William Butler Yeats poem, The Second Coming, has several references to Christianity. The title of the poem refers to the prediction of the second coming of Christ in the New Testament of the Bible. Looking at the first line of the poem, “Turing and turning in the widening gyre” (Greenblatt p.227), the word gyre is referring to a spiraling motion (The Free Dictionary). The spiraling motion is Yeats envision of a spiraling end to the Christian age. In describing the word gyre, Yeats note says, “the end of an age, which always receives the revelation of the character of the next age, is represented by the coming of one gyre to its place of greatest expansion of the other to that of its greatest contraction” (Greenblatt p.227). The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of World War I. I believe that the end of World War I is the “end of an age” Yeats is referring to in his note. Yeats is persistent in lines nine and ten; “Surely some revelation is at hand; / Surely the Second Coming is at hand” (Greenblatt p.227). These two lines are talking about the onset of the greatest expansion of the next age. The Second Coming is also said to be Christ’s second coming but, it is to be proceeded by the Antichrist; “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” (Greenblatt p.227). The “rough beast” can also be thought to be the antichrist. In the birth place of Jesus, Bethlehem, the rough beast makes its way to be born. To describe the beast’s movement to Bethlehem, Yeats uses the word ‘slouches’, which reminds me of hunched shoulders or bringing them down. If we think of slouched as bringing down, then it makes me believe that the beast will be bringing down destruction on its way to Bethlehem. It also seems that the beast will be a terror in its cradle days because Yeats describes the beast to be a “nightmare by a rocking cradle”. The Second Coming sounds like it is a new hope after World War I but with the mention of the beast that follows the Second Coming, it is foreshadowing that an evil will be born in the midst of the Second Coming.
Work Cited:
Greenblatt, Stephen, and Catherine Robson. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 10th ed., E, W.W. Norton, 2018.
“Gyre.” The Free Dictionary, Farlex, www.thefreedictionary.com/gyre.