“The Second Coming” by W. B.

Yeats

W.B. Yeats, born on the 13th of June, 1865, is considered largely an Irish poet, although he ran
in British literary circles as well, and he was a big part of the resurgence of Irish literature. In
1923, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his poetry, as the first Irishman. This was shortly
after Ireland had finally gained independence from England. Yeats died in France in 1939.

His poem “The Second Coming”, written in 1919, first was printed in The Dial (November
1920) and published in his collection of verse entitled Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921).
“The Second Coming” is a two-stanza poem in blank verse. Written in 1919 soon after the end of
World War I, it describes a deeply mysterious and powerful alternative to the Christian idea of
the Second Coming—Jesus's prophesied return to the Earth as a saviour announcing the
Kingdom of Heaven. The poem's first stanza describes a world of chaos, confusion, and pain.
The second, longer stanza imagines the speaker receiving a vision of the future, but this vision
replaces Jesus's heroic return with what seems to be the arrival of a grotesque beast. With its
distinct imagery and vivid description of society's collapse, "The Second Coming" is also one of
Yeats's most quoted poems. Its first line, "turning and turning in the widening gyre," locates the
whole poem inside an expanding gyre, or spiral, making it clear that something is moving and
changing, and the world will never be the same. The poem's second line zooms from that
gigantic, unclear beginning straight into a very specific and symbolic image—the falcon, which
has lost touch with its falconer. This line essentially implies that the "falcon," which likely
represents humanity, has become detached from its "falconer," some sort of controller or holder
that once kept it in order. Next line, through six describe collapse and turmoil, a dissolution of
order and a rising tide of violence and revolution without cause. Innocence and rituals
celebrating purity have been destroyed, and a wave of violence is washing over the land,
drowning everything in its path. In the seventh and eighth lines, Yeats mourns that the best
people have become silent and resigned to their fate, while villains are the ones in power,
speaking the loudest and caring the most about their causes.

In the second half of the poem, Yeats looks beyond the present into the future. He has taken
stock of all that is going on, and he knows that certainly something large must be happening—all
this chaos cannot be accidental; it must be part of an event of apocalyptic proportions. This must
be a Second Coming, he thinks—this must be an apocalypse like the one predicted in the Bible's
Book of Revelations.

Something about the words "The Second Coming" sends the speaker spiraling into a sort of
dream state. He falls out of his physical self and gains contact with the Spiritus Mundi, or the
world-soul or collective consciousness, which Yeats believed each person has access to in some
part of his mind. This collective consciousness is full of strange, ancient, mythological images,
and a few mythological archetypes appear to Yeats in this surreal dream space. He sees a desert
in his mind's eye, and observes a lion with a man's head, also known as a sphinx, moving slowly
around the desert, while angry, fearful birds flutter around, casting shadows on the sand. Then
Yeats finds himself suddenly back in his own body and mind, out of this surreal, dreamlike
scene. But he has seen something he cannot forget: something is happening now, something that
will shake the world to its foundation. The world has been sleeping for two thousand years, he
thinks, but something is brewing, something terrible, and it is on its way, slouching towards
Bethlehem to be born.

Analysis
"The Second Coming" is about a rapidly changing world, altered forever by violence and chaos.
The poem's first line, which mentions a "widening gyre," refers to Yeats' belief (which he
expanded on in a later book called A Vision) that the world was created by a series of
interlocking circles, spinning into each other and winding around each other to catalyze
existence. The poem's first line implies that something is turning and changing within the
universe. This first line serves to create a sense of mystery from the poem's very beginning; it is
obscure and complex, ominous withholding of any clues about what might be happening. It also
expands the poem's scale, making it clear that the poem is really addressing events on a
cosmological scale.

