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The Second Coming

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A collection of 15 of Yeats' most famous poems, including "The Second Coming" and "Easter, 1916."
"The Second Coming" is viewed as a prophetic poem that envisions the close of the Christian epoch and the violent birth of a new age. The poem's title makes reference to the Biblical reappearance of Christ, prophesied in Matthew 24 and the Revelations of St. John, which according to Christianity, will accompany the Apocalypse and divine Last Judgment. Other symbols in the poem are drawn from mythology, the occult, and Yeats's view of history as defined in his cryptic prose volume A Vision. The principal figure of the work is a sphinx-like creature with a lion's body and man's head, a "rough beast" awakened in the desert that makes its way to Christ's birthplace, Bethlehem.

Other poems in this collect include 'Easter, 1916,' which chronicles Yeats' complicated feelings on the execution of Irish patriots of the Easter Rebellion in Dublin.

24 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1920

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About the author

W.B. Yeats

2,042 books2,567 followers
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).

Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slow paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life.
--from Wikipedia

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
Profile Image for B. P. Rinehart.
765 reviews291 followers
December 12, 2015
From October 26, 2012:

So I may be cheating or contradicting myself in relation to my view of Dover Beach but I feel I have a good case here (that and I am proudly bias toward this genre).

The Second Coming is W.B. Yeats' masterpiece of post-WWI poetry. Like many in his circle he was in an absolute state of shock and horror at the breakout and aftermath of the first world war. At that time, many thought such a thing could not happen in a post-enlightenment, newly industrialized world, that had traded-in faith for reason and the institutions of old for the institutions of "new" but yet as much changed nothing changed and by 1919 Yeats was looking at a Europe in flames and ruin. It had been enough for the Irish mystic that he had been very intimately involved at that point in the Irish Literary Revival as well as the push for full independence of Ireland from the United Kingdom, but now "out of nowhere" a war of-then apocalyptic proportions had broken out and left the whole structure of the world he knew turned upside down and he and his peers would spend the next half-century in literature exploring "what-the-hell-just happened" to earth. This poem would be one of the first to ask that question.

So at the outset it seems the poem itself is opening in medias res as we find that the whole order of the world has finally broken and has been completely bent out of shape:
"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.
" Well, that's not good.

It is stark but descriptive and very to the point; unlike Dover Beach I feel that Yeats is sincerely disturbed and scared at what is going on around him and is not simply brooding and "angsting" all over the place all "emo-like" as Matthew Arnold does.


"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?
"

Now we see one of Yeats' signature beliefs come to fore-his mysticism. I could get into the contemporary allegory this may be invoking, but I like to read the above passage the way I think Yeats intended it to be read...as a simple apocalyptic vision coming about because of world events. The whole passage, the sphinx creature, the Antichrist figure, or beast that proceeds it, that appears at the end of the poem are all inspired by the prophet Daniel, The book of Revelations (which in the greek was called Apocalypse), and Yeats' own mystical visions which are all converging in that stanza to help him describe not only the world he sees, but the world he has yet to see. Given the horrors of the next "Great War" one would have been wise to take this vision seriously.
Profile Image for Mahdi Sharifi.
100 reviews15 followers
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April 11, 2024
ویلیام باتلر ییتس تو شعر «ظهور دوم» که بعد از جنگ جهانی اول نوشته، رفته سراغ ایده ظهور مجدد عیسی تو مسیحیت و می‌گه که قرار نیست همچنین چیزی در کار باشه. در عوض اون یک هیولا رو توصیف می‌کنه که در حال متولد شده و قراره یک بار دیگه دنیا رو به هرج و مرج بکشونه.

در واقع به نظر میاد که یتس می‌خواد بگه انسان‌ها تو طول تاریخ فجایع زیادی رو رقم زدن و اخلاقیات رو مدام زیر پا گذاشتن. در نتیجه در آینده هم تاریخ تکرار میشه و قرار نیست شاهد ظهور یه منجی باشیم، بلکه احتمالا قراره شاهد آشوب‌ها و شرارت‌های بیش‌تری باشیم.
Profile Image for Gregisdead121 .
272 reviews4 followers
February 16, 2025
I do not usually log solitary poems on their own here as it often feels like cheating, but I've come to the realization that that is a stupid way to repress something you obviously feel inclined to do. Especially when you come across a work as galvanizing as this, the greatest modernist poem of all time. A chilling prophecy that would sit comfortably amongst the Bible's Revelations apocalyptic verses.

