The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats: poem analysis & meaning

The Second Coming the full poem, lines numbered

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,

5The 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;

10Surely 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: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

15A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

20Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The poem in 60 seconds

Yeats wrote this poem in 1919, in the aftermath of the First World War and amid the Russian Revolution and unrest in Ireland. In 22 lines it moves from a picture of a world spinning out of control to a nightmare vision of what may come next. Its third line gave Chinua Achebe the title of his 1958 novel, Things Fall Apart.

A falcon flies in wider and wider circles until it can no longer hear the falconer who controls it. The speaker says things are falling apart and the center cannot hold. Anarchy is loose in the world, a blood-dimmed tide is spreading, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best people lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. In the second verse paragraph the speaker declares that some revelation, the Second Coming, must be near. The moment he says the words, a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi troubles his sight. Somewhere in the desert, a shape with a lion’s body and a man’s head, its gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, moves its slow thighs while the shadows of angry desert birds reel around it. Then darkness falls again. The speaker says he now knows that twenty centuries of stony sleep were turned to nightmare by a rocking cradle. He ends by asking what rough beast, its hour come at last, is slouching toward Bethlehem to be born.

Speaker & situation

SpeakerAn unnamed, prophetic voice, often read as Yeats himself. He first describes a world falling into chaos, then reports a vision he has had.

Addressed toNo one in particular. The poem speaks to the reader like a public warning.

OccasionThe disorder that followed the First World War. Yeats wrote the poem in 1919, amid the Russian Revolution and unrest in Ireland, though the poem names none of these events.

SettingThe first verse paragraph has no fixed place and could describe any society. The vision in the second is set “somewhere in sands of the desert” (line 13), and the poem ends with the creature moving “towards Bethlehem” (line 22).

ToneAlarmed and grim in lines 1–8, then awed and full of dread as the vision unfolds, ending in uncertainty.

Form & sound

FormLoose blank verse; unrhymed lines with a five-beat pulse that often settles into iambic pentameter and often breaks from it, set in two verse paragraphs of 8 and 14 lines. Some guides label it free verse because the meter is so irregular.

MeterMost lines carry five stresses, but they range from ten syllables (line 3) to twelve and thirteen (lines 13 and 14), and the stresses shift freely. A few lines are regular iambic pentameter, such as line 18, “The darkness drops again; but now I know”.

Rhyme schemeUnrhymed. Lines 9 and 10 both end on “at hand”, which works as repetition rather than rhyme.

StructureTwo verse paragraphs. Lines 1–8 describe a present collapse in general terms. Lines 9–22 announce a revelation, report a vision, and end on the poem’s only question mark.

SoundBlunt, heavy words carry the violence of lines 4–6: “loosed”, “blood-dimmed tide”, “drowned”. Near the end, the s-sounds of “stony sleep” (line 19) and “Slouches” (line 22) slow the poem to the creature’s pace.

Line by line what each part says and does

1

Lines 1–8

Things fall apart

A falcon circles wider and wider until it can no longer hear the falconer. The speaker says things are falling apart: anarchy and a blood-dimmed tide are loose, the ceremony of innocence is drowned, and the best lack conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

How it worksThe first verse paragraph names no country or event, so it reads as a general picture of collapse. The falcon image sets the pattern: a bond of control stretched until it breaks.
2

Lines 9–13

A revelation promised

The speaker declares that some revelation, the Second Coming, must be at hand. As soon as he says the words, a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi troubles his sight, somewhere in the sands of the desert.

How it worksThe doubled “Surely” sounds like confident prophecy and raises the hope of Christ’s return. Spiritus Mundi is Latin for “spirit of the world”; Yeats used the phrase for a shared store of images that belongs to no single mind, so the vision seems to come from outside the speaker.
3

Lines 14–17

The shape in the desert

The vision shows a shape with a lion’s body and a man’s head, its gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun. It moves its slow thighs while the shadows of indignant desert birds reel around it.

How it worksThe creature resembles a sphinx, though the poem never uses that word. Its blank gaze makes it feel like a force without feeling, and the angry, circling birds suggest that nature itself is disturbed.
4

Lines 18–22

The rough beast

The darkness drops again and the vision ends. The speaker says he now knows that twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, and he asks what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.

How it worksMany readers take the cradle as Christ’s, so the twenty centuries match the Christian era, which now seems to be ending. The poem closes on a question: the speaker is sure an age is over but not sure what the next one will be.

The turn

Lines 9

The poem turns at line 9, where the second verse paragraph begins. Lines 1–8 describe collapse in general terms. From “Surely” onward the speaker expects a revelation, and the phrase “the Second Coming” raises the hope of Christ’s return. What appears instead is a pitiless creature in the desert. A second, smaller turn comes at line 18, when the vision fades and the speaker says “but now I know”.

