[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Exactly. I think the thoughts expressed in this song make it a lot like a
> modern version of W. B. Yeats' poem "Slouching Toward Bethlehem," which, of
> course, Joni turned into a song. (I tried to find Yeats' poem, but I can't.)
> Joni's version is slightly different, but the mood is the same. Here are a
> few lines from the song:
>
> Things fall apart
> The center cannot hold
> And the blood dimmed tide
> Is loosed upon the world
>
> Nothing is sacred
> The ceremony sinks
> Innocence is drowned
> In anarchy
> The best lack conviction
> Given some time to think
> And the worst are full of passion
> Without mercy
The original:
The Second Coming
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?
