:The Second Coming (poem)

The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War{{Cite book |last= Haughey |first=Jim|year=2002|title= The First World War in Irish Poetry|page=161|publisher=Bucknell University Press |isbn=978-1-61148151-8}} and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence in January 1919, which followed the Easter Rising in April 1916, and before the British government had decided to send in the Black and Tans to Ireland. Yeats used the phrase "the second birth" instead of "the Second Coming" in his first drafts.{{cite book |first=Seamus|last=Deane |title= Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing Since 1790 |series= Clarendon lectures in English literature |page= 179| chapter=Boredom and Apocalypse |publisher= Clarendon Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-19818490-4}}

Yeats's cosmology is laid out in his book A Vision, where he explained his views on history and how it informed his poetry. Yeats saw human history as a series of epochs, what he called "gyres." He saw the age of classical antiquity as beginning with the Trojan War and then that thousand year cycle was overtaken by the Christian era, which is coming to a close. And that is the basis of the final line of the poem: "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

The poem is also connected to the 1918–1919 flu pandemic. In the weeks preceding Yeats′s writing of the poem, his pregnant wife, Georgie, caught the virus and was very close to death, but she survived. The highest death rates of the pandemic were among pregnant women, who in some areas had a death rate of up to 70%. Yeats wrote the poem while his wife was convalescing.{{cite web |last1=Onion |first1=Rebecca |title=The 1918 Flu Pandemic Killed Millions. So Why Does Its Cultural Memory Feel So Faint? |url=https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/05/1918-pandemic-cultural-memory-literature-outka.html |website=Slate |date=3 May 2020 |access-date=May 10, 2020}}{{cite news |last1=Lynskey |first1=Dorian |title='Things fall apart': the apocalyptic appeal of WB Yeats's The Second Coming |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/30/things-fall-apart-the-apocalyptic-appeal-of-wb-yeats-the-second-coming |access-date=30 May 2020 |work=The Guardian |date=30 May 2020}}

In 2009, David A. Ross identified "The Second Coming" as "one of the most famous poems in the English language,"{{cite book |last1=Ross |first1=David A. |title=Critical companion to William Butler Yeats: a literary reference to his life and work |date=2009 |publisher=Facts On File |location=New York |isbn=9780816058952 |page=219}} echoing Harold Bloom who, in 1986, cited the piece as "one of the most universally admired poems of our century."{{cite book |editor1-last=Bloom |editor1-first=Harold |title=William Butler Yeats |date=1986 |publisher=Chelsea House Publishers |location=New York |isbn=0877547009 |page=9-11 |chapter=Introduction}}

Critics agree that the poetry of Percy Shelley had a strong influence on the drafting of "The Second Coming." The first stanza matches the tone, diction, and syntax of Prometheus Unbound.{{cite book |last1=Stallworthy |first1=Jon |title=Between the Lines: Yeats's Poetry in the Making |date=1963 |publisher=Clarendon Press |location=Oxford |isbn=0198116012 |page=22-23}}{{cite book |last1=Bornstein |first1=George |title=Yeats and Shelley |date=1970 |publisher=Univ. of Chicago Press |location=Chicago |isbn=0226066452 |page=201}}{{cite book |last1=Henn |first1=T. R. |title=The Lonely Tower: Studies in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats |date=1965 |publisher=Cox and Wyman Ltd |location=Fakenham |isbn=0415500605 |page=131, 151-153 |edition=Second}} Both Harold Bloom and Jon Stallworthy speculate that the poem's sphinx draws on the imagery of Shelley's Ozymandias.

