The Second Coming

“The Second Coming” is a 1919 poem by W. B. Yeats that portrays historical crisis through images of a widening spiral, a collapsing order, and an ominous new birth.

Gyre: A spiral form that Yeats used to model the rise and decline of historical eras. The poem’s widening gyre makes its opening image a figure for history losing coherence.
A Vision: W. B. Yeats’s esoteric book presenting a symbolic system of historical cycles and personality types. Its gyres provide the theory behind the poem’s image of a new historical era.
Maud Gonne: An Irish revolutionary, actress, and political activist who was a lifelong friend of W. B. Yeats. Yeats’s devotion to Gonne shaped his politics and the emotional background to several poems.
Christian eschatology: Theology concerning the final events of history, including Christ’s return, judgment, and the fulfillment of God’s kingdom. Yeats’s arriving beast overturns the Christian promise of a savior’s return.
Anarchy: A condition in which established authority and social order have broken down. “Mere anarchy” names the social collapse that the poem’s opening stanza depicts.
W. B. Yeats: An Irish poet and playwright whose work helped shape modern literature. Yeats wrote the poem and supplied its prophetic voice and historical symbolism.
George Yeats: W. B. Yeats’s wife, a writer, and a practitioner of automatic writing. Her séances and automatic writing helped generate the symbolic system behind the poem.
The Waste Land: A 1922 poem by T. S. Eliot depicting cultural desolation through fragmented voices and literary allusions. Eliot’s fractured poem shares Yeats’s sense of crisis but does not culminate in a single prophetic monster.
Falconry: The practice of training birds of prey to hunt under human direction. The falcon’s inability to hear its handler gives the poem its image of severed control.
First World War: A global war fought from 1914 to 1918, involving the major powers of Europe and their allies. The war’s destruction forms part of the crisis that gives the poem’s vision its force.

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