The Second Coming

Summary

The Second Coming is a twenty-two-line poem in two verse paragraphs in which Yeats imagines the end of the Christian era and the birth of something terrible to replace it. He wrote it in January 1919, in the months after the First World War, with the Russian Revolution and its violence recent and Ireland moving toward its own war of independence. It appeared in The Dial in November 1920 and in his collection Michael Robartes and the Dancer, printed by his sisters' Cuala Press. The first paragraph is a picture of collapse. A falcon wheels in a widening gyre until it can no longer hear the falconer; things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, and mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. A blood-dimmed tide drowns the ceremony of innocence. The paragraph ends with the most quoted diagnosis in the poem: the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. The second paragraph turns from description to prophecy. Surely, the speaker says twice, some revelation is at hand, surely the Second Coming. But the words call up not Christ but a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi, Yeats's term for a common storehouse of images: in a desert, a shape with a lion's body and a man's head, its gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, moving its slow thighs while indignant desert birds wheel above. Darkness falls again, and the speaker now knows that twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle. The poem ends with a question: what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Behind the poem lies Yeats's private system, later set out in A Vision (1925), in which history moves in cycles of about two thousand years, pictured as interlocking gyres; the Nativity began one age and its end is near. Readers need not accept the system to feel the poem's force. Its opening lines have become standard language for describing political breakdown, and phrases from it have supplied titles to many later books.

Plot or Argument

• The widening gyre (lines 1-2)

  A falcon circles farther and farther out until it can no longer hear the falconer, an image of a civilization drifting beyond the voice that once governed it.

• Anarchy loosed (lines 3-8)

  In short, flat statements the speaker reports that things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, anarchy and a blood-dimmed tide are loosed, and innocence is drowned. The paragraph closes on the moral inversion of the age: the best lack conviction while the worst are passionately intense.

• The expected revelation (lines 9-12)

  The speaker reasons that such disorder must herald a revelation, and twice names the Second Coming. Hardly has he spoken when an image rises out of Spiritus Mundi, the great memory of the world.

• The vision of the beast (lines 13-17)

  In a waste of desert sand a sphinx-like creature with a lion's body and a man's head stirs, its gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, while the shadows of indignant desert birds wheel around it.

• The cradle and the question (lines 18-22)

  The vision fades, but the speaker now understands that the twenty Christian centuries were a stony sleep troubled by the rocking cradle at Bethlehem, and he ends by asking what rough beast is now slouching there to be born.

Characters

• The speaker, Visionary

  A prophetic voice who first describes the world's collapse, then receives the desert vision and draws from it a terrible knowledge.

• The falcon and the falconer, Opening emblem

  The bird circling out of earshot of its master, an image of order lost.

• The rough beast, Coming power

  The lion-bodied, man-headed shape whose hour has come round, slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.

Lessons

• Conviction and its counterfeits

  The line about the best lacking conviction and the worst being full of passionate intensity names a danger in any age of crisis: good people grow hesitant while the violent grow certain. The poem does not say intensity is evil in itself, but that conviction severed from goodness becomes destructive and goodness without conviction becomes helpless.

  • Why might the best lose their conviction in a time of collapse?
  • Is passionate intensity always a sign of the worst, or only when it is cut loose from truth?
  • What would it look like for the best to recover conviction without becoming like the worst?

• A counterfeit second coming

  The title promises Christ's return in glory, but the vision delivers its opposite: a pitiless beast slouching toward the town of the Nativity. Yeats borrows the Christian pattern of a sacred birth opening a new age and inverts it, so that the reader feels both the expectation and the horror.

  • What details of the beast make it the opposite of the Christ child?
  • Why is the cradle said to have vexed the twenty centuries to nightmare?
  • Does the poem's ending read as a prophecy, a fear, or a question left open?

• Images that outlive their system

  Yeats built the poem on his private theory of historical gyres, yet most readers know nothing of that theory and still find the poem exact. Strong images such as the falcon beyond hearing and the drowned ceremony of innocence carry meaning beyond the scheme that produced them.

  • Which images in the poem need no explanation from Yeats's system to be understood?
  • How does the poem change once you know Yeats thought history moved in two-thousand-year cycles?
  • Why have the opening lines been quoted so often about events Yeats never saw?

Context

Yeats wrote the poem in early 1919. The Great War had just ended, the Russian Revolution of 1917 had been followed by civil war and killings, and in Ireland the Easter Rising of 1916 had given way to a newly proclaimed Dáil and the first shots of the Anglo-Irish War. Yeats and his wife, George, had since 1917 been exploring automatic writing, out of which he built a cyclical theory of history later published as A Vision (1925).

Composition

Drafts date from January 1919. The poem was first printed in The Dial in November 1920 and then in Michael Robartes and the Dancer, issued by the Cuala Press with a 1920 date. Yeats later added a note explaining the gyres and the idea of an age ending after some two thousand years.

Reception

The Second Coming became one of the most quoted poems of the twentieth century. Its phrases supplied the title of Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart (1958) and of Joan Didion's essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968), and its opening lines are routinely cited by journalists and politicians in moments of upheaval.