With high stakes and a cosmological scale established in the first line, the poem goes on to
deepen this ambiguity in the second line. At first glance, it appears to mourn the fact that the
"falcon," or humanity, has been separated from its falconer—from its God or ethics or morals.
Usually, people interpret "The Second Coming" as mourning the loss of order, in which case the
falcon's being separated from the falconer would be an example of this collapse. But perhaps,
through this line, Yeats is implying that the Second Coming means that the falcon is at last
free—and the world has broken from its past traditions of convention and restraint, and it can
move into a new era, discovering new freedoms and new possibilities.
In the third line, the phrase "the centre cannot hold" implies that the core or heart of the world is
falling apart, so something once seen as fundamental to the world is changing forever. Yeats uses
the word "loosed" twice to describe the onset of the violent changes occurring, evoking an
uncontrollable burst of fury; something is coming unfurled, unclenched, opening, falling,
melting—slouching. A collapse is coming. This could lead to a new coming-together, a new
unity; but most likely will lead to uncontrollable, possibly dangerous, possibly liberating
changes.
Many Yeats scholars believe that this poem is specifically about the Russian Revolution of 1917,
also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, which resulted in a bloody seven-year war that paved
the way for the rise of the Communist party in Russia; it also certainly has echoes of World War
I, which rocked the world to its core. But perhaps Yeats could see even further as a visionary.
Perhaps he could somehow sense the coming of further wars and violence—World War II, the
atomic bomb, technologies that would reshape the world from the ground up. He knew the world
would never be the same after the 20th century, and it certainly is not.
The second half of the poem finds Yeats delving into mythological imagery through occult
methods. Yeats believed that all humans share a common, vast memory, populated by universal
archetypes and myths. This collective consciousness or Spiritus Mundi, also described as the
Oversoul by Carl Jung, is the source of the bizarre, apocalyptic imagery that leads the poem to its
conclusion. The speaker descends into a bizarre vision, observing a sphinx staring cruelly at him
in a desert, moving its thighs slowly and almost sexually, perhaps offering him the clues to
understanding what is happening around him while also embodying primal, ancient ways of
being and creative, fertile energies that represent a potential union and rebirth.

When he reemerges from the vision, the speaker reenters reality, having totally departed from it
temporarily. The poem ends where it began: in a haze of ominous foreshadowing, the specter of
a looming monster of the future rapidly approaching, the universe spinning and growing into
something different than it was. Whether that future is an evil mess of pure chaos, or whether it
will offer some sort of freedom and possibility, remains undecided. All this is, however not to
say that chaos sounds for the final phase of existence. On the contrary, it denotes but a phase of
transition, as the world is subject to constant change and history moves in a cyclic pattern.

The poem's title “The Second Coming” makes reference to the Biblical reappearance of Christ,
as prophesied in Matthew 24 and the Book of Revelation of St. John in the New Testament.
According to Christian belief, Christ will return to conquer Satan and the forces of evil, before
presiding over a thousand-year reign of peace on Earth (Brooker, 245). True to the Biblical
pattern, the speaker of the poem envisions the breakdown of the present state of the world and
the dawn of a new age. He adds, however, a sinister twist to the idea of the Second Coming,
suggesting that the return of Christ might just as well become the arrival of the Antichrist. The
title is derived from the Christian belief in the second coming of Christ. However, the new
nativity Yeats suggests is about to be born in the Second Coming is a beast, but not a beast like
that in the biblical Book of Revelation, for it will not be subdued. A new age is to be born (a
reversal of the last), the new age of destruction represented by the Sphinx-like "rough beast."

