Pages

Praetorium Honoris

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Something Wicked This Way Comes*

(Source)
You know the feeling. It's a pleasant summer day, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, but there's something in the air. Something causes the hair on the back of your neck to tingle. Though we are far from our primitive roots, there are still things which cause our hackles to rise.

If we live in a place where the horizon is far away, where the vistas are sprawling and vast, you might eventually notice the clouds on the far horizon are gathering. If you are out where the noise pollution of civilization is minimal, you might hear, at some level of your consciousness, the deep rumble of thunder.


Something is out there. Will it come this way?


Soon the sky darkens further, wisps of the storm are cast ahead of it, like cavalry scouts probing ahead. Lightning can be seen, sharp bolts against the black, what once was blue sky short moments before.

There are days when the wind shifts, the storm dissipates, or carried by the wind it moves away, to trouble some other land. But then there are the days where the wind rises, you can smell the wetness of the precipitation not yet reaching the ground. You can smell, almost taste, the ozone as the clouds discharge the lightning.

Then, almost before you can react, the storm is upon you. If shelter is close, you rush for it, if not, you cast about for some safe place. You know you are going to get wet, then a blinding flash and a near simultaneous crack. You seek the low ground, trying to maintain a low profile. Atavistic instinct takes over, you are now more animal than human. All your rational thought flees, you are unprepared, you are caught in the open.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The storm has already broken out over Europe, floods of "immigrants" make their way into the citadels of learning and culture, changing all they touch. They clamor for their "rights," they demand change, they demand adherence to their archaic, medieval doctrines. There is no escaping them, the guardians of the West have dropped their guard, they have unmanned the watchtowers. Though told this would happen, they did not listen.

For they are the great elite. They know better, they went to the right schools, they have the right friends, they believe the right things. They say to themselves, if only we understood them better, if only we try harder to accommodate their desires, their demands.

My friend the Cap'n has written of this concern. As he has many times. I'm not sure if I have lost my faith in the West yet, though as the elections loom, that faith in civilization is wavering.

I feel like a sergeant in the rear ranks, trying to get the troops to maintain their alignment, their order. Yet somewhere over my shoulder, I hear a rumbling, a dull thumping in the air. Is that a storm, is that artillery? To whom to those cannon belong? Are they ours, or do they signal the approach of some foe?

I know not. 

Yeats seems appropriate. Something is definitely coming. I can feel it in my bones...


THE SECOND COMING
William Butler Yeats

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: a waste of desert sand;
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
Wind 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? 



* With apologies to Ray Bradbury.

28 comments:

  1. My thumbs have been pricking for a long time. ( The quote is from Act 1, Scene 1, of Macbeth, The Weird Sisters )

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am not familiar with that quote. Perhaps this is in the Complete Works of Shakespeare for Badgers?

      Enlighten me oh kind Mr. Taxidea Taxus.

      Delete
    2. Sorry, ACT IV Scene one. Last lines http://www.hauntedbay.com/tomes/poems/macbeth_AIV_SI.shtml

      Delete
    3. Of course, I vaguely remembered that Bradbury also borrowed that line.

      Wow, Shakespeare and Yeats all in one post. (And my Google Fu was obviously lacking today vice the pricking of my thumbs. I guess that's why we have badgers. Keeps us honest they do.)

      Delete
    4. As in C.S. Lewis' Prince Caspian, where Trufflehunter the badger says, " It is the job given to Badgers to Remember , that and Sea Control with 16"/50 guns ".

      Delete
    5. Badgers remember, it's what they do.

      Then there's that whole seapower thing.

      Delete
  2. " Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Those who willfully ignore the lessons of the past deserve to repeat it. (So sayeth The Sarge!)

      Delete
    2. Alas, it is a certainty that they shall, and take up along with them. That includes those who choose not to remember, as related by that Super Genius, Richard Fernandez, a scary smart man: https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2016/05/27/hiroshima-as-gun-control/?singlepage=true

      Delete
    3. That article is going to require some thought. Interesting stuff.

      Delete
  3. There's definitely a stirring.
    Even the natives are restless.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I do hate it when you post these mindlessly cheerful essays.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I have been the "bluebird of happiness" lately.

      When the dark mood is upon me...

      Well, let's just say this, the DIL and two of the grandkids will be here Thursday. Perhaps my mood will lighten appropriately.

      Until then, standby for heavy rolls!

      Delete
    2. Yeah, that's the ticket! The "Bluebird " of happiness.

      Delete
    3. Hahahahahahahaha!

      (That drew a chortle, yes it did!)

      Delete
    4. There's something terribly wrong when a vulture is feeding on such a fresh carcass.

      Delete
  5. You're not the only one to post about the coming sea-change. Many of us can feel it, and this may well be the calm before the storm.
    Set Condition Zulu and stand by for heavy seas.

    ReplyDelete
  6. There'll be a lot of sufferin' and dyin' and tears enough to float a fleet. But when it's over humanity will be better and stronger.

    Or gone.

    ReplyDelete
  7. “Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.” The crime of tolerance is occurring
    all across Europe and rising in the USA. And it will continue because it is the 'politically
    correct' thing to do.

    ReplyDelete
  8. We are living the Chinese curse. (Interesting times)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As one who lives in the UK the times certainly are 'interesting'. I look across the Channel and see turmoil in France (no change there, then) and the Germans and Austrians realising that perhaps, just perhaps, the idea of inviting a lot of angry young men into their country won't end well. The UK government is denying we have a problem, meanwhile there are daily reports in local papers of truckloads of illegals being picked up at motorway service stations. Most of these are not fleeing war zones but come from sub Saharan Africa and other third world s**t holes and are economic migrants. They are not the 'Doctors and Engineers' we are told inhabit the camps in Calais. They are unemployable in a modern society without a heck of a lot of retraining. The reason they want to get to the UK? Like it or not the French have a national ID card system and you can't get anything out of the French without being registered. We don't have an ID card system so once you are in you are in. I could go on but we have a government that has 'improved' the police by cutting 16k from their strength since 2010 and gets its friends in the press to run articles to denigrate the police at every opportunity. The army is down to 82K, the navy has about 18 active major warships, and I understand has been borrowing engineers from the USCG. The UK border force has a grand total of four cutters. One of those is in the med ferrying illegals from Libya to Italy. I have a vague sense of foreboding and little hope of any politician being able to remedy the situation.
      Retired

      Delete
    2. Sounds dire. One hopes the situation can be retrieved but, like you, I have little hope at this point for the UK. Bad times are upon us.

      Delete

Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

NOTE: Comments on posts over 5 days old go into moderation, automatically.