“The Second Coming” Introduction

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“The Second Coming” Summary

“The Second Coming” Themes

• 

  Civilization, Chaos, and Control

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• 

  Morality and Christianity

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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;

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 3-6

  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;

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 7-8

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

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 9-13

  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:

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 13-17

  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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 18-20

  The darkness drops again; but now I know
  That twenty centuries of stony sleep
  Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 21-22

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

  

  

  

  

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“The Second Coming” Symbols

• 

  The Falcon

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• 

  The Beast

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“The Second Coming” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Alliteration

  

  

  

  

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• Allusion

  

  

  

  

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• Antithesis

  

  

  

  

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• Anaphora

  

  

  

  

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• Assonance

  

  

  

  

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• Caesura

  

  

  

  

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• Consonance

  

  

  

  

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• Enjambment

  

  

  

  

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• Epistrophe

  

  

  

  

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• Metaphor

  

  

  

  

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• Rhetorical Question

  

  

  

  

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• Diacope

  

  

  

  

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“The Second Coming” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Gyre
• Falcon/Falconer
• Anarchy
• Loosed
• Blood-dimmed
• Revelation
• Second Coming
• Spiritus Mundi
• Pitiless
• Reel
• Indignant
• Vexed
• Slouches
• Bethlehem

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Second Coming”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“The Second Coming” Speaker

“The Second Coming” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “The Second Coming”

More “The Second Coming” Resources

• External Resources

  • Yeats and the Supernatural — A clip discussing Yeats, faeries, and Irish occult tradition.

  • The Second Coming in Popular Culture — An interesting article outlining the poem's quotability.

  • Yeats's Vision — A website dedicated to exploring and understanding the heady text Yeats wrote about his view of the world.

  • Yeats's Voice — In this clip, Yeats reads one of his most famous poems in his distinctive tone. 

  • A Reading of the Poem — Dominic West (of The Wire fame) reads the poem. 

• LitCharts on Other Poems by William Butler Yeats

  • Adam's Curse

  • Among School Children

  • An Irish Airman Foresees his Death

  • A Prayer for my Daughter

  • Byzantium

  • Easter, 1916

  • He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

  • In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz

  • Lapis Lazuli

  • Leda and the Swan

  • Sailing to Byzantium

  • September 1913

  • The Lake Isle of Innisfree

  • The Song of Wandering Aengus

  • The Wild Swans at Coole

  • To a Shade

  • When You Are Old