It is 2025 and yet the ceremony of innocence is still drowned. Descending into a society gripped by rising fascist sentiments, the ''The Second Coming'' speaks eloquently of our fears and in turn reminds us not to slouch
Profile Image for Tanveer Anoy.
Author 5 books95 followers
July 11, 2021
Multiple times, I have stated that I'm not a big fan of poems- but particularly, this poem always makes me appreciate poems, especially it proves the power of the words. Also, honorable mention- 'Things Fall Apart'.
Profile Image for مريم عكاشة.
Author 1 book87 followers
December 9, 2019
"Spiritus Mundi" الذاكرة الجمعية للعالم منذ بدأ وحتى ينتهي، لا أعلم كم من المرات قرأت تلك القصيدة، ولا أعلم كيف استطاع ييتس أن يعبر بثقة بالنسبة لرجل في القرن العشرين عن أحلام امرأة في القرن الواحد والعشرين، كيف استطاع أن ينقب بين ثنايا عقلها الواعي واللاواعي ويكتب بتلك الطريقة المؤرقة، ربما كان ذلك هو ما عبر عنه بال "Spiritus mundi".
لا أستطيع الكلام، لا أقدر على الفعل، ليس علينا سوى الوقوف عجزة أمام النهاية؛ نهاية العالم؛ بداية القصيدة.




I can not describe how many times have I read this poem before I finally decide to admit that I have read it, stopping at every word and imagining the scenes in the writer's mind while drawing the letters, made me stop each time from sharing my thoughts about it. Should I describe how Yeats captured everything I have been going through ever since I became aware enough? Should I describe my feelings of resentment and utter fear that the poem highlighted? Should I describe how his "Spiritus Mundi" truly troubles "my" sight? I'm not sure that a second coming is at hand, it's all dark, twirly and merely anarchic and there's nothing to be said or done about it.
184 reviews2 followers
September 29, 2019
Yeats is phenomenal. One of the best despite being somewhat peculiar. I used to listen to his poetry read aloud on my way to work in the morning. He is brilliant, some of his poems are a bit strange...he believed some wonky things.
The Second Coming deserves its place as one of the most iconic poems of all times. It will seem familiar to those who haven't come across it before. This is simply because of the frequency with which other authors refer to it.
One can find many diverse and fascinating meanings it the poem.
Often of late I seem to realize the magnitude of the truth that "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity".
Profile Image for Courtney.
163 reviews
March 25, 2020
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”
Another difficult/nightmarish poem to be reading right now—anytime really—Yeats really knows his creepy images. But I’ve always loved that line. Describes so much of life so perfectly. . . . That may be pessimistic of me, but there it is.
Profile Image for ⋆.˚ Ariana ᡣ𐭩ྀིྀི.
625 reviews51 followers
May 21, 2025
The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity. I mean, Duhh

I don’t have any special thoughts on the poem itself. Those two lines, however, spoke to me lol
Profile Image for Rabbia Riaz.
210 reviews12 followers
March 31, 2020
Jesus Christ has seen that this world is at the end of chaos and here's "The Second Coming".
A hopeful poem even in the existantialist era?
Profile Image for Claudia.
335 reviews34 followers
August 9, 2016
This poem is perhaps a divination of the thing that in the early 21st Century would come to pass. It meant different things of course. But one cannot look at the Middle East and Europe today and fail to see the incredible words of this poem. And the force of its signifiers.
Amazing stuff. 5 stars.
Profile Image for Preetam Chatterjee.
6,833 reviews369 followers
May 20, 2022
“The Second Coming” gained in prophetic power with each decade of the twentieth and now twenty-first century, from the rise of fascism and nuclear warfare to the proliferation of international terrorism.

All poems included herein, expresses the melancholy realization that man, yearningly drawn to the divine, will never fully escape his bestial ancestry.
Profile Image for John Yelverton.
4,436 reviews38 followers
May 29, 2018
If this poem be not blasphemous, it is as close as you can get to it, and at the very least is unflattering and has no love for Jesus Christ by comparing Christ's second coming to all the troubles that faced Ireland at the hands of Imperial British.
Profile Image for Emmy.
125 reviews3 followers
Read
April 13, 2022
Can’t believe yeats based this on hozier’s NFWMB
Profile Image for Flarne.
Author 1 book59 followers
August 27, 2022
My fascination comes primarily from his vision of history as a series of interpenetrating gyres.
When you think about it, although one period of history is dominant, another, antagonistic to the present, is still present in the population.
Admittedly weakly, but still present.

In this sense, there is a constant crossing between two inseparable sea waves: a dominant one and a smaller one.

But he chose the term “gyre”, especially to characterize the active movement of each wave. Etymologically, a gyre is a whirlwind... this aspect of "turning" characteristic to the gyre represents the functioning of a historic period during the passage. It was important to find a word that negates the “static” feature between two inseparable sea waves; and that word needed to possess an attribute that negates it.

And the aquatic environment (unlike solid objects or gas) is the only one that allows an intersecting physical observation between two systems, while alllowing both to still be operational. I can't get enough of the brilliance of this metaphor. Sorry. It is so fitting.

