I've heard it in the chillest land-
And on the strangest Sea-
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb-of Me.

Emily Dickinson



Now if you get that Emily is saying , what should I add?

[Plane]

This poem is easy to understand , lets parce it .


Introduction To Poetry
   
 
  I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins 
 


 

[Xavier_Onassis]

Is the Antichrist supposed to be born in Bethlehem?

I don't think the Bible gets into that much detail.

[Plane]

Is the Antichrist supposed to be born in Bethlehem?

I don't think the Bible gets into that much detail.

It doesn't ,but you have to expect that a false Messiah would try to match the prophecies that he was exploiting a much as he could.

He will be born in Bethlehem or he will fake birth in Bethlehem or he will interpret the prophecy in some way that doesn't require  birth in Bethlehem. It doesn't matter much.

The poetic image of being born in Bethlehem tho is hard to mistake in meaning , it must be a Messiah or false Messiah.

[yellow_crane]

Interesting ,Yellow Crane,  that Yeats did not know that Christ had a manger and didn't have a cradle.

Both Yeats and I bow to your obviously superior intelligence.

[Xavier_Onassis]

It doesn't ,but you have to expect that a false Messiah would try to match the prophecies that he was exploiting a much as he could.

He will be born in Bethlehem or he will fake birth in Bethlehem or he will interpret the prophecy in some way that doesn't require  birth in Bethlehem. It doesn't matter much.

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An interesting concept, that an individual could actually CHOOSE THE PLACE OF HIS BIRTH, don'cha think?
I like the way that the Bible explains how Jesus (whose parents were from Nazareth (wherever that was-no one seems sure, I read) was born in Bethlehem, because the Romans, for reasons that make no sense at all, required people to return to the place of their birth to pay taxes.

If you were an oppressive tyrant, why would you make such a silly request? It's not like the Romans ran a U-Haul or Avis-rent-a-donkey service and would benefit from it. No, if they wanted to maximize their tax receipts they would tax people wherever it was that they lived.

True, if Jesus was the actual Messiah, he had to be born in the City of David because of vague prophesies and such. But the Romans were not into this, and they were the one making the rules.

Nowhere in Roman history is this return-to-your-place-of-birth thing mentioned.

[_JS]

   The pigeons visited Pushkin 
   And pecked at his melancholy 
   The gray bronze statue talks to the pigeons 
   With all the patience of bronze. 

   The modern pigeons 
   Don't understand him 
   The language of birds now 
   Is different. 
   They make droppings on Pushkin 
   Then fly to Mayakovsky. 
   His statue seems to be of lead. 
   He seems to have been 
   Made of bullets. 
   They didn't sculpt his tenderness - 
   Just his beautiful arrogance. 
   If he is a wrecker 
   Of tender things 
   How can he live among violets 
   In the moonlight 
   In love? 

   Something is always missing in these statues 
   Which are fixed rigidly in the direction of their times. 
   Either they are slashed 
   Into the air with a combat knife 
   Or they are left seated 
   Transformed into a tourist in a garden. 
   And other people, tired of riding horseback 
   No longer can dismount and eat there. 
   Statues are really bitter things 
   Because time piles up 
   In deposits on them, oxidizing them 
   And even the flowers come to cover 
   Their cold feet. The flowers aren't kisses. 
   They've also come there to die. 

   White birds in the daytime 
   And poets at night 
   And a great ring of shoes surrounding 
   The iron Mayakovosky 
   And his frightful bronze jacket 
   And his iron unsmiling mouth. 

   One time when it was late and I was almost asleep 
   On the edge of the river, far off in the city 
   I could hear the verses rising, the psalms 
   Of the reciters in succession. 
   Was Mayakovsky listening? 
   Do statues listen?

Pablo Neruda

[Plane]

   The pigeons visited Pushkin 
   And pecked at his melancholy 
   The gray bronze statue talks to the pigeons 
   With all the patience of bronze. 

   The modern pigeons 
   Don't understand him 
   The language of birds now 
   Is different. 
   Pablo Neruda

    Nice
 kinda like Ozymandias
   But with less anchient reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias


OZYMANDIAS
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.


- Percy Bysshe Shelley


In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

?Horace Smith.