The Second Coming (Leaving Cert English): Revision Notes

The Second Coming

Introduction and background

"The Second Coming" stands as one of W.B. Yeats' most celebrated and frequently quoted poems. Yeats wrote this powerful work in 1919, shortly after the devastating conclusion of World War I. The poem presents a deeply mysterious and haunting alternative to the traditional Christian concept of the Second Coming, where Jesus would return to Earth as humanity's saviour to establish the Kingdom of Heaven.

The poem's structure consists of two distinct parts. The opening stanza paints a picture of a world consumed by chaos, confusion, and suffering. The second, longer stanza shifts to a more visionary tone, describing the speaker receiving a prophetic glimpse of the future. However, this vision replaces Jesus's heroic return with the arrival of what appears to be a monstrous, grotesque creature. Through its striking imagery and vivid portrayal of society's collapse, "The Second Coming" has become one of Yeats's most influential and widely referenced works.

Summary

The poem opens with a falcon spinning endlessly in an ever-widening spiral, no longer able to hear its owner's call. This image immediately establishes that "things are falling apart and their foundation is crumbling". Pure destruction and chaos have spread throughout the world, accompanied by a "tide darkened with blood". All the ceremonies of innocence have been consumed by this devastating tide. The finest people lack motivation to take action, while the most terrible people are filled with passionate eagerness.

The speaker then declares that some kind of revelation must happen soon, and the Second Coming itself must be approaching. Excitedly, the speaker announces: "The Second Coming!" However, just as these words are spoken, a vision emerges from the "Spiritus Mundi" (world's collective unconscious). The speaker witnesses a barren desert landscape, where a creature possessing a man's head and a lion's body is coming to life. Its expression resembles the sun - empty and without compassion. Its legs move slowly, while all around it fly the shadows of disturbed desert birds. Everything becomes dark once more, but the speaker gains new knowledge: two thousand years of peaceful sleep have been irreversibly shattered by the rocking of a cradle. The speaker poses a final, ominous question: "what rough beast, whose destined time has finally arrived, is now dragging itself towards Bethlehem, where it will be born".

Major themes

Civilisation, chaos, and control

"The Second Coming" presents a nightmarish vision of the end times, as the speaker describes humanity's growing loss of control and increasing tendency towards violence and disorder. Surreal images rush past the reader rapidly, creating an unsettling atmosphere that suggests a world teetering on the edge of complete destruction.

Despite its complex metaphorical elements, "The Second Coming" delivers a relatively straightforward message: it essentially predicts that humanity's time is running out, and that civilisation as we understand it is about to collapse. Yeats composed this poem immediately following World War I, a global disaster that claimed millions of lives. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that the poem presents such a bleak view of humanity, suggesting that civilisation's apparent progress and order might be nothing more than an illusion.

With this context in mind, the first stanza's challenging imagery becomes clearer. The "falconer," representing humanity's attempt to control its world, has lost its "falcon" in the turning "gyre". These opening lines also suggest how the modern world has separated people from nature (represented here by the falcon). Regardless of interpretation, it's evident that whatever connection once linked the metaphorical falcon and falconer has shattered, and now the human world is spiralling into chaos.

The poem suggests that although humanity might have appeared to make progress over the past "twenty centuries" through seemingly ever-increasing knowledge and scientific developments, World War I demonstrated people's capacity for self-destruction like never before. "Anarchy" had been "loosed upon the world," accompanied by tides of blood (which clearly reference the massive death toll of war). "Innocence" was merely a "ceremony," now "drowned." The "best" people lack "conviction," suggesting they're not motivated to address this nightmarish reality, while the "worst" people appear excited and eager for destruction. The current state of the world, according to the speaker, proves that the "centre" - the foundation of society - was never truly strong.

Morality and Christianity

"The Second Coming" offers a disturbing perspective on Christian morality, suggesting that it may not be the stable and reliable force that people believe it to be. The poem clearly references the biblical Book of Revelation from its beginning, which simply states that Jesus returns to Earth to save the worthy. According to the Bible, this is meant to occur when humanity reaches the end times: an era of complete war, famine, destruction and hatred. The poem suggests that the end times are already happening, because humanity has lost all sense of morality - and perhaps this morality was only an illusion from the start.

In the first stanza, the speaker describes the chaos, confusion, and moral weakness that have caused "things" to "fall apart.". In the second stanza, the poem makes it clear that it's specifically Christian morality that is being undone. In describing this wide-ranging destruction, the poem questions whether Christian morality was built on weak foundations from the beginning - that is, perhaps humanity was never truly moral, but simply pretended to be.

