The Second Coming - Y.B. Yeats

Themes –

Despair about Modernism
Order vs Chaos

Concepts –

The Sphinx of Greek Myth
The Second Coming of Christ
Philosophy of A Vision

Techniques –

* The poem is divided into two stanzas and with the odd rhyme, but far more resembling free verse modern voice than the other poems

• To describe the scene of chaos he uses first person, as though he is the eyewitness

• Yeats contrasts the civilized past, the Christian Age, with the biblical story of the Second Coming of the Christ, which represents the modern age. However, it is not Christ he imagines reborn, but the sphinx, which symbolizes mythology, riddles and other unanswerable questions.

• The Metaphorical birth of the sphinx or Spiritus Mundi, the spirit of the earth, ‘its hour came round at last/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born’ is not auspicious, shown in the diction ‘slouches’.

POEM ANALYSIS -

(LINE BY LINE)

"Turning and turning in the widening (बढ़ता हुआ) gyre (चक्र)
The falcon (बाज) cannot hear the falconer (बाज का मालिक);"

The poet starts the poem telling about a falcon which is flying in the sky and cannot hear his master.

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere (केवल) anarchy (अराजकता) is loosed upon the world, "

Things fall apart means the system is not balanced and the hold of the centre upon things is loosened up. Center" is no more able to control the things going on in the society. Only anarchy is what is left in the world.

"The blood-dimmed (खून खराबा) tide (लहर) is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence (मासूमियत) is drowned (डूब गयी);"

Just the bloodshed can be seen everywhere and innocence seems like to have been drowned.
The best lack all conviction (आस्था/ उम्मीद), while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
He says that the best/ good people have lost or lacking in their conviction/ hope and the worst people are wandering freely because there is no one to bother them.

"Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand."

Here the poet talks to himself and says that something is about to be revealed for sure. Something that might surprise the world. Earlier it was believed that Jesus Christ will reborn some day so the poet says that the Second Coming of the Jesus is assumed.

"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, "

And the poet repeats the words. He says hardly the words are out means in modern world, no one talks about the second coming (rebirth) of the Christ. Now an image or a reflection of Spiritus Mundi is seen and supposed to have been appeared out of a sudden. The poet takes Spiritus Mundi as a problematic creature and compares it to the modern world people. The appearing of Spiritus Mundi troubles the poet as he describes it to be of a body of lion with head of man. He says the Spiritus Mundi is approaching out of the deserts. Here he takes Spiritus Mundi from the ancient Egyptian statues.

"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 aforementioned Spiritus Mundi seems very problematic to the poet as it has no feelings and it is blank and pitiless as the sun. further he says that the SM is moving (coming) with its slow pace. And as soon as it walks, the indignant (angry) birds are moving in the sky to see it. They are angry to see it.

"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?"

Now he says that the darkness has come again. In previous lines the poet said that the birds’ shadows are appearing on the sandy deserts and now he says that the darkness has come again. After all this the poet takes a sigh and says that now he knows that the sleep of twenty centuries has broken because of a nightmare and the cradle has started to move. Finally, closing the poem, the poet says that the beast’s hour has come and it has started to walk towards the holy city of Bethlehem to be born again…

The Second Coming

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