The Second Coming

BY 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: 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?
Form
“The Second Coming” is written in a very rough iambic pentameter, but the
meter is so loose, and the exceptions so frequent, that it actually seems closer to
free verse with frequent heavy stresses. The rhymes are likewise haphazard;
apart from the two couplets with which the poem opens, there are only
coincidental rhymes in the poem, such as “man” and “sun.”

Commentary
Because of its stunning, violent imagery and terrifying ritualistic language, “The
Second Coming” is one of Yeats’s most famous and most anthologized poems;
it is also one of the most thematically obscure and difficult to understand. (It is
safe to say that very few people who love this poem could paraphrase its
meaning to satisfaction.) Structurally, the poem is quite simple—the first stanza
describes the conditions present in the world (things falling apart, anarchy, etc.),
and the second surmises from those conditions that a monstrous Second Coming
is about to take place, not of the Jesus we first knew, but of a new messiah, a
“rough beast,” the slouching sphinx rousing itself in the desert and lumbering
toward Bethlehem. This brief exposition, though intriguingly blasphemous, is
not terribly complicated; but the question of what it should signify to a reader is
another story entirely.

Yeats spent years crafting an elaborate, mystical theory of the universe that he
described in his book A Vision. This theory issued in part from Yeats’s lifelong
fascination with the occult and mystical, and in part from the sense of
responsibility Yeats felt to order his experience within a structured belief
system. The system is extremely complicated and not of any lasting importance
—except for the effect that it had on his poetry, which is of extraordinary
lasting importance. The theory of history Yeats articulated in A Vision centers
on a diagram made of two conical spirals, one inside the other, so that the
widest part of one of the spirals rings around the narrowest part of the other
spiral, and vice versa. Yeats believed that this image (he called the spirals
“gyres”) captured the contrary motions inherent within the historical process,
and he divided each gyre into specific regions that represented particular kinds
of historical periods (and could also represent the psychological phases of an
individual’s development).

“The Second Coming” was intended by Yeats to describe the current historical
moment (the poem appeared in 1921) in terms of these gyres. Yeats believed
that the world was on the threshold of an apocalyptic revelation, as history
reached the end of the outer gyre (to speak roughly) and began moving along
the inner gyre. In his definitive edition of Yeats’s poems, Richard J. Finneran
quotes Yeats’s own notes:

“The end of an age, which always receives the revelation of the

character of the next age, is represented by the coming of one gyre
to its place of greatest expansion and of the other to its place of
greatest contraction... The revelation [that] approaches will... take
its character from the contrary movement of the interior gyre...”

In other words, the world’s trajectory along the gyre of science, democracy, and
heterogeneity is now coming apart, like the frantically widening flight-path of
the falcon that has lost contact with the falconer; the next age will take its
character not from the gyre of science, democracy, and speed, but from the
contrary inner gyre—which, presumably, opposes mysticism, primal power, and
slowness to the science and democracy of the outer gyre. The “rough beast”
slouching toward Bethlehem is the symbol of this new age; the speaker’s vision
of the rising sphinx is his vision of the character of the new world.
 Themes

The Relationship Between Art and Politics

Yeats believed that art and politics were intrinsically linked and used his writing
to express his attitudes toward Irish politics, as well as to educate his readers
about Irish cultural history. From an early age, Yeats felt a deep connection to
Ireland and his national identity, and he thought that British rule negatively
impacted Irish politics and social life. His early compilation of folklore sought
to teach a literary history that had been suppressed by British rule, and his early
poems were odes to the beauty and mystery of the Irish countryside. This work
frequently integrated references to myths and mythic figures, including Oisin
and Cuchulain. As Yeats became more involved in Irish politics—through his
relationships with the Irish National Theatre, the Irish Literary Society, the Irish
Republican Brotherhood, and Maud Gonne—his poems increasingly resembled
political manifestos. Yeats wrote numerous poems about Ireland’s involvement
in World War I (“An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” [1919], “A Meditation
in Time of War” [1921]), Irish nationalists and political activists (“On a
Political Prisoner” [1921], “In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con
Markiewicz” [1933]), and the Easter Rebellion (“Easter 1916” [1916]). Yeats
believed that art could serve a political function: poems could both critique and
comment on political events, as well as educate and inform a population.

The Impact of Fate and the Divine on History

Yeats’s devotion to mysticism led to the development of a unique spiritual and
philosophical system that emphasized the role of fate and historical
determinism, or the belief that events have been preordained. Yeats had rejected
Christianity early in his life, but his lifelong study of mythology, Theosophy,
spiritualism, philosophy, and the occult demonstrate his profound interest in the
divine and how it interacts with humanity. Over the course of his life, he created
a complex system of spirituality, using the image of interlocking gyres (similar
to spiral cones) to map out the development and reincarnation of the soul. Yeats
believed that history was determined by fate and that fate revealed its plan in
moments when the human and divine interact. A tone of historically determined
inevitability permeates his poems, particularly in descriptions of situations of
human and divine interaction. The divine takes on many forms in Yeats’s
poetry, sometimes literally (“Leda and the Swan” [1923]), sometimes abstractly
(“The Second Coming” [1919]). In other poems, the divine is only gestured to
(as in the sense of the divine in the Byzantine mosaics in “Sailing to
Byzantium” [1926]). No matter what shape it takes, the divine signals the role
of fate in determining the course of history.

