{"id":4803,"date":"2008-11-04T08:30:26","date_gmt":"2008-11-04T13:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=4803"},"modified":"2008-11-04T10:03:57","modified_gmt":"2008-11-04T15:03:57","slug":"duelling-apocalyptic-poems-for-this-fine-election-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=4803","title":{"rendered":"Duelling Apocalyptic Poems for this fine Election Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

My good friend, coworker and brother in arms Superbowl6Romeo over at the Sniper<\/a> chose as his poem of the day The Second Coming by William Butler Yates.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
\nThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;
\nThings fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
\nMere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
\nThe blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
\nThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;
\nThe best lack all conviction, while the worst
\nAre full of passionate intensity.
\nSurely some revelation is at hand;
\nSurely the Second Coming is at hand.
\nThe Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
\nWhen a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
\nTroubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
\nA shape with lion body and the head of a man,
\nA gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
\nIs moving its slow thighs, while all about it
\nReel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
\nThe darkness drops again; but now I know
\nThat twenty centuries of stony sleep
\nWere vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
\nAnd what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
\nSlouches towards Bethlehem to be born?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

For my selection, I will go with Percy Bysshe Shelley, who although an Englishman and a Karl Marx enthusiast always struck me as turning a good phrase.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

OZYMANDIAS
\nI met a traveller from an antique land
\nWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
\nStand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
\nHalf sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
\nAnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
\nTell that its sculptor well those passions read
\nWhich yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
\nThe hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
\nAnd on the pedestal these words appear:
\n“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
\nLook on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
\nNothing beside remains: round the decay
\nOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
\nThe lone and level sands stretch far away.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My good friend, coworker and brother in arms Superbowl6Romeo over at the Sniper chose as his … Duelling Apocalyptic Poems for this fine Election Day<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}