The Second Coming (p.1122)

In the poem, The Second Coming, Yeats presents a very graphic scene of the end of the world.  In the first stanza he describes the conditions of the world around him. Since Yeats wrote this poem shortly after World War I, he was describing how post war England looked and felt to him. Yeats writes “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 creation circles farther away from the creator.  The growing independence leads to an increasingly distant relationship and that lack of control over the bird allows it to stray.   

England after the war was in such bad shape that it felt as though the end of the world, for them at least, was near. Yeats must have felt as though the growing independence of the people allowed its relationship with God to weaken.  That weakening relationship was what Yeats identified as the “centre” that could not hold and would eventually collapse as anarchy broke the societal controls.  That weakening relationship between man and God and between citizens and the formerly controlling institutions in Britain allowed people to grow numb in their response to increasing sin.  The balance of independence and one’s ability to be self-conscious enough to be convicted by their sin is delicate.  The moral compass of the people malfunctioned as they circled away, ever higher, and more distant from their creator. The Bible presents events where similar conditions were present.  In Genesis, Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed after the sin of the people became overwhelming.  Fire burned the unrighteous because they became blind to their own sin.  The Great Flood that was survived only by Noah and a few of his family was a second event that demonstrated the same response by God to the overwhelming and omnipresent sin of the people.  In the final days the Bible promises the righteous people will be raptured and will leave the unsaved to inhabit the Earth.  Evil will be the standard and the remaining people will not be convicted in their sin.  Finally, the sky will open and the people will see Jesus coming on the clouds with legions of angels to do battle with the forces of evil.  Armageddon will be the final destruction of evil.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.” (lines 7&8)  The Apostle Paul also described how man commits sin with passion and is not able to detect his own condition.  If he resists the saving grace offered freely to him and continues to revel in his sin, he will be given over to his sin and abandoned.

In the second stanza he describes the “revelation [that] is at hand” (line 9). As soon as Yeats begins to describe the Second Coming a sphinx-like creature appears. “ A shape with the lion body and the head of a man,/  A gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun.” (lines 14&15) Yeats believes that the sphinx is there to bring the end of the world.  Yeats’ reference to a beast is not unlike references to a beast in the Bible’s books of Daniel and Revelation.  Yeats believed the end was inevitable and that is also what the Bible describes.  Yeats’ belief that some revelation was at hand is indicative of how badly he thought society in post-war England had become. 

I think it is common today for people to comment on how bad our society has become.  Surely some revelation is at hand and the second coming of Christ could be due.  I don’t know when it will be and no one can claim to know but if the falcon could somehow return closer to the falconer, maybe the falconer’s words could be heard and his instructions heeded.