Analysis on William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming”

The poem “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats is very interesting as it is so powerful. The words and thoughts of the poem would simply blow you away once you read it. I had a good sense of what the poem is about even at the first time I read it because of the simplicity of the poem but its theme is naturally difficult to understand. One should really look into every line, do her research and prepare her thinking mind to fully understand the poem. In addition, because of its beauty and power, I picked it to be my contest piece when I joined a poetry reading contest in our school when I was a third year high school student.

William Butler Yeats was born on Tuesday, June 13, 1865, at 5 Sandymount Avenue, Dublin, Ireland. Yeats was known to be a poet, dramatist, mystic, public figure, and senator but he was most famously known for his mystical “2000-year-cycle theory of history”. He wrote a book themed to this theory. The book is called A Vision. The book was first published on April 1924, five years after he wrote the poem “The Second Coming”, which had similar words/terms and almost had the same theme. This poem was not published until 1921.

The Second Coming has two stanzas: the first has 8 lines while the second has 14. It has no definite rhyme scheme but it has a rhythm pattern, pentameter. In the first stanza, the speaker illustrates a scene of confusion and terrifying sight. In the first four lines, the speaker states that orderliness is loosed that the falcon cannot hear its handler or ruler (falconer). Everything is out of control. In the lines 5 and 6, the speaker pictures that the tide or the flood, which is colored in blood, is loosed and is everywhere. It was scattered in the place that honoring of innocence has been drowned and now, gone. In the last couple of lines of stanza, the speaker states that the best people or probably the people who are at the top of the hierarchic rank lack conviction while those people who belong or fall to the lower rank of hierarchy are full of passionate intensity/glow/brightness.

In the second stanza, the speaker of the poem starts his revelation-like announcement and vision about the second coming. Then, he says that a vast image of collective spirit of mankind (Spiritus mundi) troubles his sight making it hard for him to say the words “The Second Coming”. Suddenly, he sees another image, one which has a lion body and head of a man “somewhere in the sands of desert” (line 13). This image obviously is the sphinx in the sands of Giza in Egypt. Then, the speaker continues by describing how he sees the lion-bodied and man-headed figure. He states that that it gazes blankly and pitilessly as it is moving its slow thighs. While doing so, there are shadows of the “indignant desert birds” around it. Then, the speaker says that he could not see anything again. In the last four lines, the speaker ponders his thoughts about his vision. He states that his rough beast’s hour to go to Bethlehem to be born, after two centuries of being stonily vexed to nightmare, has come.

Critics have two views on what the poem’s real theme is: whether it is a politically related or merely a prophetically/mystically themed poem. In William B. Yeats, Harold Bloom notes “…the poem initially alluded to the disquieting events of 1916 through 1919. However, during the conception of the poem, Yeats deliberately eliminated all topical references to the Great War…, replacing them with the more expansive vision of his 2000-year-cycle theory of history.” (28). Having the same view, Richard F. Peterson writes in his book William Butler Yeats, “…the poem is more prophetic than political in its dramamtization…” (123). This means that the theme of the final draft of the poem that Yeats published is just generally about “the second coming” it self, which is shown to be preceded by catastrophic and nightmare-like happenings and visions that happen to the mankind. The connection of the words used in the poem to some of the Bible verses is also obvious: The “Second Coming” of Christ is stated in Matthew 24; The beast of the apocalypse (hawk, similar to falcon) was mentioned in the Revelations; And lastly, the blood-colored seas might be taken from the Revelation of St John.

The poem is somewhat similar to its rhythm. The poem shows chaotic and terrifying scenes and thoughts which are related to the rhythm and rhyme of the poem. The rhythm of the poem is pentameter but because the rhythm is loose, it can be easily mistaken to be free verse. It is noticeable as well that Yeats repeated a couple of words, phrases, or similar sounding words to help make the rhythm of the poem become better. The example of these words are: “Turning and turning “ in line 1; “falcon”, ‘falconer”, and “fall” in lines 2 and 3; “loosed” in line 4 and again in line 5; and “the Second Coming” in lines 10 and 11. However, there is no particular rhyme scheme in the poem.

The speaker of the poem, who could probably be Yeats himself, is prophesizing a Second Coming to the reader, the audience of the poem. The speaker has visions of chaotic scenes that will bring forth the second coming of the messiah. He is narrating what he sees and thinks one vision after another. He ends his prophesy by asking a question about the rough beast slouching and moving its thighs toward Bethlehem to be born. He might be seeing himself standing in the middle of the desert. We can note that Giza in Egypt is very near to Israel where Bethlehem is. After here, he leaves the thinking to the audience of the poem.

In A Dictionary of Literary Symbols, Michael Ferber writes “The opening of Yeats’ “The Second Coming” is justly famous: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer.” It is an omen, an augury, of the coming anarchy as the aristocracy loses its command.” (94). The falcon in the poem is used as a metaphor for people who are under a ruler of a monarchy. On the other hand, the metaphor used for the ruler or hierarchic people is the falconer. In the first lines of the poem, Yeats means that the first sign of the upcoming Second Coming is the fall of civilizations. This is brought about by the lost of control of those people in the lower rank in hierarchy probably a revolution which is similar to what Moses and other Israelites did when they left Egypt. Another metaphor that Yeats puts in the poem is the rough beast as the messiah. He writes that the rough beast is moving slowly towards Bethlehem to be born. Even though Yeats questions this action of the beast in the last line of the poem, he is clearly implying that the sphinx-like beast is the messiah.

Though there are similarities between the two “messiahs”, such as traveling to Bethlehem to be born, there are some ironic comparisons given in the poem. Yeats was saying that the rough beast, which is likely to be a ruthless, very fearful, and unforgiving creature, was the coming messiah in his vision when ironically, we are quite familiar to the fact that the Messiah was Jesus who is the kindest being ever born on earth. Another irony is that Jesus Christ’s cradle never rocked in the poem. In line 20, the cradle was rocking the rough beast.

Yeats used the word “gyre” a lot in his works such as the poem, “The Gyre” and the book, A Vision. In the Oxford English Dictionary, the editors define the word gyre as “A turning round, revolution, whirl; a circular or spiral turn.” And in connection to Yeats, in 1920, “All our scientific, democratic, fact-accumulating, heterogeneous civilization belongs to the outward gyre.” (983). The significance of the word in the poem is that it helps describe and set the setting of the scene. Yeats also probably used the word to introduce the term “gyre” that he had in his 2000-year-cycle theory. In the theory, the gyre keeps on widening until it reaches the 28th phase of the moon which is the 20th century of the cycle. Once the cycle is done, the time will go back to the beginning; hence a cycle. The beginning is (not that type as that of the creation of the universe and Earth) the birth of Christ, the Messiah, which is what the poem points out, the second coming.