Toynbee discusses the "piling up of colossal buildings in honour of a god", a "monarch who was an object of worship because he was a guarantor of peace through unity." He says that during the Third and Fourth Dynasties of Egyptian civilization these great structures, like the Sphinx of 2575 BC, were a mark "not of a temporary rally in a long-drawn out losing battle against the forces of social disintegration, but of an early stage of social growth." Their distinctiveness parallels the beautiful exactness of workmanship with the Parthenon. It is fitting then for Harold Bloom, in his analysis of W.B. Yeats' arguably most famous poem The Second Coming, written in 1919, three months before the unveiling of the Tablets of the Divine Plan, to interpret the poem as 'the second birth of the Egyptian Sphinx." Of course, I would add my own interpretation in terms of "the early stage of social growth" of a new Force, a new Revelation, that was just about to begin the opening stage, the opening note, of a teaching Plan. -Ron Price with thanks to Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, Vol.9, 1963(1954), p. 690.
Yes, there was a turning, a turning,
for that was the core
of a message that thousands
had come to adore.1
Yes, there was a falcon, royal,
that was at the door
with his message for every broken bird
to free it from the gore and more.
Yes, things fell apart
and the centre did not hold,
but a new centre formed
a new revelation, so bold.
The Second Coming
had come and gone.
Now a lion moved its slow thighs;
a light in the darkness now shone.
The blood-dimmed tide
rose along the shore
sapping all conviction
from the best of men at war.
Slowly, inch by inch,
the Son laid down a Plan
that would take the ocean's
Water unobtrusively to man.
1. By 1919 thousands, virtually all the Baha'is, had turned to 'Abdu'l-Baha. -5/10/'00.
2. This poem uses some of the imagery and phraseology of Yeats' poem. ---Ron Price