Summary of the poem “The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats
"The Second Coming" is one of the most famous and frequently quoted poems in the Western literature. Obviously, the title refers to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to Earth at the Last Judgment.
In the first stanza, Yeats describes the anarchy and disorder in the world. Chaos rules everywhere, there are no settled rules or laws: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
He makes a reference to a Baptist cleansing ritual: “The ceremony of innocence is drowned”. The ritual purifies a person, who is welcomed to church. To the contrary, in this poem the ceremony drowns and kills the innocent. The worst people are full of power, but good people remain silent.
Yeats tries to reveal the true nature of the Second Coming. He names a monster, called the Spiritus Mundi. The author describes it as a shape with lion body and the head of a man (Yeats 1). When the lion part of it represents a ruthless predator, but a lion kills only for survival. However, the man part shows that it has a consciousness and is aware of its actions. Therefore, the Spiritus Mundi perfectly knows that it kills. Also, the creature has no emotions: “A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun” (Yeats 1).
The main point of the poem is that people hope to be saved, but there is no salvation. There is only darkness, and the hour of rough beast comes at last. It slouches towards the Bethlehem, where the religion was born, to prepare the world for something worse.
Works cited
Yeats, William Butler. “The Second Coming”, US: Cuala Press. 1921.