The lyric opens with a typical Yeatsian image: a falcon flying in ever-widening circles (the
pattern of a gyre), now tracing its widest circle and thus least subject to the control of the
falconer, a symbol of the breakdown of society and order. The phrase "the ceremony of
innocence" appears several times in Yeats' poetry and generally refers to the rituals and symbols
by which we live that give meaning and stability to our lives. The vision the speaker sees is an
end of an era, the Christian era that culminated in a scientific rationalism. A new era is at hand
(they come, in Yeats’s view every 2000 years). Appropriately the speaker describes the new era
as the Second Coming, a term from the Book of Revelation that refers to the return of Christ
after a time of great upheaval and disorder. But this advent is not of Christ but of an anti-Christ–
a Sphinx that presumably held sway during the twenty centuries before the birth of
Jesus. Christianity is finished, the poem says, and it will be replaced by some “pitiless” force
that slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.
The Sphinx has been sleeping for the twenty centuries of the Christian era, the era that began
with a “rocking cradle” at Bethlehem. Now that rocking cradle is the Sphinx’s and has vexed
him to nightmare. The Sphinx awakens and will replace Christ as the dominant force for the next
historical period; its pitiless and blank gaze, its roughness, its slouch suggesting the quality of the
next two thousand years, a nature completely antithetical to the values we currently hold dear.

In the first stanza the speaker describes the present state of the world. The second stanza presents
the speaker’s future vision of the Second Coming. The detailed description of the “Antichrist” in
the poem will be compared to the depiction of Christ in the Bible. In the last stanza the speaker
looks back in history, as if to back up his prophetic vision of the breakdown of the Christian era.

1 The First stanza - The present state of the world

Chaos and the laws of physics

The first stanza describes the present state of the world as one of complete confusion and
disorder creating a threatening doomsday atmosphere. The chaos is depicted as being
omnipresent and general, for the poem refrains from any concrete historical references to then
current political conflicts such as the First World War, the Russian Revolution or the War of
Independence in Yeat’s own country of Ireland (Holdeman, 64). Moreover, there is no definite
location given in the first stanza. On the contrary, the prepositional phrase “in the widening gyre”
(1) even suggests that the world has not yet arrived at the height of disaster, but that chaos
perpetually continues to spread out.

This idea is partly confirmed by the double repetition of “turning” (1) which underlines the idea
of incessant movement and constant relocation. Additionally, the verb “turning” offers a choice
between two distinct meanings here. Firstly, it denotes the movement “in a circle around a
central point” (OALD, 1397) which anticipates the notion of “centre” (3). This meaning relates
to the curved flight-path of the “falcon” (2) soaring in widening circles high over a field around
its “falconer” (2), hence delineating a “widening gyre” (1). Secondly, “turning” (1) can also be
used here in the sense of “to change direction” (OALD, 1397). This resonates with Yeat’s
conception of history as two intersecting cones, or gyres that move in opposite directions.
Wheras one gyre widens over a period of two thousand years the other narrows. The process then
reverses after another twenty centuries have passed, producing a cyclic pattern throughout time
(Brooker, 245; Cullingford, 54).

Another possible interpretation is that “gyre” is used here in the meaning of “vortex”. This again
activates the idea of a circular movement as it is by definition: a “mass of air, water etc. that
spins around very fast (OALD, 1449). Contrary to the centrifugal force that drives the rotating
objects away from the centre, the vortex, however “pulls things into its centre” (OALD, 1449).
This once again picks up the idea of oppositely directed forces, hence anticipating the opposition
between Christ and Antichrist.

A similar contrast can be detected in the relationship between the vortex and its centre, i.e. the
eye of a storm. Whereas the Vorticist, Ezra Pound considered the vortex the “point of maximum
energy” (Orchard, 7), in meteorology its centre is generally known as the location of the storm’s
least barometric pressure. “Centre” could hence be synonymous here with a lack of power
and control.

Just like, “gyre” the term “centre” is not specified in any way in the poem. In physics, the term
“centre” might refer to the central part of an atom, i.e. the nucleus which consists of positively
charged protons. The electronic repulsion between them is, however, overcome by the nuclear
binding energy which is highly attractive at the distance of typical nucleon separation. It has,
however, a limited range as it decays quickly with distance. As a result, only nuclei smaller than
a certain size can be completely stable (Loveland). As the world is much bigger than an atom,
the idea of its “centre” falling into pieces is hence not too far fetched. Again destruction and
chaos are justified as obeying to the laws of physics.

