Mike Vickers' Blog

With all the comment on the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin I felt a need to listen to a CD I have of WB Yeats’ poems including Easter 1916. Three of the four verses finish with the line ‘A terrible beauty is born’. I then listened to next poem ‘The Second Coming’ and came across that well know stanza

‘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.’

Well the poem’s well known to me since a guy I worked with in my first job harangued me that Yeats was the best of poets.

Interestingly I understand that Yeats ordered his published poems very carefully and he juxtaposed these two poems.

And when I look 100 years on from the Easter Rising I see that the Second Coming may be here and now. Whether we think of the Middle East, the US with the Donald, or here in the UK with Jeremy Corbyn at one extreme and the Right Ring Tories at the other with their passion to leave the EU. I am old enough to remember WWII and the thought of the EU breaking up appals me.

I am horrified that the young don’t vote; they see their vote as making no difference to what goes on in their name.