Critics have also argued that "The Second Coming" describes what Yeats elsewhere called an "antithetical dispensation" to the age ushered in by the birth of Jesus Christ.{{cite book |last1=Yeats |first1=W. B. |last2=Harper |first2=George Mills |last3=Hood |first3=Walter Kelly |title=A critical edition of Yeats's A vision (1925) |date=1978 |publisher=Macmillan |location=London |isbn=0333212991 |page=262-263}} Richard Ellmann understood the "rough beast" of the final lines as a creature to be born itself in Bethlehem, marking the cyclical (and violent) overturning of an age.{{cite book |last1=Ellmann |first1=Richard |title=The Identity of Yeats |date=1964 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0195007123 |page=260 |edition=Reprint}} Giorgio Melchiori identified this same idea in Yeats' other writings, noting that

"(1) by 1896 Yeats had already some inkling of the cyclical theory of history which he was later to develop and expound in A Vision; (2) The Trojan war, the birth of Christ, and an indefinite event due to happen in our century were already considered by him as three fundamental crises in world history, each of which reverse the established order and ushered in a new cycle of civilization . . ."{{cite book |last1=Melchiori |first1=Giorgio |title=The whole mystery of art. Pattern into poetry of the work of W. B. Yeats |date=1979 |publisher=Greenwood P |location=Westport |isbn=0837167191 |page=85 |edition=Reprinted}}

Phrases in the poem have been adopted as the title in a variety of media. The words "things fall apart" in the third line are alluded to by Chinua Achebe in his novel Things Fall Apart (1958), The Roots in their album Things Fall Apart (1999),{{Cite web |last=Banerji |first=Atreyi |date=7 February 2021 |title=The story behind The Roots' 'Things Fall Apart' album cover |url=https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/story-behind-the-roots-things-fall-apart-album-cover/ |website=Far Out |publisher=}} and Jon Ronson in his podcast series Things Fell Apart (2021).{{Cite web |last=Sawyer |first=Miranda |date=2021-11-13 |title=The week in audio: Things Fell Apart; Doomsday Watch; 5 live Breakfast |url=https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/nov/13/things-fell-apart-jon-ronson-review-doomsday-watch-with-arhur-snell-5-live-breakfast-rick-eddwards-rachel-burden-nicky-campbell |website=The Guardian |publisher=}}

Similarly, the words "the centre cannot hold" in the same line are used in the title of Elyn Saks' book about her experience with schizophrenia while obtaining her PhD at Oxford, and later her JD at Yale, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (2008),{{Cite book |last=Saks |first=Elyn R. |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/148726600 |title=The center cannot hold: my journey through madness |date=2007 |publisher=Hyperion |isbn=978-1-4013-0138-5 |edition= |location=New York |oclc=148726600}} Jonathan Alter's book on U.S. President Barack Obama's first term, The Center Holds (2013),{{cite news |last=Diedrick |first=James |date=September 26, 2015 |title=The Center Cannot Hold VS The Center Holds |url=https://jamesdiedrick.agnesscott.org/global_modernism/yeats/the-center-cannot-hold-vs-the-center-holds/ |access-date= |website=Jamesdiedrick.agnesscott.org |location=}} the Netflix biographical documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (2017), Sleater-Kinney's album The Center Won't Hold (2019),{{Cite news |last=Beaumont-Thomas |first=Ben |date=2019-08-15 |title=Sleater-Kinney: The Centre Won't Hold review – fighting death with sex |url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/aug/15/sleater-kinney-the-centre-wont-hold-album-review |access-date=2024-02-28 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}} and Junkie XL's song "The Center Will Not Hold, Twenty Centuries Of Stony Sleep" in the film Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021).{{Cite magazine |last=Mamo |first=Heran |date=12 March 2021 |title='Zack Snyder's Justice League' Soundtrack Is the 'Mount Everest of Scores': See Release Date & Track List |url=https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/zack-snyders-justice-league-soundtrack-date-track-list-9539555/ |magazine=Billboard}}

