The British Museum

 

On Saturday I went to the British Museum in London. This is one of the city's free museums, which makes it a popular spot for tourists. This museum was something that I had wanted to see, due to the amount of stuff that there is to see within the museum, and the added bonus of there being no cost to enter. We arrived at the museum for our designated time slot, and ended up having to stand in line for nearly 30 minutes before we were able to get through the line, security, and get into the museum. 

We started going through the rooms, following a map to ensure that we saw everything the museum had to offer. After a while this got more and more difficult, as rooms would split off of each other and we got confused about where we had and had not gone. I think that we were able to see almost the entire museum. We ended up leaving before we saw everything because it ended up getting very warm the farther into the museum we got, which made it hard to appreciate everything we saw. 

My favorite thing that I saw in the museum was the statue of Zeus, which reminded me of the dog that my Uncle had growing up, as his name was Zeus. I also liked looking at all of the plates and bowls that were used in the olden times. I find plates to be very pretty when they are designed well, and these ones were bursting with bright colors and designs. I also really enjoyed the section of the museum with items from Greece, and found it really cool how they were able to get a chunk of a building into the museum. I was confused on how they did that, but it was interesting to look at. 

Yeats' poem "The Second Coming" specifically talks about historical events in a broad sense. He reflects on the cyclical nature of history in this poem, and how there is chaos in the modern world. I think that this still rings true today, as many trends from the past come back into style and the public view. I also think that compared to the past, the world of today is much more disorganized and dysfunctional. I have heard the statement "things aren't made like they used to be" more times than I can count, and I think that this is shown in the museum. Artifacts from so long ago are in perfect condition, but then you go outside and see newer buildings crumbling because of the differences in craftsmanship over time. 

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