Vocabulary gyre a spiral turn falcon a bird of prey falconer a person who trains falcons to capture prey mere total absolute anarchy total chaos and war dimmed made darker ID: 651338
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Slide1
The Second Coming
By W. B YeatsSlide2
Vocabulary
gyre: a spiral turnfalcon: a bird of prey
falconer:
a person who
trains falcons
to capture prey
mere:
total, absolute
anarchy:
total chaos and war
dimmed:
made darker
loosed:
unleashed
conviction:
deep belief
in something
, such as morals
revelation:
a great realization
Second Comin
g: return
of Jesus
vast:
huge
Spiritus
Mundi:
the
shared spirit
or soul of all
peopleSlide3
pitiless:
without sympathyreel: whirl aroundindignant: upsetvexed: distressed
rough:
harsh, crude
slouches:
walks slowly, awkwardly, slumped over
Bethlehem:
town where Jesus was bornSlide4
Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart, the center 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 outWhen a vast image out of Spiritus MundiTroubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of theDesert.
Turning around in a spiral that keeps
getting wider, the falcon cannot hear his trainer. Things fall apart. Total chaos and rebellion spill into the world. A tidal wave of blood drowns everything innocent. The best people no longer believe in anything, and the worst are extremely passionate about their beliefs, even if they are wrong.
Surely some kind of great truth will be
revealed. Surely Jesus Christ will return to Earth in the Second Coming! As soon as I say this, I see a huge image, which everyone
on Earth can also see, and it troubles me.Slide5
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?Somewhere in the sands of the desert,
a beast
with a lion’s body and a man’s
face— with
an empty, unsympathetic look in
its eyes
, is slowly getting up and walking,
while angry
vultures circle it, out of
control.
Darkness
falls again. But now I know
that this
beast, which has been sound asleep
like a
statue for 2,000 years, has been woken
up, and
a nightmare is going to start. What
is this
harsh, crude beast? It walks
menacingly towards
Bethlehem, where it will be
born.Slide6
William Butler Yeats is buried
in the Protestant churchyard, Drumcliff, Co. Sligo, Ireland. Yeats' Grave at
Drumcliff
. Yeats was born in Dublin into an artistic family.Slide7
Summary of the Second Coming
The
poem begins with the image of a falcon flying out of earshot from its human master. In medieval times, people would use falcons or hawks to track down animals at ground level. In this image, however, the falcon has gotten itself lost by flying too far away, which we can read as a reference to the collapse of traditional social arrangements in Europe at the time Yeats was writing.
In the fourth line, the poem abruptly shifts into a description of "anarchy" and an orgy of violence in which "the ceremony of innocence is drowned." The speaker laments that only bad people seem to have any enthusiasm nowadays.
At line 9, the second stanza of the poem begins by setting up a new vision. The speaker takes the violence which has engulfed society as a sign that "the Second Coming is at hand." He imagines a sphinx in the desert, and we are meant to think that this mythical animal, rather than Christ, is what is coming to fulfill the prophecy from the
Biblical Book of Revelation.
At line 18, the vision ends as "darkness drops again," but the speaker remains troubled.
Finally, at the end of the poem, the speaker asks a rhetorical question which really amounts to a prophecy that the beast is on its way to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, to be born into the world.Slide8
Symbol Analysis
Title
: "The Second Coming" is an allusion to the reappearance of Christ as prophesied in the Book of Revelation
.
Lines 4-6: These lines contain two more allusions to the Bible. First, the word "anarchy" calls to mind the reign of Satan on Earth before Christ comes back. However, more specifically, it also brings to mind the Biblical flood that sent Noah packing the wife, kids, and a few pets into the ark. Interestingly, the poem spans the entire length of the Bible in these lines, from Genesis (the flood) to Revelation. Yeats’s image is noticeably more violent than the Bible ("blood-dimmed tide," "drowned"). It’s like the big flood viewed from the perspective of those who
didn’t
make it into the ark. Another notable thing about these lines is the work being done by the word "loosed," which translates roughly to "unleashed" or "let free." It’s a word that can be applied to a liquid like water, but also has the implication of a more animalistic force. In this way, it prefaces the symbolic unleashing of the "rough beast" later in the poem
.
Lines 13-14: The description of the sphinx in the desert recalls several themes from the Bible. First, as we know, the sphinx is that big stone animal that tourists like to snap pictures of in Egypt. In the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament, Egypt is where the Jewish people where held in bondage until they were freed by
Charleton
Heston
, that is, Moses. Also, these lines bring to mind the story of Christ’s temptation by Satan in the desert. So, in a sense, the desert is the devil’s home. Finally, the sphinx itself, as a mash-up of two different animals (man and lion), can be compared with similarly confused species in the Book of Revelation, such as locusts with scorpion tails (ouch
!).
Line 19: "Stony sleep," "nightmare," and "rocking cradle" are part of an extended metaphor comparing the "twenty centuries" between Christ and the Second Coming as only one night of an infant’s sleep. The metaphor of sleep suggests either the relative peacefulness or the obliviousness (probably both) which characterized the "twenty centuries" between the First and Second Comings, assuming that the latter is just around the corner.Slide9
Line 22: Compared to the weird images inspired by the Book of Revelation, this one’s easy. Christ was born in Bethlehem, so that city is a symbol of the entrance of absolute and messianic forces in the world. In the case of Christ, absolute Good. In the case of the "rough beast," well, let’s just say nobody’s going to be greeting this thing with frankincense and myrrh.
Lines
12-17: These lines are an example of symbolism, and they contain several symbols that can really be disconnected from another. In general, they represent a confused "veiled" vision of the "rough beast" described later in the poem. They are said to originate in
Spiritus
Mundi
, a "spirit world" of images and symbols that Yeats believed to have been traditionally available to the most perceptive people (like poets) throughout history. Although lots of smart-sounding people like to say that symbols always have to "mean" something specific, Yeats thought that the best symbols couldn’t ever be fully explained in words. They are "expressive" in a way that passes beyond ordinary speech.