An Analysis of Yeats The Second Coming Essay -- Yeats Second Coming E

An Analysis of Yeats The minute ComingYeats poem The Second Coming, written in 1919 and published in 1921 in his collection of poems Michael Robartes and the Dancer, taps into the concept of the gyre and depicts the approach of a new world order. The gyre is one of Yeats favorite motifs, the idea that history occurs in cycles, specifically cycles twenty centuries in length (Yeats, The Second Coming ln. 19). In this poem, Yeats predicts that the Christian era will soon give way apocalyptically to an era ruled by a godlike desert beast with the body of a lion and the head of a man (ln. 14). Critics have argued about the exact meaning of this image, hardly a close reading of the poem, combined with some simple genetic work, shows that Yeats saw the new order as a reign of terror stalk by war. The Second Coming, in its entirety, is an astounding encapsulation of Yeats idea of the gyre and his fears about the future of mankind it is expertly woven with threads of prophetic literary th eatrical role and impressive poetic techniques.To begin, the gyre, a spiral or repeated circling motion, is a symbol and a concept that Yeats used repeatedly in his poetry and prose, and the poetics of The Second Coming illustrate the idea of the gyre. The repeated words in the poem enforce the idea of spiral images (Drake 131) words and phrases, such as surely and is at hand in lines 9 and 10, turning in line 1, is loosed in lines 4 and 5, and the very title, Second Coming in lines 10 and 11, are repeated, creating an imitative effect suggesting the repetitive movement of the gyre (Bornstein 203). Similarly, repetitious or paired images give the same effect, as Yeats seems to cycle through his falcon (The Second Coming... ...tins, 1966. Drake, Nicholas. The poem of W. B. Yeats. London Penguin, 1991. Ellmann, Richard. The Identity of Yeats. New York Oxford, 1954. ---. Yeats the Man and the Masks. New York Macmillan, 1948. Jeffares, A. Norman. A Commentary on the Collected Poems o f W. B. Yeats. Stanford Stanford U., 1968. ---. W. B. Yeats. New York Humanities, 1971. Purdy, Dwight H. Biblical Echo and Allusion in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats Poetics and the cunning of God. Lewisburg Bucknell U., 1994. Stock, A. G. W. B. Yeats His Poetry and Thought. London Cambridge, 1961. Yeats, William Butler. Michael Robartes and the Dancer Manuscript Materials. Eds. Thomas Parkinson and Anne Brannen. Ithaca Cornell, 1994. ---. The Second Coming. Norton Anthology of English Literature. Eds. M. H. Abrams, et al. 6th ed. Vol. 2. New York Norton, 1993. 1880-81.