Comparisons

• journey-of-the-magi

  Eliot, writing a few years later, also sees the Nativity as the end of an old dispensation, but where Yeats fears what the next birth will bring, Eliot's magus is unsettled by the birth that has already happened.

• ozymandias

  Both poems set a colossal stone figure in an empty desert; Shelley's is a fallen king half sunk in sand, Yeats's a living shape with a lion's body rising to power.

• the-tyger

  Blake and Yeats each end with a fearful question about a beast, Blake asking who could frame the tiger and Yeats asking what rough beast is about to be born.

• the-bible

  The poem depends on Matthew 24, Christ's discourse on the signs of his return, and on the beasts of Revelation 13, inverting the hope of the first and borrowing the dread of the second.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The falcon and falconer of lines 1-2, the first picture of a world out of earshot of its master.
• The flat, short clauses of lines 3-6 and the repeated word loosed.
• The double Surely in lines 9-10, and how quickly the speaker's expectation is overturned.
• The details of the beast in lines 14-17: lion body, human head, blank pitiless gaze, slow thighs.
• The rocking cradle of line 20 and the final word Bethlehem, which tie the vision to the Nativity.

Key terms and names

Gyre

A spiral or circling motion; for Yeats, the shape of history, which widens and turns until an age ends and another begins.

Spiritus Mundi

Latin for spirit of the world; Yeats's name for a shared storehouse of images from which the vision of the beast comes.

Ceremony of innocence

The rituals and decencies by which a civilization honors what is pure, here drowned by the blood-dimmed tide.

Second Coming

In Christian teaching the return of Christ in glory at the end of the age; Yeats uses the phrase and then turns it toward a dark new birth.

Rough beast

The sphinx-like creature of the vision, whose hour has come round at last; its nature is left unnamed.

Bethlehem

The town of Christ's birth; the beast slouches toward it, signaling that one age born there is giving way to another.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension List everything that is loosed, drowned, or falling apart in the first eight lines.
2. Comprehension What does the speaker see in the desert after he says the words The Second Coming?
3. Interpretation Why might Yeats begin with a falcon that cannot hear the falconer rather than with a direct statement about politics?
4. Interpretation How do the beast's blank gaze and slow thighs make it the opposite of the child in the rocking cradle?
5. Interpretation Why does the poem end with a question instead of a statement?
6. Big Question Is history a cycle of ages, as Yeats believed, or a line moving toward a final end, as Christians confess? What difference does the answer make to how one faces a time of disorder?
7. Big Question What does it take for good people to have conviction without becoming fanatics?

Faith Connections

• Matthew 24:4-14, 23-31 (Scripture)

  Christ warns of wars, lawlessness, and false christs before his true coming in glory; Yeats's poem stages exactly the kind of counterfeit revelation the passage warns against.

• Revelation 13:1-8 (Scripture)

  John's vision of a beast rising to receive worship and authority supplies the dread that Yeats's rough beast borrows.

• Luke 2:1-14 (Scripture)

  The birth in Bethlehem announced as peace on earth is the rocking cradle of line 20; reading the two together shows what Yeats has inverted.

• Augustine, City of God XII (Church Fathers)

  Augustine argues against pagan theories of endlessly recurring cycles of time, holding that Christ died once for all; this is the very kind of cyclical history Yeats revives.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: The world is visibly coming apart and the best have lost conviction; such collapse must signal a new revelation, as the Nativity once did; but the revelation now arriving is a pitiless beast rather than a savior; therefore the end of the Christian age will bring not renewal but something terrible.

Rhetorical device: Rhetorical question. The poem ends in lines 21-22 by asking what rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem to be born, leaving the reader to supply the dreadful answer.

Debate: Resolved: The best lack all conviction is a fair description of good people in times of crisis.

Memory Work

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

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Writing Prompts

Essay: The Second Coming borrows the language of Christian hope to express dread. Analyze how Yeats uses the title, the double Surely, the rocking cradle, and Bethlehem to build and then overturn the reader's expectations.

Comparison with Journey of the Magi: Yeats and Eliot both wrote poems in which the Nativity marks the end of an old world. Compare how each speaker experiences that ending and what each poem suggests about the birth at Bethlehem.

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Collect three recent news articles or speeches that quote the first stanza. Discuss whether each use fits the poem's meaning or only borrows its mood.

• Poetry

  Write a poem that opens with a single emblem of lost control, as Yeats uses the falcon, and then turns to a vision of what is coming next.

• Essay

  Compare the beast at the end of The Second Coming with the beasts of Daniel 7 or Revelation 13, explaining what Yeats borrows and what he changes.

Further Reading

• A Vision, W. B. Yeats

  Yeats's own exposition (1925; revised 1937) of the gyres and historical cycles behind the poem.

• W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. II: The Arch-Poet, R. F. Foster

• Yeats: The Man and the Masks, Richard Ellmann

• A New Commentary on the Poems of W. B. Yeats, A. Norman Jeffares

  Line-by-line notes on sources and allusions.