每天读一点英文:那些年那些诗 56 二度圣临

The Second Coming
William Butler 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: a waste of desert sand;
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
Wind 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?

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)威廉 巴特勒 叶芝
叶芝初期的诗作写得很唯美，朦胧中略带些许的忧伤，但是忧伤中有夹杂着那么一丝甜蜜。叶芝用美丽的词藻描绘着人生百态。然而这首《二次圣临THE SECOND COMING》却一反常态，非常的硬朗，通篇充满了神秘主义色彩，同时又保留了一些美丽的东西。写出了作者对于人类前途的担忧，对于人类缺乏理性的厌恶。这篇诗作写于1919年，当时第一次世界大战刚刚结束，俄国十月革命，爱尔兰内乱等事件层出不穷，诗人写了这首诗歌来描写这段历史，表达自己对于人类世界的态度。在这首诗中诗人详细描绘了大变革到来前后的混乱世界，以及由此引发的人心浮动......