"The Second Coming" by W.B Yeats. ????

Question

What are your opinions about this poem ??
What exactly is "The Second Coming" all about in this poem by Yeats ??

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Answer 1

"The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats is a beautiful poem, but a very difficult one. It prophesies the arrival of a new kind of god, and in that, Yeats differs from Christian dogma. Or rather, he blends the prediction of the second coming in Mathew, 24, and St John's description of the beast of the Apocalypse in the book of Revelation. Yeats really announces a new kind of civilization to come, a new era characterized by an irrational force. He chose concrete words, maybe to allude to the effect of anarchy in the Irish civil war. The poem was written in 1919, so there may also be an allusion to the Russian revolution. At the same time, he mixes this future with the Christian past (see the last line of the poem, with the reference to Christ). He associates the innocence of birth, of infancy, with the idea of a profanation by this unknown beast. The poem ends on a question mark because the poet does not know what the future holds. So, there is certainty (especially in the rhythm of the poem, but also in the sentence "now I know") and uncertainty about the future.


For the other answerer: Yeats certainly does not allude to Chinua Achebe, who was born in 1930 (I just checked), whereas Yeats died in 1939...

Answer 2

Oh for heaven's sake, don't listen to people quote allusions, focus on the power and the feeling of the poem.

Things fall apart.

Eventually, things fall apart.

The centre, from which everything might be controlled or balanced, doesn't hold.

Something rough and terrible is always crossing the desert of time, getting closer to us. The future can be a horrible and rough beast. Change.
Twenty centuries of Christianity, which to Yeats is a long "sleep" of religion - now something is changing in the world. Violent wars, a horror approaching that has no name. This is the end of the world and the birth of something new: a second Bethlehem, but maybe this time an antichrist instead of a christ, something terrible.
What to do, when you wake in the morning and hear the news tell of the invention of panzer tanks, or when your nation fails to win its independence? What to do, when you wake shivering after terrible dreams, or when you wake and the trees out your window are beautiful, and yet a terror and a horror of an uncertain future shivers across your skin?
As a poet or an artist, you try to find an image, a story, or something to make a picture that will give form to this horror that is without a name. You reach deep into "Spiritus Mundi," Latin for the Spirit of the World, the under-consciousness of wisdom and poetry and images, and you find in that Spirit the picture that will show you the thing you fear.
But maybe seeing that rough beast, you still don't know what it is. But you know it's coming. You know it's about to be born. You know it is so terrible that vultures wheel in the desert sky above it. What rough beast, you ask, is on its way, as things fall apart around us?

Answer 3

The title the Second Coming was alluded from the book of revelations in the bible

The Poem
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 Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the 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?


The author begins by showing us how the world is now living a life of total misconduct. "The falcon cannot hear the falconer". They no longer listen to God and do as they please. It's a world without order. Yeats makes an allusion from Chinua Achebe's book "Things fall apart". He is trying show the collapse of the moral nature of man.
He says in the poem that the innocent people of this world are pushed away while the wicked people are the one influencing our world greatly(bringing tremendous effect). This is shown in lines 6-9
Yeats believes that all this is the evidence of the Second Coming which is stated in the Book of Revelations. It is known that when Jesus takes his chosen with him then an evil dragon called the antichrist, would come and torment the world. This dragon was called the "Spritus Mundi" in this poem. In the following lines he explains how terrible it looks.
He refers to that time as a nightmare for the century that have gone to sleep. In the last sentence he makes more of an irony as he says that this same dragon headed to Bethlehem to be born. As we all know Jesus was born in Bethlehem so what an irony it is for the antichrist also to be born in Bethlehem.

I hope u have grasped the message

Answer 4

Not a theologian by any means, these last two lines remind me of the Second Coming prophesied in the Bible.Not Christ, but a false Christ. Ack, someone help me out here! This was long ago and far away, teachings I learned while growing up. Anyway, that is what comes to mind when I read those lines.

Answer 5

I dont' think you are going to learn anything if you have other people do your homework for you all the time.

read it yourself and THINK about what you think the author is saying.