Reading these poems together highlights how Yeats's political imagination evolved from elegy to prophecy, from fresh grief to a cold, geological dread. One poem mourns individuals; the other laments an entire era of human civilization. In simple terms, "Easter, 1916" transforms specific people into myth, while "The Second Coming" turns myth itself into an impending disaster.
The Reader's Atlas · Compare
Easter, 1916The Second Coming
Put "Easter, 1916" and "The Second Coming" side by side, and the tension is palpable: both poems are by W. B.
Poets
W. B. Yeats
Years
1916 / 1920
§01 The thesis
Easter, 1916 & The Second Coming
A reader's case for putting these two side by side — what each carries, and what they argue when they sit on the same page.
§02 The dialectic axes
The two poems on four axes
Each axis isolates one specific vector — speaker, form, image, closing move — and reads the two poems against each other on that single dimension.
Axis
Poem A
Easter, 1916
W. B. Yeats
Poem B
The Second Coming
W. B. Yeats
01Speaker
Poem A · Easter, 1916
In "Easter, 1916," the speaker comes across as a familiar social figure—someone who shared polite nods with others at counters and desks, yet harbored uncharitable thoughts about them on the way home. He is connected to the everyday world that the rebels left behind, with his feelings of guilt and admiration intertwined throughout.
Poem B · The Second Coming
In "The Second Coming," the speaker has completely shed his social identity. He becomes a visionary, receiving images from the *Spiritus Mundi* — the world-soul. He reports his observations with the detached authority of someone witnessing a natural disaster, rather than as a man who once lived among the people affected.
02Form
Poem A · Easter, 1916
"Easter, 1916" consists of four stanzas of different lengths, featuring a repeated line — "A terrible beauty is born" — that appears three times. This repetition serves an emotional purpose, emphasizing the idea of transformation while the poem continues to scrutinize it. The meter is relaxed yet melodic, resembling the rhythm of a song.
Poem B · The Second Coming
"The Second Coming" consists of 21 lines divided into two uneven stanzas, lacking a refrain. The lines vary in length and are more complex in structure. It reads less like a song and more like a report—urgent and concise, concluding not with a definitive statement but with a question that the poem leaves unresolved.
03Central image
Poem A · Easter, 1916
The central image in "Easter, 1916" is the stone in the flowing stream. The rebels' unwavering commitment has rendered them stone-like—unchanging while everything around them, including the horses, birds, and clouds, shifts "minute by minute." This image evokes both admiration and discomfort: the stone is enduring, yet it has ceased to be alive.
Poem B · The Second Coming
The main image in "The Second Coming" is the rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem. It has the body of a lion and the head of a man, with a blank, unfeeling stare, and it has been asleep for twenty centuries. Unlike the stone, which remains still, the beast is on the move — and the terrifying truth is that its arrival is unavoidable, already underway.
04Closing move
Poem A · Easter, 1916
"Easter, 1916" concludes with a list of the deceased, followed by a final echo of the refrain: "Are changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born." This serves both as a burial rite and a form of consecration. The poem may not settle its uncertainties, but it carries out the act of remembrance regardless — the act of naming these individuals is what truly matters.
Poem B · The Second Coming
"The Second Coming" ends with a haunting question: "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" There’s no clear answer, no comfort, no familiar refrain to lean on. The poem concludes in a state of tension, leaving the reader to grapple with the unease without any ritual to release it.
§03 Synthesis & departure
The shared ground and the divergence
Shared
Both poems showcase Yeats at his most politically engaged, and they share a similar approach: they take a specific historical crisis and elevate it to something timeless and symbolic. "Easter, 1916" was penned right after the Rising, while "The Second Coming" emerged in 1919, as Ireland teetered on the brink of civil war and Europe was still reeling from the Great War. Each poem features a central image that balances the concrete with the cosmic — the stone in the living stream in "Easter, 1916" and the slouching beast in "The Second Coming." They also share a structural rhythm that builds tension before delivering a shocking revelation: Yeats layers in details, then delivers a line that shifts the entire perspective. Moreover, both poems grapple with transformation — they explore what occurs when history changes so dramatically that previous categories become obsolete. In this way, they represent two chapters of the same discourse on the impact of violence on civilization and the individuals within it.