Literary devices with line numbers

Symbolism

In lines 1–2 the falcon flies in an ever-widening spiral until it “cannot hear the falconer”. The broken link between the bird and its handler stands for a world that has lost touch with whatever once guided it and held it together.

Metaphor

Line 5 calls the violence “The blood-dimmed tide”, a flood darkened with blood that has been “loosed”. Line 6 extends the water image: “The ceremony of innocence is drowned”. One reading is that the customs and rituals that once expressed innocence are swept under.

Antithesis

Lines 7–8 set “The best” against “the worst” and “lack all conviction” against “full of passionate intensity”. The paired opposites sum up a crisis in which good people hesitate while dangerous people act with force.

Anaphora and epistrophe

Lines 9 and 10 both begin with “Surely” and both end with “is at hand”. The doubled pattern sounds like confident prophecy. Line 11 then repeats “The Second Coming!” as an exclamation, just before the vision interrupts and overturns that confidence.

Allusion

The title and line 10 allude to the Christian belief that Christ will return. Lines 20–22 point back to his birth with the “rocking cradle” and “Bethlehem”. The poem turns the expected return into the birth of a “rough beast” (line 21), a dark reversal of the Christian story.

Simile

In line 15 the creature has “A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun”. The comparison makes its look impersonal and merciless, like a force of nature rather than a mind. Together with its “lion body and the head of a man” (line 14), it gives the coming power an ancient, inhuman face.

Themes in The Second Coming

The collapse of orderHistory as a cycleRevelation turned to dreadConviction and violence

The collapse of order

Lines 1–8 picture a world coming apart: the falcon lost to its falconer, the center failing, anarchy and bloodshed loose everywhere. Because the poem names no event, the collapse reads as a condition of the whole age.

History as a cycle

The poem imagines history turning. The “widening gyre” of line 1, the “twenty centuries” of line 19 and the beast whose “hour” has “come round at last” in line 21 all suggest that one age is ending and another is due. Yeats built his own theory of history around such cycles, but the poem’s images carry the idea without it.

Revelation turned to dread

The speaker expects “the Second Coming” (line 10), a promise of salvation in Christian belief. The revelation he receives is a blank, pitiless creature moving toward Bethlehem. The poem takes the language of hope and fills it with fear.

Conviction and violence

Lines 7–8 describe a world where the best people “lack all conviction” and the worst are “full of passionate intensity”. The poem suggests that when decent people lose certainty, energy passes to those who are violent.

Images and symbols

The widening gyre (line 1)

A gyre is a spiral. Here the falcon’s widening spiral shows motion spinning out of control. Yeats used interlocking gyres in his own system as a picture of historical cycles, later set out in A Vision (1925), but the image works without that background.

The falcon and the falconer (lines 1–2)

A trained falcon returns to its handler’s call. A falcon that can no longer hear that call stands for authority, faith or tradition losing its hold.

The rough beast (lines 21–22)

The poem never says what the beast is, and critics read it differently. Some see a coming age of violence and tyranny, others a kind of Antichrist, others the political upheavals of Yeats’s own time, and others simply the next era in a cycle, one the speaker cannot yet understand.

Bethlehem and the rocking cradle (lines 20–22)

Bethlehem is the birthplace of Christ in the Gospels, and the cradle recalls his birth. The poem makes the same place the destination of a new and frightening birth.

Patterns

Circling and returning. The poem is full of turning motion: “Turning and turning” and the “widening gyre” (line 1), the bird shadows that “Reel” (line 17), and the beast’s hour that has “come round at last” (line 21). The circles suggest that history repeats in great turns.

Tensions

Order vs. anarchy. The first verse paragraph shows the forces that once held the world together, the falconer and the center, giving way to anarchy and bloodshed.

Hope vs. dread. The speaker reaches for the Christian hope of the Second Coming, but the vision he receives brings dread instead of salvation.

The ending

How The Second Coming ends, explained

The vision ends in line 18, “The darkness drops again”, but the speaker says it has taught him something: “now I know / That twenty centuries of stony sleep / Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle”. The lines are compressed. Many readers take the stony sleep as the desert creature’s, lasting through the twenty centuries of the Christian era, and the rocking cradle as Christ’s cradle at Bethlehem, which turned that sleep into nightmare.

The poem closes with its only question: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” The phrase “its hour come round” suggests a cycle whose turn has arrived, which fits the turning gyre of line 1 and Yeats’s belief that history moves in great cycles. “Slouches” makes the creature heavy and ungainly, the opposite of a glorious return.

