The title of the season four Angel episode 4.04 Slouching Toward Bethlehem comes from the poem ‘The Second Coming’ by William Butler Yeats, first printed in 1920. The poem is as follows:
The Second Coming
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?
Related episodes: 4.04 Slouching Toward Bethlehem
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LifeIsJustThisItsLiving on November 20th, 2008 at 12:58 am
I’m always been curious what this expression means. I mentioned this to my theology professor and she didn’t know what it meant either…but we did talk about what we thought it could mean, and came to this conclusion:
The question, we think, is: why would one go unwillingly (”slouching”) to the Promised Land? The land of “milk and honey”?
In terms of how Yeats used it in context, the poem uses religious symbolism to illustrate Yeats’ anguish over the apparent decline of Europe’s ruling class, and his occult belief that Western civilization was nearing the terminal point of a 2000-year historical cycle. (The “end”)
The title of “The Second Coming” suggests that the poem will depict the Apocalypse, described by St John, an impression reinforced by the description of the “beast” slouching towards Bethlehem, the place of Christ’s original birth.
So, this can easily be related to the Angel episode - when Lorne tries to read Cordelia’s future and sees jumbled visions of apocalyptic horror and the beast… this indicates an impending apocalypse.
Also, the title is a series of essays by Joan Didion (1968) which mainly describes her experiences in California during the 1960s.
Hope this helps :)