Dr.

Arjun Choudhuri

Department of English

Gurucharan University

Silchar, Assam.

An Introduction to Modern English Poetry (W. B.

Yeats’ The Second Coming)
Modern English poetry, which flourished from the late 19th century through the mid-20th
century, represents a radical break from the certainties and formal constraints of its Victorian
predecessors. It was born from a world in profound flux, rocked by industrialization, scientific
advancements that challenged religious dogma (Darwin, Freud, Einstein), and the
unprecedented carnage of World War I. This tumultuous environment bred a generation of
poets who felt that the old ways of writing—the romantic lyricism, moral didacticism, and
narrative clarity of poets like Tennyson and Browning—were no longer adequate to capture the
fractured, anxious, and disillusioned reality of the modern age.

The cornerstone of Modernism was a "crisis of representation." Poets and artists no longer
believed that language could transparently reflect the world. Instead, they saw it as a subjective
and often inadequate tool. This led to a profound shift in poetic technique. Key characteristics of
the movement include:

● Fragmentation and Discontinuity: Modernist poems often reject linear narratives in

favor of collage-like structures, juxtaposing disparate images, voices, and allusions. T.S.
Eliot's The Waste Land is the quintessential example of this technique.

● Psychological Depth: Influenced by the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and

Carl Jung, poets turned inward, exploring the complex, often irrational, landscape of the
human mind and the subconscious. This resulted in a poetry that was more personal,
introspective, and sometimes intentionally obscure.

● Experimentation with Form: Modernists broke free from traditional meter and rhyme
schemes, championing vers libre (free verse) to create new rhythms that better reflected
the cadences of modern speech and thought. The Imagist movement, spearheaded by
Ezra Pound, championed precision, economy of language, and the direct treatment of the
"thing" itself.

● Use of Myth and Allusion: In a world where shared cultural and religious frameworks
were collapsing, poets like Yeats and Eliot turned to classical mythology, world religions,
and literary history to create a new, albeit personal, system of symbols that could lend
order and meaning to contemporary chaos.

William Butler Yeats stands as a monumental figure in this transition. He began his career
steeped in the Romantic traditions and the Celtic Twilight movement, writing lyrical, dreamy
verse based on Irish folklore. However, as the 20th century dawned and Ireland was plunged
into political violence, his poetry underwent a profound transformation. While he never fully
abandoned formal structures like his contemporary Ezra Pound, he infused them with a new
hardness, intellectual rigor, and prophetic urgency. He developed a complex personal
mythology, most famously the system of "gyres," to interpret history and the human soul. It is in
poems like "The Second Coming" that Yeats fully emerges as a quintessential Modernist voice
—a seer gazing into the abyss of a fragmented world and forging a terrifying, unforgettable
vision from its shards.

A Critical Appreciation of "The Second Coming"

William Butler Yeats’s "The Second Coming," written in 1919 in the immediate aftermath of the
First World War and amidst the turmoil of the Russian Revolution and the Irish War of
Independence, is arguably the most powerful and prophetic poem of the Modernist era. It is a
chilling distillation of the 20th-century’s deepest anxieties, a vision of historical collapse where
order gives way to anarchy and a familiar world is supplanted by a terrifying new age. The
poem's enduring power lies not just in its apocalyptic vision but in its masterful synthesis of a
fractured structure, profound historical and personal context, resonant allusions, and a stark,
unforgettable poetic diction. Through these elements, Yeats crafts a terrifying prophecy that
transcends its immediate context to speak to any age that feels itself standing on the precipice
of violent, uncontrollable change.

Context: A World Unravelling

To fully appreciate "The Second Coming," one must understand the world from which it
emerged. The poem is a direct response to the collapse of the old European order. The "Great
War" had decimated a generation and shattered the 19th-century belief in progress and
civilization. In Russia, the Bolshevik Revolution had violently overthrown a centuries-old
dynasty, an event that both terrified and fascinated Yeats. Closer to home, Ireland was
descending into the brutal guerrilla conflict of the War of Independence. This pervasive sense of
chaos is the poem’s lifeblood. The "blood-dimmed tide" is not a metaphor; it was the literal
reality for millions.