The Transition from Romanticism to Modernism

Yeats started his long literary career as a romantic poet and gradually evolved
into a modernist poet. When he began publishing poetry in the 1880s, his poems
had a lyrical, romantic style, and they focused on love, longing and loss, and
Irish myths. His early writing follows the conventions of romantic verse,
utilizing familiar rhyme schemes, metric patterns, and poetic structures.
Although it is lighter than his later writings, his early poetry is still sophisticated
and accomplished. Several factors contributed to his poetic evolution: his
interest in mysticism and the occult led him to explore spiritually and
philosophically complex subjects. Yeats’s frustrated romantic relationship with
Maud Gonne caused the starry-eyed romantic idealism of his early work to
become more knowing and cynical. Additionally, his concern with Irish subjects
evolved as he became more closely connected to nationalist political causes. As
a result, Yeats shifted his focus from myth and folklore to contemporary
politics, often linking the two to make potent statements that reflected political
agitation and turbulence in Ireland and abroad. Finally, and most significantly,
Yeats’s connection with the changing face of literary culture in the early
twentieth century led him to pick up some of the styles and conventions of the
modernist poets. The modernists experimented with verse forms, aggressively
engaged with contemporary politics, challenged poetic conventions and the
literary tradition at large, and rejected the notion that poetry should simply be
lyrical and beautiful. These influences caused his poetry to become darker,
edgier, and more concise. Although he never abandoned the verse forms that
provided the sounds and rhythms of his earlier poetry, there is still a noticeable
shift in style and tone over the course of his career.
 Symbols
The Gyre
The gyre, a circular or conical shape, appears frequently in Yeats’s poems and
was developed as part of the philosophical system outlined in his book A Vision.
At first, Yeats used the phases of the moon to articulate his belief that history
was structured in terms of ages, but he later settled upon the gyre as a more
useful model. He chose the image of interlocking gyres—visually represented
as two intersecting conical spirals—to symbolize his philosophical belief that all
things could be described in terms of cycles and patterns. The soul (or the
civilization, the age, and so on) would move from the smallest point of the
spiral to the largest before moving along to the other gyre. Although this is a
difficult concept to grasp abstractly, the image makes sense when applied to the
waxing and waning of a particular historical age or the evolution of a human life
from youth to adulthood to old age. The symbol of the interlocking gyres
reveals Yeats’s belief in fate and historical determinism as well as his spiritual
attitudes toward the development of the soul, since creatures and events must
evolve according to the conical shape. With the image of the gyre, Yeats created
a shorthand reference in his poetry that stood for his entire philosophy of history
and spirituality.

The Swan
Swans are a common symbol in poetry, often used to depict idealized nature.
Yeats employs this convention in “The Wild Swans at Coole” (1919), in which
the regal birds represent an unchanging, flawless ideal. In “Leda and the Swan,”
Yeats rewrites the Greek myth of Zeus and Leda to comment on fate and
historical inevitability: Zeus disguises himself as a swan to rape the
unsuspecting Leda. In this poem, the bird is fearsome and destructive, and it
possesses a divine power that violates Leda and initiates the dire consequences
of war and devastation depicted in the final lines. Even though Yeats clearly
states that the swan is the god Zeus, he also emphasizes the physicality of the
swan: the beating wings, the dark webbed feet, the long neck and beak. Through
this description of its physical characteristics, the swan becomes a violent divine
force. By rendering a well-known poetic symbol as violent and terrifying rather
than idealized and beautiful, Yeats manipulates poetic conventions, an act of
literary modernism, and adds to the power of the poem.

The Great Beast

Yeats employs the figure of a great beast—a horrific, violent animal—to
embody difficult abstract concepts. The great beast as a symbol comes from
Christian iconography, in which it represents evil and darkness. In “The Second
Coming,” the great beast emerges from the Spiritus Mundi, or soul of the
universe, to function as the primary image of destruction in the poem. Yeats
describes the onset of apocalyptic events in which the “blood-dimmed tide is
loosed” and the “ceremony of innocence is drowned” as the world enters a new
age and falls apart as a result of the widening of the historical gyres. The
speaker predicts the arrival of the Second Coming, and this prediction summons
a “vast image” of a frightening monster pulled from the collective
consciousness of the world. Yeats modifies the well-known image of the sphinx
to embody the poem’s vision of the climactic coming. By rendering the
terrifying prospect of disruption and change into an easily imagined horrifying
monster, Yeats makes an abstract fear become tangible and real. The great beast
slouches toward Bethlehem to be born, where it will evolve into a second Christ
(or anti-Christ) figure for the dark new age. In this way, Yeats uses distinct,
concrete imagery to symbolize complex ideas about the state of the modern
world.
 Motifs

