The Second Coming

The Second Coming
BY WILL IAM B UT L E R YE AT S
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 (This is Latin for "world spirit." Yeats
believed that humanity has a collective unconscious, from which poets can draw powerful
symbols and images. Spiritus Mundi is the term he used for this collective unconscious)
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?
Literary Context
Along with Seamus Heaney, William Butler Yeats is one of Ireland's most prominent poets. He
was born in 1865 and began writing around the age of seventeen, and this poem appears in his
1921 collection, Michael Robartes and the Dancer. Yeats's influences were wide and diverse,
including the English Romantics—figures such as Wordsworth, Blake, and Keats—and the
French Symbolists, such as Stephen Mallarmé and Arthur Rimbaud. Irish mythology and
folklore were also especially formative of his work, particularly given his desire for Ireland's
political independence from England.
“The Second Coming” Themes:
Violence and Anarchy
“The Second Coming” presents a nightmarish apocalyptic scenario, as the speaker

describes human beings’ increasing loss of control and tendency towards violence and
anarchy. “The Second Coming” actually has a relatively simple message: it basically
predicts that time is up for humanity, and that civilization as we know it is about to be
undone. Yeats wrote this poem right after World War I, a global catastrophe that
killed millions of people. Perhaps it’s unsurprising, then, that the poem paints a bleak
picture of humanity, suggesting that civilization’s sense of progress and order is only
an illusion. The “falconer,” representing humanity’s attempt to control its world, has
lost its “falcon” in the turning “gyre” (the gyre is an image Yeats uses to symbolize
grand, sweeping historical movements as a kind of spiral). These first lines could also
suggest how the modern world has distanced people from nature (represented here by
the falcon). “Anarchy” was “loosed upon the world,” along with tides of blood
(which clearly evoke the mass death of war). “Innocence” was just a “ceremony,”
now “drowned.” The “best” people lack “conviction,” which suggests they're not
bothering to do anything about this nightmarish reality, while the “worst” people seem
excited and eager for destruction. Whether the poem means that humanity has lost its
way or never knew it to begin with is unclear, but either way the promises of modern
society—of safety, security, and human dignity—have proven empty. And in their
place, a horrific creature has emerged—a grotesque perversion of the “Second
Coming” promised by Christianity, during which Jesus Christ is supposed to return to
the earth and invite true believers to heaven. This Second Coming is clearly not Jesus,
but instead a “rough beast” that humanity itself has woken up (perhaps, the first stanza
implies, by the incessant noise of its many wars).
Morality and Christianity
The poem clearly alludes to the biblical Book of Revelation from the start, in which, put
simply, Jesus returns to Earth to save the worthy. According to the Bible, this is meant
to happen when humanity reaches the end times: an era of complete war, famine,
destruction and hatred. The poem suggests that the end times are already happening,
because humanity has lost all sense of morality—and perhaps that this morality was
only an illusion to begin with.
In the second stanza, the poem makes it clear that it’s a specifically Christian morality
that is being undone. In describing this wide-ranging destruction, the poem asks
whether Christian morality was built on weak foundations in the first place—that is,
perhaps humanity was never really moral, but just pretended to be. What's more, the
poem suggests that no one—not even Jesus—can remedy this bleak reality. The
biblical Book of Revelation predicts a kind of final reckoning in which people
essentially get what they deserve based on their moral behavior and religious virtues;
it indicates that Jesus will come to save those who are worthy of being saved. But
“The Second Coming” offers no such comfort.
“The Second Coming” Symbols

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.
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 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.
The blood-dimmed tide (symbol)

The blood-dimmed tide, loosed upon the world, is a symbol that represents
overwhelming violence and uncontrollable chaos.
The sphinx (symbol)
The sphinx, perhaps, represents the bearer of the riddle-like prophecies that the
narrator is trying to unwind, the creature in between the narrator and the answers
he is looking for. He is mystified by what has been happening around him, but he
believes that it is not all accidental, and he is trying to find clues in the seemingly
inexplicable events that have been occurring around him. In mythology, sphinxes
often delivered riddles and would sometimes kill those who could not answer the
riddle. Perhaps this sphinx is asking what the poem is asking—what rough beast is
emerging? What is this nebulous world called the future going to look like?
“The Second Coming” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

 Alliteration
"The Second Coming" uses alliteration sparingly throughout. It is first used in the opening three
lines, with repetition of the /t/ and /f/ sounds:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart;
The next notable example of alliteration comes in line 13, as the speaker describes the vision that
came from the Spiritus Mundi. The speaker starts by setting the scene, and that's where the
alliteration comes in:
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

Metaphors and Similes
The falcon and the falconer are each metaphors, representing humanity and a
controlling, prevailing force that sets humans on a specific path. The "blood-
dimmed tide" is a metaphor for waves of violence, and the "ceremony" of
innocence is a metaphor for the entirety of human innocence and goodness. The
"rough beast" is also a metaphor: for the mysterious, rapidly approaching Second
Coming.
Irony
The phrase "the best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate
intensity" is an example of irony because it is ironic, almost bleakly absurd, that
the worst people are the most passionate and the best are the least determined to
make their voices heard in Yeats's apocalyptic poem-universe.
Foreshadowing
The entire poem is foreshadowing the coming of something, from its start to its
finish. The poem even involves literal shadows—the shadows of "indignant
birds"—but part of what makes the poem so unnerving is that it never tells us
exactly what it is foreshadowing. Instead, it shows is the looming shadow of
something rapidly approaching, something that will tear down the walls of all we
have ever known.
Meter
"The Second Coming" is written in blank verse, which is unrhymed iambic pentameter. Iambic
pentameter follows a rhythm with five poetic feet, for a total of ten syllables per line. But in this
poem, the regularity of the meter is constantly under threat, especially in the second stanza.
Rhyme Scheme
"The Second Coming" doesn't have a discernible rhyme scheme. The first four
lines almost rhyme in couplets—"gyre"/"falconer" and "hold"/"world"—but not quite.
Considering that the poem seeks to paint a picture of a chaotic world in which the "centre cannot
hold," it makes sense that it doesn't employ strong end rhymes. A clear rhyme scheme would
probably suggest order and pattern, rather than disorder and array, so the lack of rhyme
underscores just how broken this world of "anarchy" really is.

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The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

“The Second Coming” Themes:

Violence and Anarchy

“The Second Coming” presents a nightmarish apocalyptic scenario, as the speaker

“The Second Coming” Symbols

The blood-dimmed tide (symbol)

“The Second Coming” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

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