W. B. Yeats' "The Second Coming"

1. William Butler Yeats
THE SECOND COMING
Dr. M. Fahmy Raiyah

2. MODERN POETRY
Modern poetry in English emerged in the late
19th century, and was rooted in the idea that
"traditional" forms of art, literature, social
organization and daily life had become
outdated, and that it was therefore essential to
sweep them aside and reinvent culture. It
encouraged the idea of re-examination of every
aspect of the art of poetry with the goal of finding
that which was "holding back" progress, and
replacing it with new, and therefore better, ways
of reaching the same end.

3. 1.
2.
3.
5.
The Main Characteristics of Modern Poetry
As a result of the political changes and two world wars, the sense of
confidence in Victorian literature is replaced by the loss of
faith, suffering, and uncertainty that modern literature expresses.
Modern poetry arose from a reaction against Victorian conservative
ideals, which now seemed questionable in the widespread turmoil
and suffering of the early 20th century.
Modernist poets were concerned with breaking away from
established rules, traditions and conventions, and finding a distinctly
contemporary mode of expression, through many experiments in
form and style. The modern poets employed new forms and styles as
fitting the new world view. They wrote in reaction against the
emphasis on traditional formalism and ornate diction of the Victorian
poetry.
The chief concern of modern poets was language and how to use
it, and with writing itself.
Modern poetry is mostly pessimistic as a result of the widespread
suffering due to two world wars and what they viewed as the collapse
of society.

4. William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)

5. 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 5
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

6. Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
10
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,
15
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,
20
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

7. Historical Background
Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" in 1919:
between 1815, the end of the Napoleonic
Wars, and 1914 (WWI). Europe had enjoyed
almost a century without major conflict: this was
an exceptionally long period of peace. Then in
1914, the World War, the Irish Easter Rising, the
Russian Revolution, the rise of the Communist
movement in Germany, and soon after, the rise
of Fascism in both Germany and Italy - all
followed each other rapidly. Suddenly everybody
was fighting in Europe.

8. The First World War

9. Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
The poem begins with the image of a falcon flying
away from its human master: the falcon, turning in a
widening “gyre” (spiral), cannot hear the falconer. The
falcon has gotten itself lost by flying too far away. The
falconer, who has trained his bird to return, is now unable
to summon the bird, which cannot hear the cry to return
home. This image of the falcon and falconer can be read
as a reference to the collapse of traditional social
arrangements in Europe, a metaphor for the encroaching
disorder, chaos, and disintegration.

12. Then, the poem announces that “things fall
apart; the centre cannot hold." Things fall
apart because the centre cannot hold. The fact
that the centers no longer function, but lose
hold, signals an ominous message of doom.

13. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 5
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
Universal dissolution and total - “mere” - anarchy are
loosed upon the world. A tide red with blood is released
and "loosed" over everything, suggesting massive violent
deaths, as in a war. Not merely water, this tide drowns
bodies as well as innocence itself- it washes away purity.
The Ceremony of Innocence would refer to how things
were before the chaos started. Yeats is thinking back to
those beautiful and peaceful times of his childhood, and
how they are now gone forever.

14. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

15. The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The speaker laments that only bad people seem to have
any enthusiasm nowadays. The best are paralyzed by
lack of conviction, while the worst are outspoken and
fired with enthusiasm, ‘passionate intensity”, and
power. The reference here is to the powerful effect of
the fiery language of fanaticism and hatred.

16. The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

17. Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! . . . . . . . . . . . .
10
The poem's narrator now makes some guesses about
what, exactly, is happening. He first surmises that
"some revelation" is here. When the narrator then
supposes that the "Second Coming" is here, he seems
to indicate even more strongly that he witnesses an
end of the world like the one described in the Bible.

18. 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,
15
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
At the start of the second stanza Yeats expects a
revelation, saying "Surely a revelation is at hand. "The
narrator is then prompted into a vision of his own. His
sight becomes "troubled" by an image out of "Spiritus
Mundi"-a Latin term that means "the spirit of the world.“
He sees a “shape with lion body and the head of a man.”
This Egyptian sphinx stirs in the middle of a desert, while
its motion startles nearby birds into angry flight.

19. A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

20. The sphinx’ gaze is "pitiless," "blank,"
statuesque, and incapable of having empathy with
other humans. This "Second Coming" doesn’t seem to
have at lot in common with the descent of Christ from
Heaven as described in the Book of Revelation.
The birds’ circling is similar to the gyres of the
falcon at the beginning of the poem, but these
birds, may be vultures, fly in circles probably because
they know something will die soon.
The Sphinx seems to be a bad omen, a herald of war
and destruction. It is a symbol of the destruction that
will befall the world at the end of 2000-year cycle of its
history. A new cycle is starting, represented by the
coming birth of the sphinx.

21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

22. The vision of the beast contradicts with the
Christian prophesy of the second coming. The
poem presents an opposite view of the
conventional Christian vision of future of the
world, a more sinister and more pessimistic.

23. The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
20
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
After the vision ends, “darkness drops again.” But from the
vision's insight, he has learned something: a rocking cradle , a
reference to the birth of Christ, has caused two thousand years
of sleep, leading to the present nightmare. This era has come to
an end. A "rough beast” is awakening and heading slowly
towards Bethlehem to be born. the speaker’s question about
what kind of "beast" is about to be born is a sign of confusion
and intense expectation of the unknown that might be
overwhelmingly horrible.

24. THEMES
Apocalypse:
"The Second Coming" evokes the Christian
concept of the apocalypse. The poem alludes to the
apocalyptic vision in the Book of Revelation, the last
book of the Christian Bible. That the "rough beast"
that Yeats imagines is moving toward Bethlehem, the
birthplace of Christ to be born affiliates it with the
second coming of Christ. However, the image of the
Sphinx provides an apocalypse very different from the
Christian vision of the end of the world.

25. Order and disorder:
The main theme of "The Second Coming" is of a
flood of disorder that drowns existing world order. One
central image that conveys this theme is the falcon, a
bird that flies in ever-widening circles away from its
trainer and can no longer hear the falconer's cry. The
loss of communication and lack of control are
symptoms of the disorder that the poem describes.

26. STYLE
“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, which is poetry unorganized by any strict
pattern of rhyme or rhythm. But the poem contains few
lines where iambic pentameter is solid and clear, like in
"The falcon cannot hear the falconer," and "The
darkness drops again but now I know." The rhymes in
"The Second Coming" are slight. Apart from the two
couplets with which the poem opens, there are only
coincidental rhymes in the poem, such as “man” and
“sun.”