Irish Nationalism and Politics

Throughout his literary career, Yeats incorporated distinctly Irish themes and
issues into his work. He used his writing as a tool to comment on Irish politics
and the home rule movement and to educate and inform people about Irish
history and culture. Yeats also used the backdrop of the Irish countryside to
retell stories and legends from Irish folklore. As he became increasingly
involved in nationalist politics, his poems took on a patriotic tone. Yeats
addressed Irish politics in a variety of ways: sometimes his statements are
explicit political commentary, as in “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” in
which he addresses the hypocrisy of the British use of Irish soldiers in World
War I. Such poems as “Easter 1916” and “In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and
Con Markiewicz” address individuals and events connected to Irish nationalist
politics, while “The Second Coming” and “Leda and the Swan” subtly include
the idea of Irish nationalism. In these poems, a sense of cultural crisis and
conflict seeps through, even though the poems are not explicitly about Ireland.
By using images of chaos, disorder, and war, Yeats engaged in an understated
commentary on the political situations in Ireland and abroad. Yeats’s active
participation in Irish politics informed his poetry, and he used his work to
further comment on the nationalist issues of his day.

The Falcon
Yeats places the falcon front and center in the opening lines of the poem to
represent humanity's control over the world. The fact that the falcon "cannot
hear" its master thus symbolizes a loss of that control.

To understand this symbol better, it's important to know a little bit about
falconry more generally. Falconry is a practice that goes back thousands of
years, and involves people training birds of prey to follow instructions. This was
often for hunting purposes, but is also practiced as a kind of art form. In both
instances, the falcon represents humanity exerting a type of intelligent control
over the natural world. Killer birds like hawks and falcons are brought under the
spell of humans.

The falcon's inability to hear the falconer's call (lines 1 and 2) means that the
relationship between them has been severed. This symbolizes chaos and
confusion, and specifically gestures towards a breakdown in communication.

The latter of these is especially interesting when considered in the context of

World War I. The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which
triggered the events that led to global conflict, is thought to have been partly
due to his motorcade taking a wrong turn—because the driver had not been
given the correct instruction.

Mysticism and the Occult

Yeats had a deep fascination with mysticism and the occult, and his poetry is
infused with a sense of the otherworldly, the spiritual, and the unknown. His
interest in the occult began with his study of Theosophy as a young man and
expanded and developed through his participation in the Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn, a mystical secret society. Mysticism figures prominently in
Yeats’s discussion of the reincarnation of the soul, as well as in his
philosophical model of the conical gyres used to explain the journey of the soul,
the passage of time, and the guiding hand of fate. Mysticism and the occult
occur again and again in Yeats’s poetry, most explicitly in “The Second
Coming” but also in poems such as “Sailing to Byzantium” and “The Magi”
(1916). The rejection of Christian principles in favor of a more supernatural
approach to spirituality creates a unique flavor in Yeats’s poetry that impacts his
discussion of history, politics, and love.
 The Beast
In lines 11 to 18, the speaker has a vision of a beast. Though the speaker doesn't
name the beast specifically, it is described in vivid and unsettling detail. The
beast has a "lion body" and the "head of a man." This makes it similar to a
sphinx or a manticore, both of which were mythical creatures said to be
predatory towards humans. This type of hybrid creature is quite common in
various mythologies, and is meant to convey a kind of freakishness, a sense of
nature somehow going wrong.

With its animal body and human head, perhaps this beast says something about
the "nightmare" to come. Though humans have tried to civilize themselves and
improve their world, perhaps their more beastly animal nature has only been
hidden—not defeated.

In other words, the beast might symbolize that civilization itself is a kind of
illusion. The human head has a "gaze" that lacks empathy, suggesting that the
beast is ready to kill. Given that the poem was written between the two world
wars of the 20th century, this surreal image seems to gesture towards
humankind's ever-improving capacity for self-destruction.

Irish Myth and Folklore

Yeats’s participation in the Irish political system had origins in his interest in
Irish myth and folklore. Irish myth and folklore had been suppressed by church
doctrine and British control of the school system. Yeats used his poetry as a tool
for re-educating the Irish population about their heritage and as a strategy for
developing Irish nationalism. He retold entire folktales in epic poems and plays,
such as The Wanderings of Oisin (1889) and The Death of Cuchulain (1939),
and used fragments of stories in shorter poems, such as “The Stolen Child”
(1886), which retells a parable of fairies luring a child away from his home, and
“Cuchulain’s Fight with the Sea” (1925), which recounts part of an epic where
the Irish folk hero Cuchulain battles his long-lost son by at the edge of the sea.
Other poems deal with subjects, images, and themes culled from folklore. In
“Who Goes with Fergus?” (1893) Yeats imagines a meeting with the exiled
wandering king of Irish legend, while “The Song of Wandering Aengus” (1899)
captures the experiences of the lovelorn god Aengus as he searches for the
beautiful maiden seen in his dreams. Most important, Yeats infused his poetry
with a rich sense of Irish culture. Even poems that do not deal explicitly with
subjects from myth retain powerful tinges of indigenous Irish culture. Yeats
often borrowed word selection, verse form, and patterns of imagery directly
from traditional Irish myth and folklore.

 Speaker, Historical Context, Lierary Context from Litcharts...