Where they diverge
The sharpest difference lies in scale. "Easter, 1916" feels intimate. Yeats mentions MacDonagh, MacBride, Connolly, and Pearse — men he knew, including one he actively disliked. The poem's moral weight arises from the tension between personal emotion and public duty. He whispers their names "as a mother names her child," and that tenderness is genuine, even amid doubt. In contrast, "The Second Coming" lacks such tenderness. It begins not with a face but with a falcon that can no longer hear its falconer — a system already fractured before the poem starts. While "Easter, 1916" questions the necessity of specific deaths, "The Second Coming" doesn’t focus on individuals at all. Its inquiry is cosmic: what rough beast is history itself about to bring forth? This formal distinction reinforces the difference. "Easter, 1916" features a lilting, almost ballad-like refrain that constantly draws the reader back to emotion. "The Second Coming" is a tight 21-line structure without a refrain, names, or comfort — just a question mark at the end that has nowhere to settle.
§04 A reader's order of operations
Which to read first
If you've read "Easter, 1916" and want to explore Yeats's thoughts further, the next poem to check out is "The Second Coming." In the earlier piece, Yeats still holds on to the belief that individual humans — even those he found frustrating — can become part of something significant through their choices in life and death. However, "The Second Coming," written just three years later, shows a stark shift in perspective. Here, history is no longer something that people actively shape; instead, it becomes something that simply unfolds around them. Reading these poems sequentially allows you to witness Yeats’s political optimism fade in real time, which is one of the most enlightening experiences these two poems can offer.
§05 Reader's questions
On Easter, 1916 vs The Second Coming, frequently asked
Answer
Yes, often — particularly in classes focused on modern poetry, Irish literature, or the literature surrounding World War One and its aftermath. These are Yeats's two most anthologized political poems, and their contrasting tones provide a great opportunity to teach how a poet's perspective can change over a brief period.
Answer
"Easter, 1916" was composed in 1916, shortly after the Rising, but Yeats shared it privately and only published it in 1920. "The Second Coming" was written in 1919 and published in 1920 as part of the collection *Michael Robartes and the Dancer*. This means they appeared in print almost at the same time, even though the Easter poem was created four years earlier.
Answer
From "Easter, 1916," we often hear "A terrible beauty is born" — a phrase that has become shorthand for any moment marked by violent, ambiguous change. From "The Second Coming," the lines "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" or "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity" are usually cited. The latter has been quoted so frequently in political discussions that it risks becoming a cliché, yet the original still carries weight.
Answer
For "Easter, 1916," a bit of background is helpful — understanding that the Rising was a rebellion against British rule, that it failed militarily, and that the British executed the leaders (turning them into martyrs) gives the poem its significance. In contrast, for "The Second Coming," while historical context is useful, it's not as crucial; the poem functions on a level of abstraction that enables readers unfamiliar with 1919 Ireland to find it relevant to their own experiences.
Answer
The gyre is a key element in Yeats's personal cosmological framework, which he elaborated on in his prose work *A Vision*. He envisioned history as a series of interlocking spiraling cones—gyres—where each cone signifies a different era of civilization. As one gyre contracts to its smallest point, a new one starts to expand, ushering in a new age with distinct values. The widening gyre in the poem indicates that the current era has spiraled out of control and is on the verge of being replaced by something uncertain.
Answer
His feelings were complex, which is precisely the focus of the poem. He was uncertain about armed rebellion and had once believed that some leaders were squandering their lives on politics. Following the executions, he felt deeply affected and unsettled. "Easter, 1916" represents his effort to publicly navigate that ambivalence—paying tribute to the dead while acknowledging that he hadn't always supported their cause.
Answer
Yeats didn't have a particular figure in mind, yet readers have linked the image to nearly every authoritarian movement of the twentieth century. In Yeats's view, the beast symbolizes the spirit of a new historical cycle — the force that will shape the next two thousand years much like Christianity shaped the previous two. The poem intentionally leaves the beast vague, which contributes significantly to its unsettling nature.