每天讀一點英文:那些年那些詩 56 二度圣臨

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 葉芝
葉芝初期的詩作寫得很唯美，朦朧中略帶些許的憂傷，但是憂傷中有夾雜著那么一絲甜蜜。葉芝用美麗的詞藻描繪著人生百態(tài)。然而這首《二次圣臨THE SECOND COMING》卻一反常態(tài)，非常的硬朗，通篇充滿了神秘主義色彩，同時又保留了一些美麗的東西。寫出了作者對于人類前途的擔憂，對于人類缺乏理性的厭惡。這篇詩作寫于1919年，當時第一次世界大戰(zhàn)剛剛結(jié)束，俄國十月革命，愛爾蘭內(nèi)亂等事件層出不窮，詩人寫了這首詩歌來描寫這段歷史，表達自己對于人類世界的態(tài)度。在這首詩中詩人詳細描繪了大變革到來前后的混亂世界，以及由此引發(fā)的人心浮動......