Permalink
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?
The first stanza doesn’t seem to have a definite location. It refers to medieval falconing, so we can imagine a guy calling to a bird in some forest or meadow, trying to catch some deer or rabbits to bring back his lord. There’s also a description of violence that is vaguely reminiscent of the Biblical flood. But, from the perspective of Yeats the setting is post-WWI Europe. Thus, he’s taking an overview of the devastation wrecked on the continent.
In the second stanza, the setting abruptly shifts to Spiritus Mundi, as the speaker has a vision of a desert with a sphinx-like creature and some birds. It’s all very cloudy, which is interesting because he is essentially looking at a hazy dream or memory. In line 18, “the darkness drops again,” but we get one more image of the beast “slouching towards Bethlehem.” This might be described as an echoing “after-shock” of the Spiritus Mundi vision. All in all, Yeats bounces around in various mental locations without really landing anywhere specific. Which is probably a good thing, because something seems wrong within this world.
The speaker of this poem is capable of seeing things that no one else can see. He is a poet-prophet of sorts. While Europe was trying to rebuild itself after WWI had ended, Yeats is saying, “Wait a minute, not so fast. We need to look at what kind of world we’ve left ourselves with, and what it might mean for the future.” The speaker of the poem is deeply pessimistic and also not afraid to use religious imagery, although he puts his own, weird spin on it. He can be thought of as trying to repeat the achievement of the Book of Revelation, which has all kinds of amazing, memorable symbols but is also vague and wild enough that no one could say what exactly it is supposed to mean.(which follows to what the poem is doing).
In the first stanza the speaker uses a bunch of metaphors to evaluate the present state of the world, and in the second he has a profound vision, followed by “darkness” and a rhetorical question, which amounts to a prophecy regarding the Second Coming. The first person appears only twice in the poem(lines 13 and 18), but the prophetic voice feels very distinct and personal throughout. He presents himself as a moral authority and feels comfortable making general pronouncements about the state of things, such as “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
The Second Coming” is written in blank verse, which means that has a consistent meter but no rhyme scheme. With 22 lines divided into two stanzas, it does not appear to follow a particular formal tradition. However, notice that the second stanza has fourteen lines, making it the same length as a sonnet. At eight lines, the first stanza could be thought of as a fragment of a sonnet that is “interrupted” by the full sonnet of the second stanza. However, these aren’t “true” sonnets in the classic sense because they don’t rhyme.
The meter is roughly iambic pentameter. Yeats’s use of this meter is not as regular as Shakespeare’s. We know this right off the bat because the very first syllable has a stress on it: “Turn-ing.” Also, some lines have well over ten syllables, such as line thirteen, which has thirteen syllables(which is probably something purposeful because Yeats often uses hidden messages). However, most of the lines in the poem do have around ten syllables. As far as form and meter in Yeats’s other poetry goes, “The Second Coming” is fairly typical, but he didn’t have many rhymes in this poem and instead traded them out for alliteration.
There are many symbols in Yeats’ poems. It was a hobby of his to hide as many symbols as he though was possible in his works and many people who study Yeats say there are probably many more to be found. With that said:
In line 1 there is the “gyre”. Which is an important recurring symbol in Yeats’s poetry. Technically, it stands from the alternation between two historical cycles: one characterized by order and growth, the other by chaos and decay. It’s comparable to the Chinese concepts of Yin and Yang. Yeats wrote a poem called “The Gyres” in his collection The Tower, but even there it’s still a pretty confusing concept.
In lines 12-17 the lines themselves are an example of symbolism, and they contain several symbols that cannot 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. Therefore they do not really explain themselves but are expressed solely as an entity.
In this poem specifically Yeats had many examples of biblical symbolism. There are many but the important points to mention are in:
In lines 4-6 Yeats’s image being 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.
In 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 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.
In line 19 you have the comparison of words like stony sleep which parable to the idea of the second coming of Christ as an awakening, but this is a small point to note. And lastly in line 22 you have the obvious idea of a Christ(who differs from the original idea to show the corruption of traditional values)going back to his birthplace to allude to the original birth of Jesus.
The major themes of this poem are those of good and evil, a differing version of reality, fragmentation of history, and finally warfare. When Christ is said to return he is supposed to engage in a campaign, called The Battle of Armageddon, against the forces of evil. Yeats uses this to allude to the war that happened in Europe.
In the English class I am taking I was required to give a speech on Friday. This was the speech I memorized and preformed. You can see with the way I write and the difference with the way I talk with this speech that I have a mask on. I find it weird that people do not notice this.