Additionally, the phrase "slouches towards Bethlehem" in the last line is referenced in the title of Joan Didion's collection of essays Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968), Joni Mitchell's musical adaptation of the poem "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" (1991),{{Cite book |last=Whitesell |first=Lloyd |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iAMSDAAAQBAJ |title=The Music of Joni Mitchell |date=2008 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-530757-3 |language=en}} Robert Bork's non-fiction work Slouching Towards Gomorrah (1996), Daniel Ravipinto and Star Foster’s interactive fiction game Slouching Towards Bedlam (2003),{{Cite journal |last=Chetcuti |first=Clara |date=May 3, 2020 |title=Electronic Literature, or Whatever It’s Called Now: the Archive and the Field |url=https://doi.org/10.7273/zkaa-3611 |journal=Electronic Book Review |doi=}} and Brad DeLong's economic history Slouching Towards Utopia (2022).{{Cite web |last=Matthews |first=Dylan |date=2022-09-07 |title=Humanity was stagnant for millennia — then something big changed 150 years ago |url=https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/9/7/23332699/economic-growth-brad-delong-slouching-utopia |access-date=2024-07-02 |website=Vox |language=en-US}}

Other works whose titles come from lines in the poem includes Walker Percy’s novel The Second Coming (1980), Robert B. Parker's novel The Widening Gyre (1983), and multiple songs in Moby's album Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt (2018).{{Cite web |last=Brown |first=Eric Renner |date=2018-02-27 |title=Moby says new album explores 'who we are as a species' |url=https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/moby-says-album-explores-apos-151530255.html |access-date=2024-07-02 |website=Yahoo Entertainment |language=en-US}}

The poem is quoted extensively in a number of books, including Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s political manifesto The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949),{{Cite web |last=Spark |first=Clare L. |title=Arthur Schlesinger's Missing Vital Center |url=https://www.hnn.us/article/arthur-schlesingers-missing-vital-center |access-date=2024-07-02 |website=History News Network |language=en}} and Stephen King's novel The Stand (1978).

It is also quoted extensively in numerous films and TV shows, including the episode "Revelations" (1994) of Babylon 5,{{Cite book |last1=Guffey |first1=Ensley F. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NGW1DgAAQBAJ&q=babylon+5+revelations+yeats&pg=PT123 |title=A Dream Given Form: The Unofficial Guide to the Universe of Babylon 5 |last2=Dale Koontz |first2=K. |date=19 September 2017 |publisher=ECW Press |isbn=9781773050508}} the director's cut of Nixon (1995),{{cite web |last1=Williams |first1=Tony |date=2 September 2014 |title=Nixon – Oliver Stone's Rough Beast Slouching |url=https://filmint.nu/nixon-oliver-stones-rough-beast-slouching/ |website=Film International}} multiple episodes including "The Second Coming" (2007) of The Sopranos,{{cite book |title=The Essential Sopranos Reader |date=2011 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |editor-last=Lavery |editor-first=David |page=75 |editor-last2=Howard |editor-first2=Douglas L. |editor-last3=Levinson |editor-first3=Paul}} the last episode of Devs (2020),{{Cite news |last=Lynskey |first=Dorian |date=2020-05-30 |title='Things fall apart': the apocalyptic appeal of WB Yeats's The Second Coming, |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/30/things-fall-apart-the-apocalyptic-appeal-of-wb-yeats-the-second-coming |access-date=2024-02-01 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}} and the episode "The Queen's Speech" (2021) of See.{{cite web |last=Wilson |first=Jonathon |date=2021-10-08 |title=See season 2, episode 7 recap – "The Queen's Speech" |url=https://readysteadycut.com/2021/10/08/see-season-2-episode-7-recap-the-queens-speech/ |accessdate=2021-09-06 |work=Ready Steady Cut}}

{{Reflist}}

{{Wikisource|The Second Coming (Yeats)|"The Second Coming"}}

• {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/w-b-yeats/poetry|name=The collected public domain poetry of Yeats as an eBook|noitalics=true}}
• [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming Text (as originally published)]

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Category:1920 poems

Category:Poetry by W. B. Yeats

Category:Works originally published in The Dial