Beyond the historical context lies the personal and mystical. Yeats, along with his wife Georgie
Hyde-Lees, had been experimenting with "automatic writing," believing they were receiving
messages from the spirit world. From these communications, Yeats developed the elaborate
mystical system of history detailed in his book A Vision. At the core of this system was the
concept of the gyre, a historical cycle represented by two interpenetrating cones. According to
Yeats, history moves in 2,000-year cycles. The poem is written at the very end of the Christian
gyre, which began with the birth of Christ and was, in Yeats's view, reaching its point of
maximum expansion and, therefore, its final disintegration. "The Second Coming" is a direct
poetic channelling of this theory, predicting the violent inauguration of a new, antithetical gyre
that would be the polar opposite of the Christian age it was replacing.

Structure: The Unravelling Form

The poem's structure masterfully mirrors its theme of collapse. It is composed of two stanzas of
unequal length (an octave and a quatorzain), written in a loose iambic pentameter that
frequently stumbles and breaks, refusing to settle into a comfortable rhythm. This metrical
instability is a formal embodiment of the "centre" that "cannot hold."
The first stanza is a whirlwind of chaotic motion. The opening lines establish this immediately:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

The repetition of "turning" and the image of the "widening gyre" create a sense of dizzying,
uncontrolled spiralling. The falcon, a traditional symbol of order and nobility, is now lost, unable
to hear the call of its master (representing Christ, reason, or civilization itself).

MThe stanza then cascades into a series of stark, declarative statements of anarchy: "Things
fall apart," "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world," "The ceremony of innocence is drowned."
The enjambment and relentless pace give the reader no time to pause, sweeping them along in
the "blood-dimmed tide" of chaos.
The second stanza marks a dramatic shift. It begins with the word "Surely," a turn or volta that
signals a move from describing the present chaos to receiving a prophetic vision of the future.
The pace slows, the tone becomes one of awestruck terror. This stanza is itself almost a
distorted sonnet, a traditional form of order that Yeats breaks apart to contain his monstrous
vision. He describes a vast image from the Spiritus Mundi—a kind of collective unconscious or
universal memory—and the language becomes hypnotic and incantatory. The final lines return
to a chilling, declarative tone, with the final question hanging in the air, unanswered and
dreadful. The structural journey from chaotic description to terrifying vision is complete, perfectly
reflecting the poem’s thematic movement from the effects of collapse to its monstrous cause.

Allusions and Diction: A Subverted Gospel

The poem's power is magnified by its brilliant manipulation of allusion, bcc th jghparticularly
Christian eschatology. The very title, "The Second Coming," primes the reader for the
prophesied return of Jesus Christ to usher in an age of peace and judgment. Yeats seizes this
expectation and subverts it with horrifying ingenuity. The revelation at hand is not of Christ, but
of his antithesis.

The central vision is of a monstrous creature, a "shape with lion body and the head of a man," a
clear allusion to the Egyptian Sphinx. This beast is an emblem of the coming age: it is pagan,
not Christian; it possesses animalistic power ("lion body") combined with cold, calculating
human intellect ("the head of a man"); and its gaze is "blank and pitiless as the sun," signifying
an era devoid of the Christian values of pity, love, and compassion. This is the new messiah.

The most shocking subversion comes in the poem's final couplet:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
By invoking Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, Yeats creates a terrifying parody of the
Nativity. The gentle birth in the manger is replaced by the menacing "slouching" of a "rough
beast." The verb "slouches" is a stroke of genius, suggesting a slow, deliberate, and sinister
inevitability. This is not a glorious return but a sordid and terrifying birth. The Christian story is
not just ignored but actively inverted and desecrated, announcing a new world order founded on
brutality and instinct.
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The poem's diction is crucial to its impact. It is stark, elemental, and almost brutally direct.
Phrases like "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" and "The best lack all conviction, while
the worst / Are full of passionate intensity" have the force of aphorisms. They have entered the
English language because they perfectly articulate a timeless political and social anxiety. Yeats
avoids ornate or decorative language. The imagery is visceral and violent—"blood-dimmed
tide," "drowned," "rocking cradle"—creating a palpable sense of physical and moral decay. This
bare, prophetic language gives the poem an air of absolute authority, as if it were not written but
received, a true and terrible vision from the Spiritus Mundi.

