[lbo-talk] The reds buy Shelley (Was Re: How Politics Ruined My Life:

Matthias Wasser matthias.wasser at gmail.com
Wed Jan 14 18:53:52 PST 2009


For what it's worth, here's one of my (I'm sure many's) favorite right-wing poems:

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?

I think it's worth noting that this poem isn't beautiful in _spite_ of being right-wing (or at least anti-utopian and conservative); it succeeds because it expresses that viewpoint so well. It's not like it's formally interesting or anything.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list