√√ The Second Coming | William Butler Yeats | Critical Studies | English

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Concepts:
• The Sphinx of Greek Myth.
• The Second Coming of Christ.
• Philosophy of A Vision.

Themes:
• Despair about Modernism.
• Order vs Chaos.

Techniques:
• The poem is divided into two stanzas and with the odd rhyme, but far more resembling free-verse Modern voice than the other poems.
• Interestingly, to describe this scene of chaos he uses first person, as though he is an eyewitness.
• Apocalyptic imagery
e.g. “The blood-red tide is dimmed” and the metaphor “The ceremony of innocence is drowned” are biblical allusions to Noah’s flood which drowned the wicked.
The diction “revelation” and “Second Coming” is also biblical.
• Imagery of broken or collapsing gyres also alludes to Yeats’ own book A Vision and his idea that the modern age is uncivilised and chaotic e.g. “The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”
• Yeats contrasts the civilised past, the Christian age, with the biblical story of the Second Coming of Christ, which represents the modern age. However it is not Christ he imagines reborn, but the sphinx, which symbolises mythology, riddles and other unanswerable questions.
• The metaphorical birth of the sphinx or Spiritus Mundi, the spirit of the earth “its hour come round at last / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born” is not auspicious, shown in the diction “slouches”.
• This birth marks the beginning of a new age, just as Leda’s giving birth to Helen did. The final rhetorical question shows Yeats’ fears about the spiritual bankruptcy this new age will bring.

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