The first stanza's imagery develops this sense of morality being turned upside down: good and evil (the "best" and "worst") are no longer the reliable categories that they once were, replaced by "mere anarchy". Humanity has drenched itself in blood - the "blood-dimmed tide" - suggesting that morality was only ever a "ceremony," a performance that created the illusion that humankind was "innocent."

The "blank gaze" of this new creature provides further evidence of just how hopeless the situation has become. This being might have the head of a "man," but it lacks moral sense - instead, it is "pitiless.". It is arriving to preside over "blood-dimmed tide[s]" and "drowned" "innocence" - not a world of kindness, charity, and justice. Its sphinx-like appearance is also deliberately at odds with Christian imagery, which further suggests a break with Christian morality.

Structure and form

'The Second Coming' consists of two stanzas, with the first stanza containing eight lines and the second containing fourteen. While this might suggest a resemblance to a sonnet, the poem resists traditional forms. The irregular stanza structure mirrors the thematic breakdown of order in the world that Yeats describes. The poem transitions from an objective tone in the first stanza to a subjective, visionary one in the second, further reflecting the evolving nature of the chaos it depicts.

The poem lacks a consistent rhyme scheme, further reinforcing the theme of disorder. Though there are partial slant rhymes like "gyre" and "falconer," they do not form the clearest of patterns. This absence of strong end rhymes reflects the unravelling of societal structures and the instability of the world that Yeats envisions.

As for the metre, it primarily follows iambic pentameter. However, the poem frequently deviates from this regular metre, particularly in the second stanza, where lines like:

"A shape with lion body and the head of a man"

Extend beyond the traditional ten-syllable limit. These disruptions in the metre mirror the poem's chaos and instability, as the breakdown of the regular rhythm reflects the unravelling world Yeats portrays.

Detailed analysis, stanza by stanza

Stanza one

Falcons were used as hunting animals since the mediaeval era. They are incredibly smart and dedicated to their trainers, responding immediately to any noise that their handler makes. For the falcon to have flown so rapidly out of the reach of the falconer shows us how the delicate balance of the world has been upset. It's a particularly Shakespearean tactic to reflect evil in the way that nature behaves. In Macbeth, when the villainous Macbeth murders the good king, a lowly porter recognises that the horses have started to eat each other and that there was a great and thunderous storm. This is the same manipulation of imagery, using the innocent vision of nature to imply a great warping in the fabric of things as they should have been.

We see this throughout the first stanza: Yeats' words take on an edge of doomed and destroyed innocence. The famous line "things fall apart, the centre cannot hold" establishes the poem's central theme. The very world as he knew it - here no doubt represented in the immediate world as Yeats knew it, which was Europe - has started to crumble. The Great War is still fresh on his mind, and the phrase "the centre cannot hold" can also represent the battles that were fought in France, battles that left the country scarred beyond repair and struggling in the aftermath of the war. "Blood-dimmed tide" also can reference the same war, but aside from the historical link, there is again that idea of nature warped by man - blood-dimmed tide, water corrupted by spilled blood, by war, by an encroaching and violent end.

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 sphinx, 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 nothing for the suffering of man. It is and will be when man has turned to ash and dust in its wake.

It's worth noting that Yeats believed that poets were privy to spiritual "after images" of symbols and memories recurring in history, and especially available to souls of a sensitive nature such as poets. Here, the Spiritus Mundi is the soul of the Universe, rattling in the wake of the coming apocalypse, delivering to Yeats the image of the beast that will destroy the world, and him with it. The beast will come, Yeats is assured of this, but not yet; by the end of the poem, the veil has dropped again, the monster is no longer visible, and Yeats writes that "twenty centuries of stony sleep / were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle," implying that whatever is coming for the world, whatever monster, will be here soon. It is not yet born, but the world is right for it, and waiting for it, and Yeats is certain that the rough beast "its hour come round at last" is only a few years away from wrecking the world into a state of complete destruction.

Key poetic techniques

Imagery

Vivid, apocalyptic imagery evokes chaos and destruction:

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world"

This portrays a world descending into disorder.

Symbolism

The "rough beast" symbolises a new, ominous force or era:

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

Allusion

Biblical allusions, particularly to the Book of Revelation:

• "The Second Coming" refers to the prophesied return of Christ, but here is perverted into something monstrous.

Tone

The tone is foreboding, prophetic, and unsettling:

"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed"

This phrase conveys violent upheaval.

Enjambment

The use of enjambment creates a breathless, relentless flow, mimicking the unstoppable collapse of order:

"The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."

Contrast

Stark contrasts highlight moral and societal decay:

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

This critiques the inversion of moral authority.

Symbol of the falcon and falconer

The falcon and falconer symbolise lost control and disconnection:

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer"

This suggests humanity has lost touch with guiding principles.

These techniques together create a haunting vision of imminent catastrophe and the birth of a new, frightening age.