That Yeats poem sounds familiar. I must have come across it in school or someplace, but I seem to remember that I didn't get it at the time. I didn't get it this time either at first but, thanks to Uncle Ken's comments and a brief sabbatical in my smoking lounge, I think I got it now. Correct me if I'm wrong: The world is going to hell in a hand basket and we're all doomed. The Sphinx "slouching its way to Bethlehem" symbolically states that our benevolent Christian God has been replaced with one of those fearsome beasts out of the Biblical Book of Revelation.
If Yeats had read the whole book, he would have learned that all those fearsome beasts will ultimately be cast into the fiery pit and the good guys will win in the end. Of course that was supposed to happen in one generation and we're still waiting for it 2000 years later. I prefer the Zoroastrian and Deist version myself. God gave us an imperfect world and He expects us to work the bugs out of it. Once we've done that, He has another job lined up for us, but there's no use explaining that to us now because, at our present stage of development, we couldn't possibly understand it. I read a quotable quote in our local paper the other day, but I don't remember who said it. I really need to start writing this stuff down. "Good will always win in the end because, if good hasn't won, it's not the end yet."
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