William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
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 blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
A broad, sometimes comic yet fully harrowing aspersion of what is to come, Yeats' dire predictions of a future where "the center cannot hold", where authority and order give way to decay and chaos details with quite certainty that the rumblings of modern moral relativism have dire consequences.
At the outset, Yeats presents an unstable and foreboding phenomenon, a "gyre", or a circular or spiral form; a vortex. In another sense, a "gyre" may refer exclusively to the motions, like an ocean current.
Either way, the image of a maelstrom which threatens to snap a ship in two, or of a drain which draws down everything, leaving nothing to sight comes to view. The sense of dragging down is magnified by the dizzying repetition of "turning and turning", the damaging effects of which grow menacing with the adjective "widening", indicating a downward spiral which is taking down as much as possible.
"The falcon cannot hear the falconer;" Yeats incorporates medieval imagery in the second line, a trice to the glancing eye, yet inevitably stored with implications. The traditions, the myths of the past, for example, no longer withstand the onslaught of the widening vortex which disrupts and destroys everything in its wake. "Falcon" incorporated in "falconer" speaks to the essential identity and relationship of leader and led, yet the connection of both, even if based on essence, no longer remains intact. The falcon, a bird well-trained in hunting and returning to its master, cannot hear the calls any longer of the one who had trained him, a telling metaphor indicting the failures of the older generation to call out and call back the students, the disciples, taken in by the swirling vortex of opinion, the siren songs of fashion and popularity.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
"Things fall apart" — so banal a turn of phrase in contrast to sweeping ocean currents and the romance of the hunt, yet arresting for the fundamental scope of decay which wreaks havoc on order. "The centre" could refer to commerce, to the focal point of a ministry, the direction of a ship, a "centre" which accounts for the integrity of the whole, which is not able to withstand and maintain the entire element.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
Almost a sly joke, "mere anarchy" implies that the disorder of the modern age is weak in spite of its damage intensity on the world around it. The agent of this anarchy is not identified, perhaps weakening its power, yet also enhancing the forbidding menace of this force.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
Tying in with the gyre of the first line, the reader gathers a growing glimpse of a violent tirade tiding against the world. The "ceremony of innocence" is a rich phrase, one encapsulating the traditions of men which create a sense of security in a world fraught with more doubts and growing questions. One ceremony of interest floating weakly through the "blood-dimmed tide" include birth or death, or baptism which signifies both a death from the old identity into a new life, free from the sins of the former man, the corruption of sin put away, as described in the New Testament writings of Paul the apostle. Yet in a perverse twist, the ceremony of baptism itself is drowned, losing its value, the subject, the essence never resurging, granting not witness to itself or to the world any efficacy or certainty of perfection of purification. The watering down of water immersion is "everywhere", swallowed up in the widening gyre of chaos and disorder.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
In "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death", Yeats ties together taut, almost sophomoric contrasts of life and death, poor and rich, wide disparities. The preceding neat conceit conveys a greater intensity, one which captures the obvious yet overwhelming trend of immoral dissolution in the world. "The best lack all conviction." ""Conviction" speaks not just a confident sense of the truth, but also the internal mandate that they must do something. They feel no pang about letting the world slip into crude emptiness. "The worst are full of passionate intensity". "The play on words with ""passionate" is sickening in its deep irreverence, conjuring up the image of Christ's "Passion", which He endured with intense conviction, whereas now, according to the poet, the "worst", the evil elements of the world are now committed, but their commitment is to a heedless, hedonist hatred of all order, a moral relativism which scorns at dying for anything. They have a materialist intensity, one which they are "full" of, not motivated, not inspired, but merely "full", a static element which means or moves nothing.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
"Surely. . .Surely" the poet knows that something imminent, dangeround, foreboding has come, but what? He repeats this assertion to himself, refering obliquely to "some revelation," The certainty of ill-tidings, wrapped in uncertainty, all the more magnifies the troubles of the modern era, one in which people are lost, yet know no where to go or even how to find out where. "The Second Coming is at hand." The poet repeats, inaccurately, an amalgam of Scripture. Jesus declared that the Kingdom of God is "at hand," but His Second Coming will be a shock, a surprise which will arrest the attention of the entire universe, not a gradual overtaking for which mankind may still bide his time.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight:
The inarticulate nature of the vision articulates the maddening disturbance of the poet's fears. Some "Spiritus Mundi", a world-spirit, Weltgeist or Zeitgeist, but in Latin, a vain appeal to the aching rigors of the Catholic Church, an institution which is also rocking the world, whose rot, propagated by human hierarchies dressed up in religious trappings, has spread and exposed the decay of tradition and temporal authority shrouded in mysteries. The very words Second Coming" elicit this vision, one that troubles his sight, one that causes him to question what he sees, to review what he views, to shake and tremble, blurring the presence before him. His vision, his viewing, his perception all betray a reluctant doubt regarding what he is beholding, much like the shifting views and values of modern times causes man to doubt what he fears, and to doubt his own doubts.
a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
What does the poet see here? Some mirage from the Valley of Kings, perhaps? "A shape with lion body and the head of a man" conjures up the tombs of ancient Pharaohs. Yet this "shape", indefinite in its mixed description, "is moving", with birds flocking around it. Raw power, vain attempts to shade one's authority in the learnings, the awesome size and scope of ancient artifacts, has moved many to read the past in order to justify their present circumstances, to enshrine their life and world-view on something which smacks of permanence. Yet the mythic, and comical, apparition of a man-with-lion-body defies the stability of the past, reminding the reader of little children who cut out pictures in diverse magazines and paste together fantastic creatures. This creature moves about in a "waste of desert sand", a redundancy which mirrors the stark bleakness of the man's view as well as vision of the future.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
"Darkness drops again", yet what causes the darkness initially? The modern age, the mixing of metaphors, the inability to articulate even the ineffable. to explain the trials and troubles of a world which has discarded the means and distinctions of right and wrong, or authority and submission, or direction and station. The twenty centuries, tied with "rocking cradle" and "Bethlehem to be born" all speak of the Son of God's birth, which also connects with the poet's apprehension of the "Second Coming." The momentous first appearance frightened kings, precipitated divisions and wars, forced a culture and people to rethink their origins, to renew their understanding of Scripture, while inviting alienated nations to enter into the community of grace and life with God. The political tumults and turmoils, the disruptions of class, status, race, and creed did not dissolved into massive confusion following the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The structures, the traditions, the divisions among men which have followed, however, have broadened the widening of gyres, the loss of direction for leader and servant. To claim that the mixed creature of "Sphynx-like" extraction will inaugurate a new era leaves much to be desired. The Second Coming, according to the Scriptures, will not follow from a birth, but from the mighty and ultimate coming of Jesus Christ.
Yeats' poem exemplifies the modern dilemma of man, one in which man has been allowed to discard the principles, the myths, the legends, the culture which defined his experience, which informed his identity in a world which he did not create. Now pressed to create himself, to define his path in a fallen world which still cries out that something is coming, he now has no knowledge, no wisdom, no legacy, no authority to explain to him what is happening. The mixing of metaphors, the obscurity of the menacing Spiritus Mundi, the failing of manmade institutions, has created a widening mess of mankind which he cannot contain or control, let alone define.
Without question, the poet cannot end his dire anti-dirge but with a question, a wandering wondering which pieces together a narrative from times and deeds immemorial, yet lost through decay and disrespect.