The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats

Critically examine close reading of W.B. Yeats’s postmodern poetry The Second Coming.

(Black and white image of an older white man seated at a table with books)

Twentieth-century heroically humanist W.B. Yeats’ The Second Coming is a symbolic incarnation” of the imagination of resurrection allegorically satirizing the pathogenic cycle of the historical First World War nationalistic spirit of the Irish independence movement and coterminous flu pandemic enmeshed within Christian imageries.

The Messianic Saviour of humanity’s salvation, Jesus Christ, although redeems as a prolific resurrectionist transfiguration of crucified atonement within Biblical tradition, nonetheless, which Yeats majestically inverts as mental apparitions of the eschatological apocalypse. This is starkly evident in the poetic lines by the allegorical personification of the beast’s rebirth in the dismal gloom of dystopian anarchic Jerusalem “And what rough beat, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Yeats’s envisioning of poetic voice and pictorial shroud heralds dramatic, visionary, aesthetic, elegiac, lyric and philosophic language in accord to macabre of ending the ceremony of innocence, the end of Christian dispensation and the desecration of the divine destination heritage site of Bethlehem. 

Lion’s body and humans’ head Urizenic mythical beast is that ultimate sinisterish gothicism of “That twenty years of stony sleep/ Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,” as foreshadowed by revival of the sphinx’s second coming. Furthermore, the penchant of this demoniac spirited cherubim reincarnation illustrates the failure of the French Revolution and the failure of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice. The moral satire of the aristocratic elitist upper class sophistication with fascism implicates the death of spiritualism despite the advent of Christ’s resurrection in view of the redemptive quest for salvation.  

“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world./ The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/ The ceremony of innocence is drowned.”  After all the heroic return of Jesus’s reincarnation of the resurrectionist spirit is replaced by the poet laureate with the advent of a grotesque beast, the Egyptian Sphinx. And this gossamery of the Christian revelation has drowned the ceremony of innocence by a bloody trench war over a community of civilization. Modernity has divided into the world with the sunken titanic and widespread disenchantment, violence and extremism, bloodshed of massacred lives have been mystically visualized by The Second Coming.

The quagmire of Second Coming is an apocalypse collapse of civilization into anarchy furthermore is heralded by the verbosity of “That twenty centuries of stony sleep /Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,” enmeshed by devastation of things falling apart and the center cannot hold. Twenty centuries had elapsed since the crucifixion and promised return of Jesus Christ. However, the sphinxlike creature in its stony sleep has been poised in the desert, awaiting the time when it will be unleashed upon the earth. 

The Beast of Apocalypse is a slough of despond for these derailed and directionless everyman Christians personified falcons from their Christ figure in the personified abstraction of the Falconer. Thus the massacre of innocents by Herod and possibly the ceremony of baptism is evoked by the drowning of innocent provincial lives with the sea of a blood bath by the surreal demonic Anti Christ. Falcon is a manifestation of symbolic allegorical colonial Ireland harbouring the Irish nationalist rebels, reactionaries and revolutionaries as implied by the worst full of conviction.

On the contrary Falconer is a manifestation of symbolic allegorical British Isles and Britannic kingdom whilst their productivity and efficacy diminishes as implied in the poetic diction the best lack all conviction. Furthermore The Great World War I, The Russian Revolution, Ester Rising 1916 underscore the politico socioeconomic allegorical inferences permeated throughout the poem.   

Further Reading

Kremen. R Kathryn, Yeats’s Secularization of Christian Events pp. 272-74, The Imagination of the Resurrection: The Continuity of Religious Motif in Donne, Blake and Yeats

Kremen. R Kathryn, Yeats’s Subjectification of Religious Language: Three Poetic Examples, pp. 281, 283, The Imagination of the Resurrection: The Continuity of Religious Motif in Donne, Blake and Yeats

Tabor College Library Hillsboro Kansas, Internet Archive, Yeats Harold Bloom, Michael Robartes and the Dancer, The Second Coming, pp. 317-325

Selected Poems W.B. Yeats, York Notes Advanced, A Norman Jeffares, pp. 43-44

Happiness

Happiness is not a destination, but a journey.

In every moment, even in the smallest things,

there lies a reason to smile.

Life is a beauty revealed

when we stop chasing perfection

and start appreciating the present.

