Module B: Critical

Study of Text
Poetry of W.B.Yeats
‘The Second Coming’
Analysing the Poem
The Second Coming
Consider Yeats’ purpose:
• TSC was written in 1919.

• The Second Coming is written after, and in

response to, the First World War, the Irish
uprising and the Bolshevik Revolution in
Russia.

• TSC is one of the most powerful criticisms

of the modern age in which these events
are brought to birth.

• Yeats sees this breaking of nations as

anarchy, the rejection of all authority.

• The imagery in the poem is ‘blunt’ and its

tempo builds from the firth line of Stanza
2, to a climax of horror at the end of the
poem.
The Second Coming

Consider Yeats’ purpose:

• The title of the poem; ‘The Second

Coming’ is an ironic appropriation of the
Christian belief that Christ will come again at
the end of the world, saving the good/
virtuous, and punishing the evil.

• Yeats’ ‘second coming’ is a pagan one that

reflects what he sees as the character of
the present and immediate future.
Key concepts:
• Yeats believed in a cyclical view of history,
where an epoch-making event occurred
once every 2000 years.

• Yeats believed that the birth of Christ was

the previous epoch-making event, but that
the influence of the birth of Christ (and
the subsequent rise of Christianity), had
dwindled and that the next epoch-making
event was unfolding.

• Yeats was not the only writer to see WW

I as proof that Christianity had lost its
influence on human affairs.

• In TSC,Yeats predicts the new era as being

one characterised by relentless destruction.
The Second Coming

Analysing the poem

The Second Coming:
Stanza I
 The Second Coming: Stanza I
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.
• Stanza 1:Yeats conjures up images
of the world as he sees it in
1919.

• The poem opens with the image

of the gyre of history, which is
‘widening’, meaning that the
influence of Christianity is
fading significantly.
 Stanza I
• Imagery: ‘the falcon cannot hear the falconer’ - suggests not only the absence of
authority, but the violent destructiveness (represented by the controlled falcon)
which is the result of it.
- This image is also a metaphor indicating the world events are out of control.

• While observing the horror of anarchy,Yeats paradoxically diminishes its significance

by calling it ‘mere’ - a word that sneers at it, both in its sense and sound.
- The word ‘mere’ also suggests Yeats’ disdain for the state of the loss of authority.

• The horror of anarchy causes both great turmoil and has long-term, devastating
effects:

‘The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned’.

• ‘The ceremony of innocence’ is a paradoxical phrase as it refers to the Christian

baptism ceremony, which involves the candidate either being immersed completely
in water, or having water placed on their foreheads.
‘The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity’

• These lines suggest a strong attack on the

events of the present - the best people
do not care, but the ones who care the
most (‘are full of passionate intensity’)
are those who are to be feared.

• These lines reflect a compete reversal in

values.

• Those ‘full of passionate intensity’ may be

regarded as the extremists/
fundamentalists.

• Yeats does not release the rulers and

aristocrats of the former societies from
responsibility for their destruction.
• Yeats’ view of the destruction of order in
Europe was held by many of his
contemporaries.

• For Yeats’ contemporaries the anarchy of

the historical period heralded a new age,
not unlike the apocalypse that is
anticipated in the Second Coming of
Christ in the Bible:

‘Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand’.

• Here Yeats appears to be reflecting on

the Christian teaching that such breaking
of nations which occurred early in the
twentieth century could signal the end of
the world, the Second Coming of
Christ and the Last Judgement.
The Second Coming:
Stanza II
 The Second Coming: Stanza II
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?

• The Second Coming that is envisaged by Yeats is not Christian, but pagan:

‘The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight’.

• ‘Spiritus Mundi’ is the term used by Yeats to indicate the shared, collective
[universal] consciousness.Yeats’ persona presents themselves to the audience as
both a visionary and a prophet: roles which Yeats associated with the poet’s
calling.

• The persona’s vision is of a troubling world-spirit, not a blessed heavenly being, which is
coming to the new age.
• The troubling world-spirit comes in the form of the Egyptian Sphinx:

‘Somewhere in the 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’.

• ‘somewhere in the sands of the desert’ - the poem builds a slow momentum as
the beats takes shape in our minds, then moves towards it’s horrifying
destination.

• ‘A shape with a lion body and the head of a man’ - indicates the brute
destructiveness of human intelligence: the worst of both worlds.

• There is nothing attractive about this birth, it is gross and sensual, and - most
alarmingly - the being is indestructible, as the vultures recognise.

• Christianity, now replaced by the pagan order, must now give way to its
recovery
• ‘A gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun’ shows the lack of conscience and compassion
while the ‘slow thighs’ gives us the image of something that will take its own time.

• The tempo of the poem climaxes on ‘slouches’ - a movement and an attitude in one
word.

• It is paradoxically both power and insolence - and it is headed to Bethlehem, ironically

the birthplace of Jesus Christ.

• The vision is horrifying yet brief - ‘the darkness drops again’ - but it has been a
revelation to Yeats:

‘now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle’

• The new pagan, anarchic world, is the result of 2000 years of Christian suppression of
the pagan.

• This observation conforms to Yeats’ view of the rising and falling of the natural and
supernatural influences on individuals and civilisations.
• Yeats Blends the two opposing
worldviews:

- Pagan: the spirit of the sphinx, some

indefinable ‘rough beast’, about to begin
a new era

- Christian: the idea that the sphinx is

slouching towards Bethlehem, the
birthplace of Jesus.

• The power of ‘The Second Coming’

accumulates as the poem proceeds, as
meaning and sound gather force, line-
by-line, and bear down, like the beast of
paganism on Bethlehem, upon
‘slouches’ - that ‘ugly’ but unforgettable
verb.
• ‘The Second Coming’ does not use any of
the lyrical devices of ‘The Wild Swans at
Coole’, and instead uses direct images
and a disjointed rhythm.

• Technique: the use of a disjointed rhythm

is designed to throw the reader off-
balance and cause them to be
disoriented.

• The tempo builds to the climax of the

poem.