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Why did Yeats write the Second Coming?
What happened to William Butler Yeats?
Why did Yeats use the phrase 'the second birth' instead of 'the Second Coming'?
Why is the Second Coming so difficult to understand?
A famous poem by Yeats that depicts the chaos and violence of the modern world and the coming of a mysterious beast. Read the full text, analysis, and context of this apocalyptic vision.
- “The Second Coming” Summary.
- “The Second Coming” Themes. Civilization, Chaos, and Control. See where this theme is active in the poem. Morality and Christianity.
- Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Second Coming” Lines 1-2. Turning and turning in the widening gyre. The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Lines 3-6.
- “The Second Coming” Symbols. The Falcon. See where this symbol appears in the poem. The Beast.
- Summary
- Analysis, Stanza by Stanza
- Historical Background
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‘The Second Coming’ was William Butler Yeats’ ode to the era. Rife with Christian imagery, and pulling much inspiration from apocalyptic writing, Yeats’ ‘The Second Coming’tries to put into words what countless people of the time felt: that it was the end of the world as they knew it and that nothing else would ever be the same again. The First Wor...
Stanza One
Much has been written on the apocalypse, and many of those writings focus on the harbingers of the event: it is always bloody and massive, a vicious explosion that shakes the world to its foundation. In Yeats’ poem, the apocalypse is a much quieter, more understated, affair. It opens up with the disturbance of nature. Falcons were used as hunting animals since the medieval era. They are incredibly smart, and dedicated to their trainers, responding immediately to any noise that their handler m...
Stanza Two
In the second stanza, the Biblical imagery takes over the visions of corrupted nature. From the start, Yeats ties his poem to religion by stating ‘the Second Coming is at hand’, and conjuring up a picture of a creature with a lion’s body and a man’s head, much like the sphynx, and a gaze as ‘blank and pitiless as the sun’. By comparing it to the very nature that Yeats spoke about in the first part of the poem, he brings out the almost infallible quality of this beast: like nature, it feels no...
W.B. Yeats was an Irish poet born on the 13th of June, 1865. He is considered a largely Irish poet, although he ran in British literary circles as well, and he was a big part of the resurgence of Irish literature. In 1923, he was to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for his poetry, as the first Irishman. This was shortly after Ireland had finally g...
Learn about the apocalyptic imagery and symbolism of Yeats' poem 'The Second Coming', written after World War I. Read the full text, meter, commentary and biography of the Irish poet.
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Read the full text of Yeats's famous poem about the apocalypse and the end of the world. The poem explores the themes of chaos, violence, and the Second Coming of Christ or the Antichrist.
"The Second Coming" is a poem written by Irish poet W. B. Yeats in 1919, first printed in The Dial in November 1920 and included in his 1921 collection of verses Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and Second Coming to describe allegorically the atmosphere of post-war Europe . [2]
Learn about the meaning and context of Yeats's famous poem \"The Second Coming\", which describes a nightmarish scene of anarchy and a monstrous revelation. Explore the poem's structure, imagery, and mystical theory of history in A Vision.
The Second Coming Lyrics. 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...