Let every new day remind you

that you are the creator of your own happiness.

Maja Milojković was born in 1975 in Zaječar, Serbia. She is a person to whom from an early age, Leonardo da Vinci’s statement “Painting is poetry that can be seen, and poetry is painting that can be heard” is circulating through the blood. That’s why she started to use feathers and a brush and began to reveal the world and herself to them. As a poet, she is represented in numerous domestic and foreign literary newspapers, anthologies and electronic media, and some of her poems can be found on YouTube. Many of her poems have been translated into English, Hungarian, Bengali and Bulgarian due to the need of foreign readers. She is the recipient of many international awards. “Trees of Desire” is her second collection of poems in preparation, which is preceded by the book of poems “Moon Circle”. She is a member of the International Society of Writers and Artists “Mountain Views” in Montenegro, and she also is a member of the Poetry club “Area Felix” in Serbia.

All I have in this world
The only one is my masterpiece,
My pride in life,
This is my heavenly mother.
Always my support 
My support at every step
My love, my love 
My country is my father 
A light on my way 
My mood at night,
He thinks of us every moment,
This is my father and mother.

Just AN Unhinged Lunatic Howling AT THE Moon

On a moonlit late-night
I sat in the Cosmos Bar

In Soi Cowboy

Drinking drams of demented, fermented dream dew

With one scotch, and one bourbon. and one beer

To chase it all down.

Twenty drinks too sober.

Just an unhinged lunatic
Dreaming of howling

at the super full moon.

Watching the world walk by
Looking at all the fine-looking babes
Walking by the street
Thinking wild, erotic thoughts
Of endless wild libertine passions.

When into the bar
Walked the most beautiful women
In the Universe.
So wild, so free
So wonderfully alive.

I did not know what to do
As this carnal, deprave

lustful vision of delight

Sauntered through the bar
In a skin-tight leather pants

Looked so fine
That my eyeballs hurt

And finally

 I had to say something
So I gathered up

My manly courage

And walked up to her
And she looked at me

And instantly

Bewitched my soul
Mesmerizing me

With a devilish grin.

I lost all reason
And became a raving lunatic
Unhinged lunatic
Howling at the moon.

Foaming at the mouth
A wild, free werewolf
Howling at the lunatic light
Of the full Moon

Peace

Silence falls like a soft blanket,

on the thirsty, exhausted earth,

a river of calm, that flows without pause,

erasing the echo of the savage war.

The clouds, white doves in flight,

draw a serene canvas in the sky,

where the sun, a master of fire,

paints a new world with light.

The wind whispers a sweet melody,

to the leaves that dance in harmony,

a chorus of life, that sings without noise,

in a garden where peace

blooms and multiplies.

And in the heart, an oasis of calm,

where hope sprouts, like a flower in spring,

a promise of the future, without drama,

a song of peace, that resonates forever.

GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer and poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina, based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters and is the author of seven books of poetry, awarded several times worldwide. She works as the World Manager of Educational and Social Projects of the Hispanic World Union of Writers and is the UHE World Honorary President of the same institution Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. She is the Commissioner of Honor in the executive cabinet IN THE EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL RELATIONS DIVISION, of the UNACCC SOUTH AMERICA ARGENTINA CHAPTER.

Love is a feeling in your eyes…

 (called)

 Love is a feeling in your eyes

 I’m crazy because I’m being seduced

 When there is joy in his eyes

 I bowed my head and said no words

 I didn’t love you because of your beauty

 You have a beautiful heart as always

 Maybe that’s why I’m in love with you

 If you can’t open it, I have a heart attack

 Chehrang laughs and your eyes shine

 The secret of your absent-mindedness is revealed

 You didn’t say anything, hold my hands

 Good luck to you, boy

 If there is fate, we will be together

 Life created us the same

 We have the same views and the world is together

 That’s why God focused on each other

      I was born on October 1, 2005 in the Barlos neighborhood of Ishtikhan District, Samarkand Region, daughter of Sevinch Tirkasheva Bunyod. I studied at the 22nd general secondary school. And now I am an applicant, actively participated in various competitions and was awarded certificates and honorary labels by the school. My poems have been published in foreign magazines.  And I am a participant in many anthologies.  Currently, I am creating under the pseudonym “Sevinch_Shaydo”.