1.2 Chaos as a political system

In political terms, the “centre” could be equated with a central organ of control in a country such
as the government. This idea is picked up in the negative sense in the noun ” anarchy” as it
negates any kind of political control. Moreover, the term associates a political state of transition
more or less comparable to the political situation during wartime. It can also be said to represent
a cancellation of opposites as it allows neither for aristocracy nor democracy.

This transition from one political era to another is also indicated by the image of falconry.
Despite the tight bond that aligns “falcon” (2) and “falconer”(2) their relationship is normally
characterized by interdependence and unilateral control, comparable to the hierarchy between
master and servant, or mankind and God. One is, however, quick to note that the hierarchical
relationship between “the falcon” and his controlling master the “falconer” is impaired, as the
“falcon cannot hear the falconer.” (2). This might serve to express Yeat’s favour for feudal
society, suggesting that “social decline begins with the escape of the falcon from his handler’s
control.” (Webb, 19). This idea takes on additional force when taking into consideration that
falconry dates back to the Middle Ages and was then known as a noble sport, for the keeping of
falcons was a rather expensive pleasure (“falconry”).

The poem, in summary, prophesies that some sort of Second Coming (traditionally, this is the
return of Christ to Earth, as was promised in the New Testament) is due, and that the anarchy
that has arisen all around the world (partly because of the events of the First World War, though
the tumultuous events in Yeats’s home country of Ireland are also behind the poem) is a sign that
this Second Coming cannot be far off. (Yeats wrote ‘The Second Coming’ in 1919, and it was
published two years later in his volume Michael Robartes and the Dancer. In the run-up to the
millennium, the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Christ – traditionally, anyway – many people
began to consider the possibility of this ‘Second Coming’ more.) The ‘gyre’ metaphor Yeats
employs in the first line (denoting circular motion and repetition) is a nod to Yeats’s mystical
belief that history repeats itself in cycles. But the gyre is ‘widening’: it is getting further and
further away from its centre, its point of origin. In short, it’s losing control, and ‘the centre
cannot hold’.

But what sort of Second Coming will it be? It’s almost been ‘twenty centuries’, or 2,000 years,
since Christ came to Earth in human form and was crucified; what ‘rough beast’ will reveal itself
this time? Perhaps it will not be a Christ in human form, but something altogether different. The
reference to Spiritus Mundi, literally ‘spirit of the world’, is, like the ‘gyre’, another allusion to
Yeats’s beliefs: for Yeats, the Spiritus Mundi was a sort of collective soul containing all of
mankind’s cultural memories – not just Christian memories, but those from other societies. ‘A
shape with lion body and the head of a man, / A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun’ suggests
something altogether different from Jesus Christ – it’s got more in common with the Sphinx, that
giant stone sculpture of a human-cat hybrid found near the Pyramids at Giza (Yeats’s word
‘gaze’ even faintly suggests ‘Giza’), which belongs to a different civilisation from the Christian
one, and indeed predated it. Similarly, the other famous sphinx, the one that posed a riddle about
mankind to Oedipus, belongs to yet another religious and cultural tradition: the ancient Greeks.
The effect of this is to decentre Christianity from its apparently secure place in western
civilisation, and to question what form a ‘Second Coming’, if it occurs, might take. Perhaps other
civilisations, after all, have been waiting for their deities to return.

The famous lines in the first stanza of the poem describe a time of chaos:

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.

‘Things fall apart’ was used by Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe as the title of his 1958
novel Things Fall Apart – tellingly, about the chaos that empire had created on the African
continent. Although these events – African countries gaining their independence from European
imperial powers – were quite a way off when Yeats wrote the poem, they are nevertheless
relevant. Note how Yeats’s words in the above passage suggest the chaotic nature of world
events and the disaster this spells: loosed and world suggests this worldwide anarchy, only for
the two words to become joined in that doom-laden word, worst, a few lines later. Worldwide
chaos is the worst thing that could happen right now, and is bleakly ominous.

Indeed, although the poem is unrhymed, like many poems written around this time – such
as poems of the First World War by Wilfred Owen and others – it utilises other techniques that
stand in for traditional rhyme: pararhyme (hold/world, man/sun), repetition (at hand/at hand),
and what we might call semantic rhyme (sleep/cradle). These are worth analysing and pondering
on in more detail. And then we have the wordplay:

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 word order in that final line, with the verb ‘Reel’ being placed before the noun, summons up
the spectre of a homophone, ‘Real’ – but shadows are not real, so this is an illusion, a desert
mirage.

Many of Yeats’s most celebrated poems end with a question: ‘How can we know the dancer
from the dance?’ (‘Among School Children’); ‘Did she put on his knowledge with his power /
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?’ (‘Leda and the Swan’). ‘The Second Coming’ is
another such poem. It’s elusive and ambiguous, defying any straightforward analysis. Partly this
is what makes it so compelling: it is a poem that asks questions, rather than providing answers.
We haven’t tried to offer any easy answers here, but merely drawn attention to some details of
the poem which are of interest.

Themes
Civilization, Chaos, and Control

“The Second Coming” presents a nightmarish apocalyptic scenario, as the speaker

describes human beings’ increasing loss of control and tendency towards violence and
anarchy. Surreal images fly at the reader thick and fast, creating an unsettling atmosphere
that suggests a world on the brink of destruction.
Yet for all its metaphorical complexity, “The Second Coming” actually has a relatively
simple message: it basically predicts that time is up for humanity, and that civilization as
we know it is about to be undone. Yeats wrote this poem right after World War I, a global
catastrophe that killed millions of people. Perhaps it’s unsurprising, then, that the poem
paints a bleak picture of humanity, suggesting that civilization’s sense of progress and
order is only an illusion.
With the above in mind, the first stanza’s challenging imagery starts to make more sense.
The “falconer,” representing humanity’s attempt to control its world, has lost its “falcon”
in the turning “gyre” (the gyre is an image Yeats uses to symbolize grand, sweeping
historical movements as a kind of spiral). These first lines could also suggest how the
modern world has distanced people from nature (represented here by the falcon). In any
case, it’s clear that whatever connection once linked the metaphorical falcon and falconer
has broken, and now the human world is spiraling into chaos.
Indeed, the poem suggests that though humanity might have looked like it was making
progress over the past “twenty centuries”—via seemingly ever-increasing knowledge and
scientific developments, for example—the First World War proved people to be as
capable of self-destruction as ever. “Anarchy” was “loosed upon the world,” along with
tides of blood (which clearly evoke the mass death of war). “Innocence” was just a
“ceremony,” now “drowned.” The “best” people lack “conviction,” which suggests
they're not bothering to do anything about this nightmarish reality, while the “worst”
people seem excited and eager for destruction. The current state of the world, according
to the speaker, proves that the "centre"—that is, the foundation of society—was never
very strong.
In other words, humanity’s supposed arc of progress has been an illusion. Whether the
poem means that humanity has lost its way or never knew it to begin with is unclear, but
either way the promises of modern society—of safety, security, and human dignity—
have proven empty. And in their place, a horrific creature has emerged—a grotesque
perversion of the “Second Coming” promised by Christianity, during which Jesus Christ
is supposed to return to the earth and invite true believers to heaven. This Second Coming
is clearly not Jesus, but instead a “rough beast” that humanity itself has woken up
(perhaps, the first stanza implies, by the incessant noise of its many wars). With this final
image of the beast, the poem indicates that while humanity seemed to get more civilized
in the 2,000 years that followed Christ's birth, in reality people have been sowing the
seeds of their own destruction all along. This “rough beast” is now “pitilessly” slouching
toward the birthplace of Jesus—likely in order to usher in a new age of “darkness” and
“nightmare.”

Morality and Christianity

“The Second Coming” offers an unsettling take on Christian morality, suggesting that it
is not the stable and reliable force that people believe it to be. The poem clearly alludes to
the biblical Book of Revelation from the start, in which, put simply, Jesus returns to Earth
to save the worthy. According to the Bible, this is meant to happen when humanity
reaches the end times: an era of complete war, famine, destruction and hatred. The poem
suggests that the end times are already happening, because humanity has lost all sense of
morality—and perhaps that this morality was only an illusion to begin with.
In the first stanza, the speaker describes the chaos, confusion, and moral weakness that
have caused “things” to “fall apart.” In the second, the poem makes it clear that it’s a
specifically Christian morality that is being undone. In describing this wide-ranging
destruction, the poem asks whether Christian morality was built on weak foundations in
the first place—that is, perhaps humanity was never really moral, but just pretended to
be.
The first stanza's imagery develops this sense of morality being turned upside down:
good and evil (the "best" and "worst") are no longer the reliable categories that they once
were, replaced by “mere anarchy” (“mere” means something like “pure” here). Humanity
has drenched itself in blood—the “blood-dimmed tide”—suggesting that morality was
only ever a “ceremony,” a performance that conjured the illusion that humankind was
"innocent."
What's more, the poem suggests that no one—not even Jesus—can remedy this bleak
reality. The biblical Book of Revelation predicts a kind of final reckoning in which
people essentially get what they deserve based on their moral behavior and religious
virtues; it indicates that Jesus will come to save those who are worthy of being saved. But
“The Second Coming” offers no such comfort.
Instead, in the first line of the second stanza the poem hints that a moment of divine
intervention must be at hand after the chaos of the first stanza ("surely some revelation is
at hand"). And, as it turns out, "some revelation" is at hand. But rather than returning the
world to peace, this new revelation makes things worse: a new and grotesque beast heads
toward Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, to be brought into the world. If Jesus was the
figurehead for a moral movement, this new beastly leader is the figurehead of a new
world of “anarchy,” in which the “best” people (likely the most moral people) lack the
courage of their convictions and the “worst” are allowed to thrive. In other words, the
poem portrays Christian morality and prophecy as weak, or even proven false, in the face
of the violence and destruction that humans have created.
The “blank gaze” of this new creature provides further evidence of just how hopeless the
situation is. This being might have the head of a “man,” but it doesn’t have moral sense—
instead, it is “pitiless.” It is arriving to preside over “blood-dimmed tide[s]” and
“drowned’ “innocence”—not a world of kindness, charity, and justice. Its sphinx-like
appearance is also deliberately at odds with Christian imagery, which further suggests a
break with Christian morality. Meanwhile, the “Spiritus Mundi” mentioned by the poem
is what Yeats thought of as the world’s collective unconscious, from which the poet
could draw insight. This vision of the beast, then, is suggestive of a worldwide shift into
“anarchy,” as the collective mind of humanity lets go of morality. This is a bleak vision
of the future of humankind, one which presents morality as a kind of collective dream
that is now turning into a nightmare.
Analysis of Literary Devices in “The Second Coming”

Literary devices are tools the writers use to convey emotions, ideas, and beliefs. Yeats has also
employed some literary devices in this poem to prophesize the future of the world. The analysis
of some of the literary devices used in this poem has been stated below.

1. Metaphor: There are several metaphors used in this poem such as, “the Falcon” and “the
falconer,” which stands for the world and the controlling force that directs humanity.
Similarly, “the blood-dimmed tide” stands for waves of violence, while “the rough beast”
stands for “the Second Coming.”
2. Allusion: Allusion is an indirect reference to a person, place, thing or idea of a historical,
cultural political or literary significance in a literary piece. The use of illusion in the
fourth line of the second stanza is “the spiritus” It is an illusion to the
Latin phrase meaning the world’s soul. “The Second Coming” is also a biblical allusion
to the return of Christ.
3. Symbolism: Symbolism is using symbols to signify ideas and qualities, giving them
symbolic meanings that are different from the literal meanings. Yeats has used multiple
symbols such as, “falcon” as the symbol of the world, “desert birds” are the symbols of
approaching death and “the Second Coming” symbolizes the indifference.
4. Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of same vowel sounds in the same line such as
the sound of /i/ in “Turning and turning in the widening gyre” and /e/ sound in “The
ceremony of innocence is drowned.
5. Imagery: Imagery means the use of images of the five senses intended to make the
readers understand the writer’s feelings and emotions. Yeats has used imagery to present
the vivid and clear picture of the ominous beast such as, “A shape with lion body and the
head of a man”, “somewhere in sands of the desert” and “Is moving its slow thighs.”

The literary analysis shows that Yeats has skillfully used some literary devices to discuss the
reason why the world is going astray. The effective use of these devices and clarity
of subject matter have made the poem thoughtful for the readers.

The use of symbols

It is obvious that Yeats’ language is very symbolic i.e. he portrays what he wants to say
indirectly. The ‘gyre’ symbolizes the collapse of the authority and society as well. Another
crucial symbol is the falcon and the falconer one. The ‘falcon’ represents the people, the society
or the age. However, the ‘falconer’ represents the core of the moral sense, which binds people.
The ‘sphinx’ in the second stanza represents punishment of humans who leave their religion and
back to God just in their hopeless case. ‘Blood-dimmed tide’ is a symbol for war that is WWI.
The last symbol is ‘the rocking cradle’ that is a symbol of the cradle of Christ at the nativity.
Imagery: The last element in the semantic level is imagery. Imagery is amazingly applied in the
poem. The opening of the ‘widening gyre’ brings forth the idea that a vortex of some type, a
black hole has descended upon humanity. This lack of clarity and uncertainty is why the
normally reliable ‘falcon cannot hear the falcon’. The idea of the center being unable to hold a
‘things fall apart’ is another symbolic image, which brings the idea that the political and moral
structure that guided people has been broken. Finally, the image of the beast that symbolizes the
evil or antichrist is very vivid.

The Gyre
The gyre, a circular or conical shape, appears frequently in Yeats’s poems and was developed as
part of the philosophical system outlined in his book A Vision. At first, Yeats used the phases of
the moon to articulate his belief that history was structured in terms of ages, but he later settled
upon the gyre as a more useful model. He chose the image of interlocking gyres—visually
represented as two intersecting conical spirals—to symbolize his philosophical belief that all
things could be described in terms of cycles and patterns. The soul (or the civilization, the age,
and so on) would move from the smallest point of the spiral to the largest before moving along to
the other gyre. Although this is a difficult concept to grasp abstractly, the image makes sense
when applied to the waxing and waning of a particular historical age or the evolution of a human
life from youth to adulthood to old age. The symbol of the interlocking gyres reveals Yeats’s
belief in fate and historical determinism as well as his spiritual attitudes toward the development
of the soul, since creatures and events must evolve according to the conical shape. With the
image of the gyre, Yeats created a shorthand reference in his poetry that stood for his entire
philosophy of history and spirituality.

The Beast
Yeats employs the figure of a great beast—a horrific, violent animal—to embody difficult
abstract concepts. The great beast as a symbol comes from Christian iconography, in which it
represents evil and darkness. In “The Second Coming,” the great beast emerges from the Spiritus
Mundi, or soul of the universe, to function as the primary image of destruction in the poem.
Yeats describes the onset of apocalyptic events in which the “blood-dimmed tide is loosed” and
the “ceremony of innocence is drowned” as the world enters a new age and falls apart as a result
of the widening of the historical gyres. The speaker predicts the arrival of the Second Coming,
and this prediction summons a “vast image” of a frightening monster pulled from the collective
consciousness of the world. Yeats modifies the well-known image of the sphinx to embody the
poem’s vision of the climactic coming. By rendering the terrifying prospect of disruption and
change into an easily imagined horrifying monster, Yeats makes an abstract fear become tangible
and real. The great beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born, where it will evolve into a
second Christ (or anti-Christ) figure for the dark new age. In this way, Yeats uses distinct,
concrete imagery to symbolize complex ideas about the state of the modern world.