Characteristics of 2oth century poetry, a comparison between T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land", Philip Larkin's "Church Going" and W. B. Yeats' "The Second Coming".

1. MODERN POETRY
and it’s
characteristics
Submitted by
Shruti Pandey
shrt153@gmail.com

2. THE WASTE LAND THE SECOND COMINGCHURCH GOING

3. REALISM
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter
dawn,
A crowd flowed over London
Bridge, so many,
Turning and turning in the
widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the
falconer;
Things fall apart; the center
cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the
world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,
and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is
drowned;
Hectoring large-scale verses
and pronounce,
Here endeth much more loudly
than I'd meant,
The echoes snigger briefly.
Back at the door,
I sign the book donate an Irish
sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth
stopping for.

4. THE WASTE LAND
April is the cruellest month,
breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land,
mixing
THE SECOND COMING
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?
CHURCH GOING
A serious house on serious earth it is
In whose blent air all our
compulsions meet
Are recognisd and robed as
destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete
Since someone will forever be
surprising
A hunger in himself to be more
serious

5. IMPACT OF WORLD WAR
THE WASTE LAND
White bodies naked on the low damp
ground
And bones cast in a little low dry
garret,
Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to
year.
But at my back from time to time I
hear
The sound of horns and motors, which
shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
THE SECOND COMING
Things fall apart; the centre
cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon
the world,
CHURCH GOING
For Sunday brownish now; some
brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small
neat organ;
And a tense musty unignorable
silence

6. THE WASTE LAND
And I will show you
something different from
either
Your shadow at morning
striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening
rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a
handful of dust.
THE SECOND COMING
The darkness drops again; but
now I know
That twenty centuries of stony
sleep
CHURCH GOING
From where i stand the roof
looks almost new--
Cleaned or restored?
someone would know: I
don't.

7. THE WASTE LAND THE SECOND COMINGTHE CHURCH GOING

8. THE WASTE LAND
• Religion and Cult
• Gulf Between Past and
Present
• Lost Culture
• Anxiety
• Materialism
• Sex
THE SECOND COMING
• Society
• Political Power
• War
• Anarchy
• Religious Concepts
• Symbolism
• Generational Differences
• Prediction
• Global Issues
CHURCH GOING
• Religion
• The Established Church
• The Need to Worship
• The Ceremony of Ritual
• The Future of the Church
• Superstition
• Religious Feeling

9. BAD TREATEMENT OF LOVE & SEX
THE WASTE LAND
He’ll want to know what you done
with that money he gave you, To
get yourself some teeth. He did, I
was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get
a nice set, He said, I swear, I can’t
bear to look at you.
And no more can’t I, I said, and
think of poor Albert, He’s been in
the army four years, he wants a
good time, And if you don’t give it
him, there’s others will, I said.
THE SECOND COMING
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?
CHURCH GOING

10. THE WASTE LAND
“That corpse you planted last
year in your garden,
“Has it begun to sprout? Will
it bloom this year?
“Or has the sudden frost
disturbed its bed?
THE SECOND COMING
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?
THE CHURCH GOING
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass weedy pavement brambles butress sky.
A shape less recognisable each week
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last the very last to seek
This place for whta it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts
were?
Some ruin-bibber randy for antique
Or Christmas-addict counting on a whiff
Of grown-and-bands and organ-pipes and
myrrh?

11. EXISTENTIALISM OR MONOTONY
THE WASTE LAND
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he
guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and
tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if
undesired,
THE SECOND COMING
That twenty centuries of stony
sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a
rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its
hour come round at last,
THE CHURCH GOING
Bored uninformed knowing the ghostly
silt
Dispersed yet tending to this cross of
ground
Through suburb scrub because it held
unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation--marriage and birth
And death and thoughts of these--for
which was built

12. THE WASTE LAND
Here is no water but only
rock
Rock and no water and the
sandy road
The road winding above
among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock
without water
THE SECOND COMING
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
CHURCH GOING
What we shall turn them into
if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically
on show
Their parchment plate and
pyx in locked cases
And let the rest rent-free to
rain and sheep.

13. THANK YOU