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The Annotated Edition

The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats

Summary, meaning, line-by-line analysis & FAQ.

The world feels like it’s unraveling — violence surrounds us, decent people seem to have fallen silent, and the fanatics are drowning them out.

Poet
W. B. Yeats
Year
1920
Form
lyric
The PoemFull text

The Second Coming

W. B. Yeats, 1920

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?

Public domain

Sourced from Project Gutenberg

§01Quick summary

What this poem is about

The world feels like it’s unraveling — violence surrounds us, decent people seem to have fallen silent, and the fanatics are drowning them out. Yeats imagines a terrifying creature stirring from a 2,000-year slumber and making its way to Bethlehem, where Christ was born. The poem poses a chilling question: if a new era is on the horizon, what kind of being will emerge into it?

§02Themes

Recurring themes

§03Line by line

Stanza by stanza, with notes

  1. Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

    Editor's note

    Yeats begins with his well-known symbol: the **gyre**, a spiral cone he used to illustrate the rise and fall of historical periods. A falcon circles wider and wider until it strays so far that it can no longer hear its handler — control slips away. From that single image, the stanza erupts into disorder: anarchy is 'loosed,' innocence is 'drowned,' and those who could hold things together have lost their resolve, while the most dangerous individuals burn with conviction. These eight lines were penned in 1919, shortly after World War I and during the Irish War of Independence, and they resonate like a diagnosis of an entire civilization coming apart.

  2. Surely some revelation is at hand; / Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

    Editor's note

    The second stanza begins with a glimmer of hope — *surely* something is on the way to resolve this — but Yeats quickly twists the Christian phrase 'Second Coming.' Instead of a return of Christ, a vision emerges from **Spiritus Mundi** (Latin for 'Spirit of the World,' which refers to a collective unconscious that Yeats believed in). What he perceives isn’t a savior but a Sphinx-like creature: lion-bodied, man-headed, blank-eyed, slowly moving through desert sands while birds circle around it in distress. This beast has been sleeping for 'twenty centuries' — the whole span of the Christian era — and it was the gentle rocking of the infant Jesus in his cradle that disturbed its slumber and initiated this moment. The poem concludes not with an answer but with a question: what is this rough beast, and what will the world be like when it arrives?

§04Tone & mood

How this poem feels

The tone is chilling and apocalyptic — Yeats isn't panicking; he's making an assessment. The first stanza has a sharp, straightforward rhythm, reminiscent of someone delivering a verdict. In the second stanza, the mood shifts to something more surreal and dreamlike as the vision unfolds, yet the language remains measured and exact. The impact of the horror is intensified by Yeats's calm demeanor. The final line, framed as a question instead of a declaration, leaves the reader hanging in a state of unease.

§05Symbols & metaphors

Symbols & metaphors

The gyre
Yeats's philosophical view of history is represented as interlocking spirals. Each civilization grows outward until it eventually collapses, giving rise to a new one that spins in the opposite direction. The widening gyre indicates that our current era has hit its breaking point.
The falcon and the falconer
A vivid picture of lost control. The falcon represents human society or individual actions, while the falconer symbolizes the guiding force — whether it be reason, tradition, God, or government — that keeps it grounded. When the falcon can no longer hear the falconer, civilization must navigate its course alone.
The rough beast / Sphinx
The poem's main, unsettling image is a creature that is part lion and part human, wholly merciless. It symbolizes the force poised to take over the Christian era — something ancient, inhuman, and unconcerned with human suffering. Yeats deliberately avoids naming it, which adds to the impact.
Bethlehem
The birthplace of Christ is used to create a stark contrast. While the original birth in Bethlehem began 2,000 years of Christian civilization, this new 'birth' signals something entirely different—and the beast is already making its way there.
The rocking cradle
The cradle of the infant Jesus. According to Yeats, the birth of Christianity disrupted the previous age’s 'stony sleep' and triggered the current cycle. Now that cycle is coming to an end, and the old beast is beginning to stir once more.
Spiritus Mundi
Latin for 'Spirit of the World.' Yeats used this term to refer to a common pool of images and symbols that all human minds tap into — similar to a collective unconscious. The vision of the beast doesn't originate from Yeats's personal imagination; it emerges from this deeper, universal source, giving it a prophetic quality instead of merely being fantasy.

§06Form & structure

Form & structure

Form
lyric

§07Historical context

Historical context

Yeats wrote 'The Second Coming' in January 1919, right after World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the start of the Irish War of Independence. Europe had just gone through four years of industrialized slaughter that no one could have imagined, and the political and religious institutions that were meant to prevent such horrors had either failed or played a part in them. Yeats was also influenced by his own complex private mythology, which he detailed in his prose work *A Vision* (1925). This work described history as a series of interconnected 2,000-year cycles. He felt that the Christian era was coming to an end and that something entirely different — and not necessarily better — was on the horizon. His wife Georgie's sessions of automatic writing, which he regarded as genuine contact with supernatural forces, directly informed these ideas. The poem is brief, yet it became one of the most quoted works of the 20th century, with phrases like 'things fall apart,' 'the centre cannot hold,' and 'passionate intensity' woven into everyday speech.

§08FAQ

Questions readers ask

On the surface, this poem reflects Yeats's fear that Western civilization is falling apart and that whatever comes next will be horrific. He draws on the Christian concept of the Second Coming—when Christ returns to earth—but puts a dark spin on it: instead of a savior, a terrifying beast is approaching. More broadly, it explores the consequences of societal structures breaking down and how something dark and powerful can seize that empty space.

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