Wednesday, November 7, 2012

The First Coming

Author's Note: I wrote this poem modeling William Butler-Yeats style in the poem "The Second Coming". I wanted to keep the focus of it close to what the focus of his original poem was to model is his style even better. Since his was on the second coming of Jesus I decided to do mine on the first coming. Yeats used a lot of symbolism from the Bible, so I tried to do the same thing with mine. In my poem, much like Yeats', I made it from the perspective of the people and what they were thinking during that time period.

The First Coming

Roaming and roaming the dessert land
The Sheppard came back for his sheep;
The people cannot see; the world won't accept;
A love never seen before hung upon a tree,
The burnt, the fellowship, and the grain,
Covered, and the law torn apart,
The rich in spirit are not sought out, while the lowliest
Are hand picked with precision.

This can't be what we've waited for,
This can't be the Savior who's arrived,
The Savior!  My soul is overcome
When a vision from the Spirit
Blurs my conscious: far beyond the entrance to the city,
A colt untied from his owner,
With healing hands and majestic little feet,
Prances along a cloth road, as palms
Wave throughout the air, hailing to the king.
The town trembles in fear; now knowing that those years
Of prophecies has prepared us for yet another
Vast amount of silence and trouble,
But the Sheppard, finally coming around,
Takes up his own cross to leave us again?


The Second Coming
By 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: 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?  

1 comment:

  1. Excellent! Your crafting of a parallel poem displays not only an understanding of the original which is by itself admirable, but goes on to show the depth of understanding and your ability to use language at an advanced level. The way you selected the words and images to convey a complimentary message is really exemplary. Excellent work.

    ReplyDelete