Poem Review: "The Second Coming" By W.B. Yeats - The Prophecy Of The Catastrophic End Of An Era

Source: A Block ’15

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center 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.”

 

Introduction

 

Poem’s Name - The Second Coming

 

Written By - William Butler Yeats

 

Originally Published in - November 1920

 

Genre - Modernist Poetry

 

Collected in - Michael Robartes And The Dancer, 1921

 

Poem Summary

 

The Second Coming is a two-stanza poem written in 1919, soon after World War, I ended. The poem is narrated by a speaker who is observing the world engulfed in chaos and devastation. The stanza shows us a world that is falling apart, a world without order or authority, a world that is slowly losing touch with reality. It's a world where “innocence is drowned”, the “best” people are silenced while the “worst” ones have the loudest voice.

 

As the second stanza begins, it evokes a feeling of hope as if something good is about to unfold, as if this chaotic world is about to be turned upside down. However, the major shift that it's signaling towards, isn’t a world of peace. Rather, this “second coming” is the descend of the apocalypse, the birth of a new world born from and ruled by violence. 

 

Unlike the biblical Second Coming that foretells the return of Christ, Yeats’ second coming says that some ominous “rough beast” has risen and is slowly approaching the world.

 

About W.B. Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939)

 

Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, prose writer and was one of the most famous figures of Modernist Literature. He also received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923. The days of his childhood spent in County Sligo- a county known for its folklore, scenery, and supernatural legends- inspired most of Yeats’ works in the early phase of his career.

 

His poetry, which was inspired heavily by myths and folklore, transformed into more physical and realistic in the second phase of his career. Yeats was, what we call, a Symbolist poet who used allusive imagery and symbolic structures. The way he selected and arranged his words, left his works having not just the obvious meanings, but also suggesting some abstract ideas, more profound and evocative. 

 

He was very fascinated by or even obsessed with mysticism, occultism, spiritualism, and astrology. The Second Coming is a testimony of his ideas about the collective spirit (Spiritus Mundi) and also his theory about history- that it is structured in gyres i.e. it's cyclical. One cycle of history ends and another begins. He elaborated more on this theory in his book- A Vision.

 

Psychological Analysis

 

Though ‘The Second Coming’ is an unsettling poem, like many of Yeats’ other works, it's one with captivating phrases that have been very popularly used in literature, movies, music, etc., one of the most famous ones being Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. 

 

‘The Second Coming’, like many of Yeats’ other works, is a poem whose lines have been 

This poem is about a world in upheaval, forever changed by violence and catastrophe. The first stanza of the poem talks about the present state of the world- things falling apart, anarchy, etc.

 

The very first line, “turning and turning in the widening gyre” evokes a feeling that some huge shift is happening. The word ‘gyre’ is a scientific name for a vortex that can be found in the air or the sea, and it commonly refers to systems of circulating ocean currents. The gyre is employed in Yeats' poem to symbolize the whirling, twisting landscape of life itself. Each gyre represents a historical moment, an era.

 

These first sentences could also be interpreted as a metaphor for how contemporary society has isolated humans from nature (represented here by the falcon). In any case, the link that formerly existed between the metaphorical falcon and falconer has severed, the falcon or the humans have lost their reason, ethics, and morals and are now descending into the spiral of anarchy.

 

The “twenty centuries” of progress and development that humans have made is nothing but a ruse. Modern society’s assurances of safety, security, and human dignity have finally proven to be hollow. The poem perverts the second coming that Christianity promised during which Christ is meant to come down to the earth and take true believers to heaven.

 

But in place of holy Christ, a grotesque “rough beast” is descending, a beast that humanity itself has awoken, a beast of our own making, most likely to bring about a new era of “darkness” and “nightmare”.

 

The Bottom Line

 

Despite its allegorical richness, ‘The Second Coming’ has a straightforward message: it essentially prophesies that mankind's time is up, and society as we know it is about to be torn down. This poem was written just after World War I, worldwide devastation that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. 

 

Keeping that in mind, it doesn't come as a surprise that the poem then offers a depressing view of humanity, implying that society's sense of advancement and control is really a figment of the imagination.

 

My ratings of the poem - 3.5 on 5

Written By - Sanjana Chaudhary