Here is another poem for you to ponder. The beast can be seen as all of humanity, who was saved at Bethlehem. Burdened humanity was saved by Bethlehem. (This interpretation comes from The Prose and Poetry of England, Seton Press, 2001).
This reminded me of the miracle of Christmas
*happy to think about it not always during the "holiday season"*
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?
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
ReplyDeleteMere anarchy is loosed upon the world"
Mere anarchy -- because anarchy can never equal the beauty and wonder of order and purpose!
^Amen.
ReplyDeleteLovely post, m'dear!!