The Second Coming - W.B. Yeats
A Foreboding Revelation of Chaos and Transformation
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 Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: 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.
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?
W.B. Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” envisions a world gripped by chaos and unraveling order, written in the aftermath of World War I. Yeats paints a vivid scene of societal collapse, using the metaphor of a falcon that can no longer hear its falconer to depict humanity’s growing disconnection from traditional structures. The line “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” has become one of literature’s most famous expressions of cultural and spiritual fragmentation.
Yeats draws on Christian eschatology, yet inverts its hopeful imagery of a redemptive return. Instead, he introduces an unsettling “rough beast,” suggesting a monstrous entity that heralds a new and ominous era rather than salvation. The “Spiritus Mundi,” or universal spirit, is said to shape this vision, hinting at a collective, almost archetypal awareness that something momentous and terrifying looms on the horizon.
The poem’s language reflects an apocalyptic mood. The “blood-dimmed tide” and “ceremony of innocence drowned” express the sense that moral structures have collapsed under the weight of brutal conflict and ideological upheaval. Despite the biblical allusion in the title, what arrives is not a traditional Messiah but an ambiguous force that marks a dark turning point.
The power of this poem lies in its blend of dread and fascination with a coming transformation. By depicting a gyrating cycle and an unstoppable beast, Yeats warns of an approaching age shaped by primal energies and destructive potential. The poem remains a crucial reflection on societal shifts, cultural anxiety, and the uncertain future that follows in the wake of catastrophe.
Key points
• Symbolic depiction of global upheaval and collapse of old certainties
• Critique of lost innocence and moral clarity in the modern world
• Use of biblical and mythic imagery to herald a new, unsettling era
• Reflection on the cyclical nature of history and the anxieties of transformative change