In conclusion, "The Second Coming" is a triumph of poetic art. It is a poem born of a specific
historical moment of crisis, yet its power is universal. By perfectly aligning its crumbling
structure, its subversion of religious allusion, and its stark, elemental language with its theme of
societal collapse, Yeats created a timeless and terrifying masterpiece. It is the definitive anthem
for an age of anxiety, a chilling prophecy of a world where innocence is lost, order has vanished,
and a monstrous new reality slouches inexorably towards its birth.

William Butler Yeats: A Poet of Vision and

Transformation
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) is one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature, a poet
whose career charts a remarkable journey from the twilight romanticism of the Victorian era to
the hard-edged realities of Modernism. His work is a testament to a lifelong quest for a coherent
vision that could unify art, spirituality, and Irish national identity in a rapidly changing world. His
ideology, a unique blend of Irish nationalism, Romantic aesthetics, and esoteric mysticism,
formed the bedrock of a body of work that continuously evolved in style and deepened in
intellectual complexity.

Early Career: The Celtic Twilight

Yeats’s early poetry was deeply influenced by the English Romantics, particularly Shelley and
Blake, and the French Symbolists. He was a leading figure in the Irish Literary Revival, a
movement that sought to create a new literature out of Ireland's rich heritage of myths and
folklore. Poems from this period, such as the famous "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," are
characterized by their lyrical, dreamy, and often escapist quality. They are filled with Celtic
heroes like Cú Chulainn, magical landscapes, and a yearning for a pastoral, pre-modern
Ireland. His unrequited love for the fiery Irish nationalist Maud Gonne became a central theme,
casting her as a mythic figure of destructive beauty, a Helen of Troy for the Irish cause.

The Turn to Modernism

As the 20th century began, a note of disillusionment crept into Yeats's work. His frustration with
the political infighting of the Irish nationalist movement and his realization that the romantic
Ireland of his imagination was gone forever led to a significant stylistic shift. In collections like
Responsibilities (1914), he shed the "embroideries" of his early style for a more direct,
colloquial, and hard-edged verse. This middle period saw him engage more directly with the
political realities of his time, most notably in the powerful poem "Easter, 1916," which grapples
with the violent birth of a "terrible beauty" in the aftermath of the Easter Rising.

Late Career: The Visionary Poet

The final two decades of Yeats's life marked the culmination of his poetic genius. This is the
period of his greatest and most enduring works, including the collections The Tower (1928) and
Last Poems (1939). The central pillar of his later work was the complex, esoteric system of
philosophy and history he laid out in A Vision (1925). This system, built upon the symbolism of
the gyres, the phases of the moon, and the Great Year, provided him with a powerful symbolic
framework to explore his great themes: the cyclical nature of history, the conflict between art
and life, the search for spiritual unity, and the rage and wisdom of old age. Poems from this
period, such as "Sailing to Byzantium," "Leda and the Swan," and "The Second Coming," are
marked by their intellectual rigor, symbolic density, and prophetic grandeur. They fuse public
history with private myth, creating a poetry of immense power and resonance.

Yeats's Ideology

Yeats's worldview was a complex tapestry woven from several distinct threads:

1. Mysticism and the Occult: Far from being a mere poetic affectation, Yeats's
involvement with theosophy, spiritualism, and esoteric orders like the Hermetic Order of
the Golden Dawn was central to his thought. He sought a spiritual reality beyond the
materialism of the modern world and believed in a universal memory, the Spiritus Mundi,
from which the artist could draw symbols and visions.

2. A Cyclical View of History: Rejecting the linear, progressive view of history common in
the 19th century, Yeats believed history moved in great, recurring 2,000-year cycles or
"gyres." Each age was dominated by a particular mindset—either "primary" (objective,
democratic, Christian) or "antithetical" (subjective, aristocratic, pagan). He saw his own
time as the violent end of the primary Christian cycle.

3. Aristocratic Idealism: Yeats held a deeply anti-materialist and anti-bourgeois stance. He

idealized the Anglo-Irish aristocracy and the Irish peasant class, seeing both as
repositories of tradition, "ceremony," and passion, which he contrasted with the
commercialism and intellectual chaos of the modern middle class. This led him to briefly
flirt with quasi-fascist ideas in the 1930s, a controversial aspect of his political thought.

In essence, W.B. Yeats was a poet who spent his life trying to impose order on the chaos he
saw within himself and in the world around him. He built a towering, unified artistic vision from a
unique synthesis of Irish myth, occult philosophy, and a profound engagement with the turbulent
history of his time, securing his place as a giant of modern literature.