A contrast of beauty
One time Randy and I were sitting in our backyard hot tub and I saw a white cat walking along the top of our fence. I said to Randy, “Look at that c…” But the “cat” turned its head to look at us and...it was a possum! Yucko! Beady little eyes and a weird snout were turned our way instead of the familiar cat face we expected. When I read this poem, “The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats -- written in a pandemic 100 years ago --, I had a similar feeling of revulsion at the lines, “A shape with lion body and the head of a man, | a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, | Is moving its slow thighs,...”
I read this poem in an article titled “Pandemic Poetry.”
Written during the height of the Spanish Flu in 1919 and while his wife was herself stricken by the disease, W. B. Yeats penned this reflection.
“The Second Coming”:
by 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?
Many of you reading this know far more about poetry and W.B. Yeats than I do. I googled the poem (“dropped a goog,” I heard someone call it) to gain a little more understanding. Many commentators talk of how the poem has been cannibalized -- phrases used as book titles, in songs, speeches, and all kinds of places. One person proposed a “Yeats Test:”
“The more quotable Yeats seems to commentators and politicians, the worse things are.”
There you go. No wonder the article was titled “Pandemic Poetry.” Seems very quotable right now!
from: https://discoveringegypt.com/luxor-temple/luxor-temple-sphinxes/
I’m sure it’ll be no surprise to you that the image of a lion made me think of Aslan.
In the creation story of Narnia, Aslan the lion walks around the new world. Aslan sings the land, water, plants, and animals into life as he walks.
In the poem the beast “[moves] its slow thighs.”
Aslan’s gaze is full of love.
The lion-human (a Sphinx) in the poem gazes “blank and pitiless as the sun.”
Aslan brings birds and beasts to joyful life, they burst into song.
In the poem, “indignant desert birds” reel around the lion-human.
Rather than...
the beautiful story of the angel announcing that God’s son Jesus will be born in Bethlehem, “good news that will cause great joy for all the people” (Luke 2:10),
the “rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.”
Rather than...
Jesus’ gaze, his look of love for a rich man who wanted the secret of eternal life (Mark 10:31),
his notice of the children and taking them into his arms (Mark 10:16),
the eyes that wept when his beloved friend died,
his view from the cross of his executors gambling for his clothing, which prompted him to pray for their forgiveness…
...rather than that unfathomable gaze of love,
the beast has “a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun.”
In spite of its hopelessness, I find the poem gripping and even beautiful. It is beautiful in the way a fire-breathing dragon is beautiful, its scales reflecting a rainbow of colors the way oil on water holds a prism, its size majestic and awe-inspiring, eyes glinting in the dark, flames and smoke forming intricate patterns in the air. Beautiful and fearsome. When we turn our eyes from the horrid yet fascinating beauty of the dragon or the lion-human-Sphinx to the beloved lion-Creator-Redeemer-Spirit-God, our hearts are overjoyed. Love fills our gaze.
Praise God for his never-ending, heart-filling, fear-conquering love.