| The Second Coming | |
|---|---|
| byW. B. Yeats | |
| Written | 1919 |
| First published in | The Dial |
| Country | Ireland |
| Language | English |
| Form | Lyric poetry |
| Publication date | 1920 |
| Media type | |
| Lines | 22 |
| Full text | |
 The Second Coming (Yeats) atWikisource | |
Turning and turning in the wideninggyre
The falcon cannot hear thefalconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mereanarchy 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 somerevelation is at hand;
Surely theSecond Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out ofSpiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape withlion 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 towardsBethlehem to be born?
“The Second Coming” is a poem written by Irish poetWilliam Butler Yeats in1919, first printed inThe Dial in November1920 and included in his1921 collection of versesMichael Robartes and the Dancer.[1] The poem usesChristian imagery regarding theApocalypse andSecond Coming to describeallegorically the atmosphere of post-warEurope.[2] It is considered a canonical work ofmodernist poetry and has been reprinted in several collections, includingThe Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.[3]
The poem was written in 1919 in theaftermath of theFirst World War[4] and the beginning of theIrish War of Independence in January 1919, which followed theEaster Rising in April 1916, and before theBritish government had decided to send in theBlack and Tans to Ireland. Yeats used the phrase "the second birth" instead of "the Second Coming" in his first drafts.[5]
Yeats's cosmology is laid out in his bookA Vision, where he explained his views on history and how it informed his poetry. Yeats saw human history as a series of epochs, what he called "gyres." He saw the age of classical antiquity as beginning with the Trojan War and then that thousand year cycle was overtaken by the Christian era, which is coming to a close. And that is the basis of the final line of the poem: "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
The poem is also connected to the1918–1919 flu pandemic. In the weeks preceding Yeats′s writing of the poem, his pregnant wife,Georgie, caught the virus and was very close to death, but she survived. The highest death rates of the pandemic were among pregnant women, who in some areas had a death rate of up to 70%. Yeats wrote the poem while his wife was convalescing.[6][1]
In 2009, David A. Ross identified "The Second Coming" as "one of the most famous poems in the English language,"[7] echoingHarold Bloom who, in 1986, cited the piece as "one of the most universally admired poems of our century."[8]
Critics agree that the poetry ofPercy Shelley had a strong influence on the drafting of "The Second Coming." The first stanza matches the tone, diction, and syntax ofPrometheus Unbound.[9][10][11] Both Harold Bloom and Jon Stallworthy speculate that the poem'ssphinx draws on the imagery of Shelley'sOzymandias.[8][9]
Critics have also argued that "The Second Coming" describes what Yeats elsewhere called an "antitheticaldispensation" to the age ushered in by thebirth of Jesus Christ.[12]Richard Ellmann understood the "rough beast" of the final lines as a creature to be born itself inBethlehem, marking the cyclical (and violent) overturning of an age.[13]Giorgio Melchiori identified this same idea in Yeats' other writings, noting that
"(1) by 1896 Yeats had already some inkling of the cyclical theory of history which he was later to develop and expound inA Vision; (2) TheTrojan war, the birth of Christ, and an indefinite event due to happen in our century were already considered by him as three fundamental crises in world history, each of which reverse the established order and ushered in a new cycle of civilization . . ."[14]
Phrases in the poem have been adopted as the title in a variety of media. The words "things fall apart" in the third line are alluded to byChinua Achebe in his novelThings Fall Apart (1958),[1]The Roots in their albumThings Fall Apart (1999),[15] andJon Ronson in his podcast seriesThings Fell Apart (2021).[16]
Similarly, the words "the centre cannot hold" in the same line are used in the title ofElyn Saks' book about her experience with schizophrenia while obtaining her PhD at Oxford, and later her JD at Yale,The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (2008),[17]Jonathan Alter's book on U.S. PresidentBarack Obama's first term,The Center Holds (2013),[18] theNetflix biographical documentaryJoan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (2017),Sleater-Kinney's albumThe Center Won't Hold (2019),[19] andJunkie XL's song "The Center Will Not Hold, Twenty Centuries Of Stony Sleep" in the filmZack Snyder's Justice League (2021).[20]
Additionally, the phrase "slouches towards Bethlehem" in the last line is referenced in the title ofJoan Didion's collection of essaysSlouching Towards Bethlehem (1968),[1]Joni Mitchell's musical adaptation of the poem "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" (1991),[21]Robert Bork's non-fiction workSlouching Towards Gomorrah (1996), Daniel Ravipinto and Star Foster’s interactive fiction gameSlouching Towards Bedlam (2003),[22] andBrad DeLong's economic historySlouching Towards Utopia (2022).[23]
Other works whose titles come from lines in the poem includesWalker Percy’s novelThe Second Coming (1980),[1]Robert B. Parker's novelThe Widening Gyre (1983), and multiple songs inMoby's albumEverything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt (2018).[24]
The poem is quoted extensively in a number of books, includingArthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s political manifestoThe Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949),[25] andStephen King's novelThe Stand (1978).[1]
It is also quoted extensively in numerous films and TV shows, including the episode "Revelations" (1994) ofBabylon 5,[26] the director's cut ofNixon (1995),[27] multiple episodes including "The Second Coming" (2007) ofThe Sopranos,[28] the last episode ofDevs (2020),[29] the episode "The Queen's Speech" (2021) ofSee,[30] and byKenneth Clark in the final episode of his 1969 documentary seriesCivilisation.[31]
The reference to the best '[slouching] towards Bethlehem' in the poem's final line is quoted in the first verse of Irish singer-songwriterAndrew John Hozier-Byrne's trackNFWMB.[32]
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