“the falcon cannot hear the falconer” AHHHHH THIS IS SO GOOD.

The falcon is an animal that is known to catch prey.
But there, the current period of history (allegory for the falcon) does not know that it too is prey for the falconer, because two periods of history are like disproportionate gyres.. the current and overwhelming gyre sees itself as dominant, but is permanently , slowly, but permanently being overtaken by another (the falcolner)

No one sees a falcon as an animal that is known to GET caught as prey. This shows the irony with the current period of history (allegory for falcon) being caught by the unnoticed period of history (allegory for falconer).

Furthermore, the narrative progression of the poem achieved an accurate chronological expression of it when we have all the elements in mind: the poet was able to concisely capture this phenomenon of passage between two periods of history:

At the beginning, there is an omnipresence of “turning and turning in the widening gyre”
And during that stage of dominance of the soon-to-be -ucceeded era, “the falcon cannot hear the falconer”
But eventually, “things fall apart; the center cannot hold”
“Mere anarchy is loose upon the world”

“the blood-dimmed tide is loosed..” (-the scarlet color used here, is to characterize the slow 'death' of the current *gyre* by defeat/murder against the submissive *gyre*)

The intercorrelation with the second stanza is demonstrated on the fierce and fearful aura with which the poet perfumed the arrival of the new historical period. “a gaze and blank and pitiless”. The scene is put in slow motion as if to suggest the arrival of a sinister (the aforementionned murders occurring – a symbol for the undergoing demise of the initially dominant historical period).
Profile Image for Jd.
148 reviews1 follower
February 26, 2025
I love learning new words and gyre is a word I might classify as onomatopoeia because its easy to guess it’s meaning even outside of the context of the first line. Beautiful. First two lines, I’m on board. The imagery is clear. I can see it in my head. But then things fall apart. I have to let go of the falcon using thermals to spiral up and out of earshot to a different kind of vortex that brings chaos and now only brings mere anarchy. What a line. “Mere anarchy” like it’s a box of vitamins from amazon. This is feeling very close to home for a poet who lived from 1865 to 1939. It still feels very disconnected from the first two lines unless he is referencing God as the falconer and that our distance from him is what has caused the anarchy. The lack of conviction from good people and the worst have passionate intensity which makes me think of pointless rage. It brings to mind a modern social engine/algorithm that is only trying to stir emotion and the easiest one to stir is anger. The second stanza feels very familiar to my Western religious upbringing. We are taught to look for the second coming of Christ but the term Spiritus Mundi (which I had to look up) doesn’t evoke God. In context, it sounds like a book the speaker recalls but there is no such thing as far as I can tell. In any case, he has a vision of a desert and a sphynx and that’s where I lose the thread. Because I think he’s implying that an ancient sphynx was woken up by a nightmare (perhaps the nightmare of anarchy) and incarnated as Jesus. I acknowledge I have a bias in this understanding. Since Yeats is classified as Irish literary renaissance from the 20th century I’m not sure if I should be looking for a literal message or an interpretive message. I think it was about the time period when spiritualism was gaining popularity. The imagery of the sphynx evokes wisdom and enigma. Is he trying to say that the god figure is ancient and unknowable and disconnected from humanity and it’s problems?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for رضوى.
103 reviews3 followers
May 11, 2023
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?
Profile Image for Rebecca.
1,430 reviews6 followers
July 13, 2023
This poem was written in WW1, but the apocalyptic imagery seems like it applies to today’s era. Maybe not the rebirth portion, sadly. Yeats’s apocalyptic imagery in the first stanza is just great. Evocative, descriptive, dreamlike, making the reader feel in the middle of a whirlwind. The second stanza is great too, if less memorable. There is a sadness to this poem which echoes within my mind and makes me appreciate it greatly, and quotes from this poem make good mottoes or book titles. This poem is a classic for a reason.
Profile Image for Emily.
821 reviews43 followers
May 18, 2017
This poem is one of Yeats most popular and this is one of my favorites as well. Yeats turns the traditional view of the second coming of Jesus Christ and instead feels another Being will be coming and this age of Christianity will end and a new age will start.
Profile Image for Vijay Chengappa.
553 reviews30 followers
October 8, 2022
Contains one of my favorite lines ever
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Profile Image for audrey :).
10 reviews
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September 11, 2023
"and what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards bethlehem to be born?"
sorry that was me lol
1,482 reviews14 followers
February 19, 2024
Is not the Second Coming everyone’s favorite poem?
3 reviews
December 2, 2024
Writing this review not for this collection, but for The Second Coming only.

This is in contention for the best short-poem of all time. A masterpiece in so few words.

5/5
Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews

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