William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist. Born in Dublin, Yeats was always fascinated with Irish legends and symbols and would eventually become very involved in the Irish Renaissance or Celtic Revival. His interest in symbols shaped much of his career, using allusive imagery and symbolic structures frequently. Another influence on much of his work was his proposal that was turned down by Maud Gonne in 1891. He tragically had a one sided love affair with her his entire life.
In this blog, I will be exploring Yeats’ The Second Coming, which is a perfect example of his writing style in that it is filled with imagery, allusions, and symbols. We see an allusion in the very first line, “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer” (p. 1122); one usually associates this description of a falcon circling around with death. This poem was written a year after WWI had ended, which had left Europe in ruin and which Yeats describes as “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” (p. 1122). Given the fact that many Europeans thought that WWI would be the war to end all wars, there was no real resolution brought about by the war, but it simply left the continent in utter devastation. At the end of the first stanza, Yeats states, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity” (p 1122). I think Yeats is trying to describe the effect the war had on individual soldiers. Many soldiers were “shell shocked” and had psychological and emotional issues the rest of their lives. War changes people and you learn how to survive even if it means doing ugly and horrid things. Even people that were good and noble by nature lacked all conviction by the end of the war and those that began the war not good only had their temperament intensified. It was a dirty war that left people and countries in turmoil.
In the second stanza, the title of the poem, The Second Coming, is further explored through various images and allusions. This idea of the second coming is certainly hinting to the Christian belief of the return of Christ to earth on Judgment Day. However, I do not think that Yeats is trying to describe Christ’s return, but using much of the imagery in the book of Revelation to describe the chaos throughout Europe in the early 1900’s. Upon Christ’s return, we don’t know what exactly is going to happen to any of us and I think that the period during and around WWI was very similar in that nothing was really resolved and people were in a lot of distress. Similar to the book of Revelation when John describes four living beings including one looking like a lion, a second like an ox, a third with a human face, and the fourth like an eagle each of which had six wings and eyes covered their entire beings, Yeats describes, “A shape with a lion body and the head of a man” (p. 1122). He ends the stanza with a description that eludes to Christ; “That twenty centuries of stony sleep/ Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,/ And what rough beast, its hour came round at last,/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” (p. 1123). The twenty centuries is describing the 2000 years since Jesus was born and placed in a cradle in Bethlehem and since then the nightmare of sin that has been bestowed upon the world. However, in line 21, a beast is described whose hour is come round at last, which eludes to the possibility of a Judgment day. Again, I think most people don’t associate this poem with Yeats’ belief of the actual second coming, but the similarity between the idea of the unknown future for people on that day and the way many people felt unsure of their future after WWI.