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I will sing to the stars in the sky
Dec. 13th, 2006 01:37 pmWatched a movie called Land of the Blind the other day-- had no idea what it was about; just saw Ralph Fiennes and Donald Sutherland on the cover, which was more than enough of a recommendation for me. Turned out to be a very strange political satire. One of my favorite parts, though, was when Fiennes recited part of William Butler Yeats's "The Second Coming". The man just has a voice made for reading poetry, I swear. The fact that I've always liked the poem in question was a bonus. ;-) For those who haven't read it:
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 the 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?
One of my fondest memories of college history class was when we spent an hour discussing T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". I don't always know what every poem I like means exactly, but most of the time that doesn't even matter. Just the language of it, the turn of phrase. I mean, you've got "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me" and "She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies; and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes" and "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest, to children ardent for some desperate glory, the old lie-- dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" and "I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death" and . . . yeah. *happy sigh*
So tell me some of your favorites, if you have any. A particular line, a full poem, a poet. :-)
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 the 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?
One of my fondest memories of college history class was when we spent an hour discussing T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". I don't always know what every poem I like means exactly, but most of the time that doesn't even matter. Just the language of it, the turn of phrase. I mean, you've got "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me" and "She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies; and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes" and "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest, to children ardent for some desperate glory, the old lie-- dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" and "I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death" and . . . yeah. *happy sigh*
So tell me some of your favorites, if you have any. A particular line, a full poem, a poet. :-)
