"The Second Coming" is a poem written by Irish poet W. B. Yeats in 1919, first printed in The Dial in November 1920, and afterwards included in his 1921 collection of verses Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and Second Coming allegorically to describe the atmosphere of post-war Europe. The poem is considered a major work of Modernist poetry and has been reprinted in several collections, including The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.
Historical context
Dominic West reads "The Second Coming" by WB Yeats | A Fanatic Heart: Geldof on Yeats, RTE One - See more at: http://www.rte.ie/player "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world..." Dominic West reads "The Second Coming" by WB Yeats. "A Fanatic...
The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence that followed the Easter Rising, at a time before the British Government 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.
Influence
Phrases and lines from the poem are used in many works. Several novels, songs, TV episodes, and albums draw their title from "The Second Coming" (e.g. Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, Elyn Saks's 2007 autobiography The Center Cannot Hold, Joan Didion's 1968 essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem and Robert B. Parker's 1983 Novel The Widening Gyre).
A 2016 analysis by Factiva showed that lines from the poem were quoted more often in the first seven months of 2016 than in any of the preceding 30 years in the context of political turmoil after the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump's election with commentators repeatedly invoking its lines: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
References
External links
- Text and brief analysis
- "The Second Coming" in the context of A Vision
