“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The Falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”
A frightening image of a falcon and a falconer arising into the heavens were the falcon is unable to sense the falconer.
“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned”
I believe when Yeats describes the ceremony of innocence being drowned he is referring to Herods massacre of the innocent children at the time of Jesus’ birth. Yeats makes another reference to the birth of Jesus at the end of the poem when he says –
“And what rough beast, its hour come around at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”
Linking ‘The Second Coming’ to possibly and end of an era and a second coming of another. Through this Yeats uses biblical collusion within the poem.
‘The Second Coming’ Is rich in allusions. Yeats refers to the ‘Sphinx’ (an iconic image of a recumbent lion with a human head) –
“Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with a lion body and the head of a man”. Yeats refers to the Sphinx of almost coming to life –
“Is moving its slow thighs,
While all about it reel shadows of the indigent desert birds”
Again a reference to birds and the movement of birds, possibly the Gyre as he quotes it ‘reels’.
The theory of Yeats Gyre centres on a diagram made of two conical spirals, one in side the other, so that the widest part of one of the spirals rings around the narrowest part of the other spiral and vice versa. Yeats believed that this image captured the contrary motions within the historical process, and he divided each Gyre into specific regions that represent particular kinds of historical periods. Yeats believed the Gyre could also represent the psychological phases of an individuals development; he had the idea that it was almost like a spiral staircase, in a way that as you moved up the spiral staircase you were able to look down and see the path but not look up. In terms of these Gyres, Yeats believed that the world was on the threshold of an apocalyptic revelation, as history reached the end of the outer Gyre and began moving along the inner Gyre.
I believe it is unusual of Yeats to write in free verse. It is unlike in all other poems that I have read were he tends to use regular rhythms and rhyme schemes, taking ‘September 1913’ and ‘Easter 1916’ as an example. However in ‘The Second Coming’ there are only coincide; rhymes such as ‘man’ and ‘sun’.
The only typical link I can see between Yeats other poems and ‘The Second Coming’ is when he says in ‘Easter 1916’ that “A terrible beauty is born” whilst in ‘The Second Coming’, this terrible beauty may be the rise of the Sphinx and the ‘rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem’.
I found ‘The Second Coming’ in my opinion obscure and difficult to understand. I find it obscure because I don’t see what it all should signify to me as a reader of ‘The Second Coming’.
The first stanza describing the conditions present in the world, the second summarising from those conditions that a monstrous second coming is about to take place, a ‘rough beast’ and the Sphinx rousing itself in the desert; lumbering toward Bethlehem to where Jesus was born. What connection does this have with belief in the return of to fulfill the rest of the ?
However, my opinion is only one of many who have read the poem and I acknowledge that some people whom have read it can paraphrase its meaning to satisfaction. After researching Yeats' poem I have found out that it has inspired many other works including - 's song "Slouching toward Bethlehem", 's novel and 's novel . I was unable to find a quote by a critic in relation to ‘The Second Coming.
I believe the aesthetic experience of its passionate language in the coming may be powerful enough to ensure its value and its importance in Yeats’s work, and some may thrive the idea of the complex Gyre, whilst others including me – may not!