Critics read the beast in different ways. Some see a coming age of violence and tyranny, a dark answer to the hope named in the title. Others tie it to the upheavals around 1919. Others, drawing on Yeats’s own system, argue that he saw the next age as the reverse of the Christian one rather than as simple evil, so the horror may belong to a speaker standing at the end of the old age. Because the poem ends with a question mark, it does not settle the matter. The speaker is sure an era is ending and unsure what is being born.

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”

Line 3. Two short clauses sum up the whole first verse paragraph. Chinua Achebe took the title of his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart from this line.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”

Lines 7–8. The antithesis describes a crisis in which good people hesitate and violent people act.

“A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun”

Line 15. The simile makes the creature of the vision impersonal and merciless.

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

Lines 21–22. The closing question turns the place of Christ’s birth into the scene of a frightening new arrival and leaves the future unknown.

Common misreadings

MythThe poem describes the actual return of Christ.

ActuallyThe speaker expects “the Second Coming” (line 10), but the vision shows a “rough beast” (line 21) with a lion’s body and a man’s head (line 14). The title sets up a hope that the poem overturns.

MythThe poem is about one specific event, such as the Russian Revolution.

ActuallyYeats wrote it in 1919, after the First World War and amid the Russian Revolution and unrest in Ireland, but the poem names none of these. Its general language is part of why readers apply it to many later crises.

MythThe poem has no meter at all.

ActuallyIt is often labeled free verse, but it is closer to loose blank verse: unrhymed lines, most with five stresses, some in regular iambic pentameter, such as line 18, “The darkness drops again; but now I know”.

AP practice a poetry prompt in the exam's style

Read W. B. Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming” carefully. Then write an essay that analyzes how Yeats uses literary elements and techniques to convey a complex perspective on a world in crisis and the future it faces.

What a strong response notices

The falcon and falconer in lines 1–2 picture a breakdown of control that the rest of lines 1–8 widens to the whole world.
The antithesis in lines 7–8 contrasts the doubting “best” with the passionate “worst”.
Lines 9–11 repeat “Surely” and “the Second Coming”, building a hope that the vision in lines 12–17 overturns.
The simile in line 15 and the lion-bodied shape in line 14 make the coming power impersonal and pitiless.
The closing question in lines 21–22 leaves the future uncertain and turns Bethlehem, a place of holy birth, into a place of dread.

Practice prompt written by StoryBites, not taken from a College Board exam. See the AP Literature free-response guide for how answers are scored.

Test yourself

1. What can the falcon no longer do in line 2?

2. According to lines 7–8, how do “the best” and “the worst” differ?

3. What does the shape in the desert have?

4. Where is the rough beast heading at the end?

5. How does the poem end?

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Answer

Explain it like I’m 12

The poet looks at the world and feels that everything is falling apart. Good people have stopped being sure of anything, while bad people are full of fierce feeling. He expects a great sign from heaven. Instead he sees a scary vision of a desert creature with a lion’s body and a man’s head. It is moving slowly across the sand. The poet feels that two thousand years of history are coming to an end. The poem ends by asking what kind of monster is on its way to be born.

Compare & connect

Dover Beach

Matthew Arnold

Both poems look at a world losing its old certainties. Arnold turns to private love for comfort, while Yeats offers a frightening vision of what comes next.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Wilfred Owen

Owen shows the First World War up close, in a gas attack. Yeats looks at the disorder after that war from a distance, through symbols.

Ozymandias

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Both poems place a strange figure in the desert sand to think about how ages of power rise and pass.

Discussion and essay prompts:

💬 Discussion questions

What is The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats about
What does the rough beast symbolize in The Second Coming
What does the widening gyre mean in The Second Coming
How does The Second Coming explore the theme of the collapse of order?
How does The Second Coming explore the theme of history as a cycle?
What is the central conflict in The Second Coming, and how does it shape the ending?

✎ Essay prompts

Analyze how W. B. Yeats develops the theme of the collapse of order in The Second Coming. Support your argument with specific evidence from the text.
Examine the significance of the widening gyre (line 1) in The Second Coming. What does it represent, and how does it deepen the work’s meaning?
How does W. B. Yeats use symbolism to shape the reader’s experience of The Second Coming?
Some readers assume that the poem describes the actual return of Christ. Argue for or against this interpretation, using evidence from the text.

Key questions students ask

What is The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats about
What does the rough beast symbolize in The Second Coming
What does the widening gyre mean in The Second Coming
What is Spiritus Mundi in The Second Coming
What does the best lack all conviction mean
Where does the phrase things fall apart come from

Analysis is original StoryBites commentary. The poem is printed from W. B. Yeats’s Poetry as edited by Standard Ebooks. First published in 1920, it is in the public domain in the United States.