The Second Coming

William Butler Yeats, 1919

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?

William Butler Yeats' poem The Second Coming  was written in 1919 and published in 1920. The poem reflects Yeats' concerns about the disintegration of social and cultural order, as well as his broader metaphysical and historical beliefs. The poem was written in the aftermath of World War 1 - a time of political upheaval and widespread disillusionment. The tone of the poem is ominous, prophetic, and foreboding. Vivid and often unsettling images reinforce the poem's themes of disintegration and rebirth.

Yeats believed in the cyclical theory of history as a series of gyres or spirals, with each civilization inevitably giving way to a new order. More recently, The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy by William Strauss and Neil Howe, written in 1997, also proposes a cyclical theory of history. Societies go through recurring generational cycles, or 'turnings', wrote Strauss and Howe, with each cycle lasting approxiately every 80-100 years. These cycles are divided into four distinct 'turnings', each lasting about 20-25 years, corresponding to different phases of societal development. The Fourth Turning (The crisis) is described by Strauss and Howe as a period of major upheaval, often marked by war, revolution, or economic collapse. Institutions are rebuilt, and a new social order emerges. The last Fourth Turning was the Great Depression and World War 2 (1929-1946). Significantly, Strauss and Howe predicted that the 2020s (twenty years after they had written their book) would be a cataclysmic period in American history.

 

Yeats poem describes a world descending into chaos marked by the collapse of traditional structures and the emergence of an ominous new force. In his poem, the transition from one historical cycle to another is signified by a terrifying vision of a 'rough beast' that heralds a new, darker age.

In the first stanza, Yeats begins with the metaphor of a 'widening gyre', symbolizing the unraveling of order and the loss of control. The falcon and falconer evoke a breakdown in communication and authority. 'The centre cannot hold' harkens to the central theme of disintegration and collapse of order. Widespread violence and the loss of innocence is captured in the phrase 'the blood-dimmed tide'. The final couplet is prescient for our own time of polarization: those with wisdom are passive and quiet, while zealots dominate and 'are full of passionate intensity'. 

In the second stanza, Yeats uses Christian imagery in referencing the return of Christ (the Second Coming), but Yeats subverts this expectation with an ominous, pagan vision. The 'shape with lion body and the head of a man' resembles a sphinx, symbolizing a monstrous and foreboding power. Its 'pitiless' gaze suggests an indifferent, primal force. The barren setting of the desert emphasizes a period of desolation and spiritual emptiness.

In the final lines, Yeats refers to the cyclical nature of history with the 'stony sleep' representing the previous years of relative stability. The 'rough beast' is the harbinger of a new age. Its 'slouching' movement suggests inevitability and menace, a stalking predator, and a stark contrast to the divine imagery associated with the second coming of Christ.

I think Yeats' poem is speaking to me these days. And this music encapsulates my mood perfectly: