“The Second Coming” Difficulty Essay

“The Second Coming”

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

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?

– William Butler Yeats

 

Following my first read of “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats, I was lost when attempting to decipher the various symbols in the poem- the sphinx, gyres, and falcons out of earshot. However, what I could determine was that the general “plot” of the poem transitions from a description of the chaos and downturn that the world is experiencing to a foretelling of the future. The speaker- possible being Yeats himself- explains how human civilization is on a path of destruction where the antithesis of Christ emerges, as I interpreted from the final line, “slouches towards Bethlehem” (22). The historical context surrounding the poem could give the reader more perspective as well; the poem is written in 1919, around the conclusion of World War I, where the world was indeed spiraling out of control. Seeds from the harsh war reparations on Germany would sow the seeds for World War II, with the fierce pursuit of power and influence of the west spreading east.

 

With my general lens of the poem, I then looked toward the form and structure of the poem. “The Second Coming” is written in blank verse, which has a somewhat consistent beat, but has no apparent rhyming scheme. The first eight lines are harshly transitioned into the warning of the second coming, which is fourteen lines. While the grouped eight and fourteen lines may simply be to separate the ideas of present and future, I was unsure of whether there is some concealed reason for Yeats’ choice. I turned toward the second stanza, thinking that fourteen lines are really a sonnet. However, this stanza is not written in a traditional sonnet format, with no iambic pentameter present and, more importantly, no rhyming. Since I could not derive much meaning from the form, I turned to punctuation. I searched up a reading of the poem, and found one by TED-Ed titled, “‘The Second Coming’ by William Butler Yeats”.  Upon listening, I remarked that the poem sounds like the ramblings of a fanatic warning the human race of the apocalypse. Looking through the poem, I observed the frequent usage of semicolon punctuation. In the first stanza, Yeats wrote semicolons to divide each statement “things fall apart” and “the centre cannot hold” (2) instead of simply using commas. Given that the speaker is trying to convince others that the “Second Coming” is nigh, pauses between different ideas emphasizes and gives more weight to the speaker’s message. Each comma or semicolon adds to the idea of a Second Coming in which some “beast” arises amidst the world’s chaos.

After analyzing the general meaning and form of the poem, I conducted some research on Yeats to see whether his background would shed more light on the poem’s interpretation. I found that Yeats grew up a Protestant, the Christian minority within Ireland, but was cut off from conventional Christianity by his father’s skepticism, leading him to mysticism and the occult (Independent.ie, 2015). Yeats developed his vision of history and time as a system of interlocking gyres; growth of species and the journey of the souls are all described by the conical geometry of the gyres. There is a yin-yang relationship between two gyres that determines eras of chaos and that of growth and calm, creating a “diamond” and “hourglass” shape (Yeats Vision). 

When rereading the poem, I consequently found new meaning in the first two lines, seeing that the “widening gyre” represented the gyre of chaos, constantly widening its radius. The falconer and falcon would thus be an analogy for how the world is on an inevitable decline. Another question arose from this analogy: if the falcon represents the world and, more specifically, life on Earth, then who or what is the falconer? Given the spiritualist background of Yeats, I determined that the falconer could be God who controlled the world, or some immutable universal force, that “Spiritus Mundi” (12) referenced in the second stanza. Or, the analogy could be even more metaphorical, seeing as how history itself is out of human control- possibly an observation that chaos and destruction are an unchanging pattern that humanity must simply brace itself against. Ultimately, for me, Yeats’ likening of gyres to the falcon and falconer is quite vague, and up to interpretation.

To corroborate the presence of an immutable universal force, was the “blood-dimmed tide” (Yeats, 5). Following the list of events occurring in the world, Yeats uses the imagery “blood-dimmed tide,” possibly referencing the bloodshed throughout World War I. In a less literal sense, the tide, like the ocean, is commanded by a force that is outside of authority- something that is ancient and universal. The use of “tide” provides an insistent and urging tone, but one that acknowledges the futility of acting against a constant, inescapable future. Furthermore, lines 7-8, “the best lack all conviction…” are an encouragement to accept the fate of the world and to not further precipitate the Second Coming. Those “full of passionate intensity” such as western world leaders, who wage senseless wars only contribute to the tide of upheaval that the gyres predict. Though, there is some apparent irony in this statement: the speaker himself speaks with fervor, but denounces those that have that same passion. Could it be true then that the speaker realizes that his own attempt to warn others is also futile? This question underscores the tone of the poem with cynicism and an unsolvable paradox- why try to instruct others on the truth when trying in itself is pointless?

Moving onto the second stanza, I first see the repetition of “Second Coming” and the urgency with which it is spoken. The shift between the first and second stanza signals and increase in intensity of the tone, where the speaker predicts the future in a prophetic vision with even more fervor. There is a transition into an imagery of a Sphinx in the desert, originating from barrenness and conniving desert birds- a moving beast that threatens a coming apocalypse. I was confused why Yeats chose the Sphinx as the symbol of some harbinger of doom, which “slouches toward Bethlehem to be born” (22). The Sphinx was created to honor pharoahs in ancient Egypt, a testament to the power and tyranny of the ruler- someone that was a god and worshipped. The speaker describes that the Sphinx has a “gaze blank and pitiless as the sun”  (Yeats, 15), which is in line with the idea of a tyrannical ruler. There appears to be a contradiction between the Biblical reference to the birthplace of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem and that of a non-Christian “beast” that threatens humanity. The idea of tyranny could relate to the events of World War I, a relentless drive for power that is the very antithesis of what Christ represents. Therefore, Yeats may imply that human nature promotes and supports tyranny and chaos along the gyre’s spiral path- a point not to prevent humanity from doing so, but to allow nature to take its course in the hope that good will return and that the values of a Christ-type figure will return again.

What I find from my overall analysis of this poem is that the symbolism and contradiction that plagues the poem’s meaning. If destruction were to happen in any case, why would it matter that  people try to accumulate wealth and power as in World War I? Why would it matter if someone lacks conviction or is full of passion when history and time are so detached from human control? 

 

Works Cited

“Geometry.” W. B. Yeats and “A Vision”: Geometry, https://www.yeatsvision.com/Geometry.html#Cones.

“Magic, Myth and Secrecy – WB Yeats and the Occult.” Independent, Independent.ie, 8 May 2015, https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/wb-150/magic-myth-and-secrecy-wb-yeats-and-the-occult-31207213.html.

“‘The Second Coming’ by William Butler Yeats.” Youtube, Uploaded by TED-Ed, 2 Feb 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY2oIsA4c7k

Yeats, William Butler. “The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming.