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- Summary
- Structure and Form
- Analysis, Stanza by Stanza
- Historical Background
‘The Second Coming’ was William Butler Yeats’ ode to the era. Rife with Christian imagery, and pulling much inspiration from apocalyptic writing, Yeats’ ‘The Second Coming’tries to put into words what countless people of the time felt: that it was the end of the world as they knew it and that nothing else would ever be the same again. The First Wor...
‘The Second Coming‘ is composed of two stanzas, with the first stanza containing eight lines and the second, fourteen. While this might suggest a resemblance to a sonnet, the poem resists traditional forms. The irregular stanza structure mirrors the thematic breakdown of order in the world that Yeats describes. The poem transitions from an objectiv...
Stanza One
Much has been written on the apocalypse, and many of those writings focus on the harbingers of the event: it is always bloody and massive, a vicious explosion that shakes the world to its foundation. In Yeats’ poem, the apocalypse is a much quieter, more understated, affair. It opens up with the disturbance of nature. Falcons were used as hunting animals since the medieval era. They are incredibly smart, and dedicated to their trainers, responding immediately to any noise that their handler m...
Stanza Two
In the second stanza, the Biblical imagery takes over the visions of corrupted nature. From the start, Yeats ties his poem to religion by stating ‘the Second Coming is at hand’, and conjuring up a picture of a creature with a lion’s body and a man’s head, much like the sphynx, and a gaze as ‘blank and pitiless as the sun’. By comparing it to the very nature that Yeats spoke about in the first part of the poem, he brings out the almost infallible quality of this beast: like nature, it feels no...
W.B. Yeats was an Irish poet born on the 13th of June, 1865. He is considered a largely 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 was to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for his poetry, as the first Irishman. This was shortly after Ireland had finally g...
- Female
- Poetry Analyst
Matthew 24, (with parallels in Luke 21 and Mark 13) refers to wars, earthquakes, famines, upheavals in nature, and other such crises accompanying the time of the end. Jesus tells the disciples that they will be delivered up to tribulation, hated and even killed for His sake (verse 9).
In 2009, David A. Ross identified "The Second Coming" as "one of the most famous poems in the English language," [7] echoing Harold Bloom who, in 1986, cited the piece as "one of the most universally admired poems of our century."
The Second Times of Troubles (2011) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more.
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The Second Coming. By William Butler Yeats. 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;
