The Second Coming by Yeats: Meaning, Analysis & the Rough Beast

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" in 1919 — in the aftermath of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the Irish War of Independence. The poem captures the feeling of a world coming unglued. A century later, it still does.

Historical Context: 1919 and the Gyres

Yeats had a theory of history: civilization moves in 2,000-year cycles (gyres). One age ends; another begins. The Christian era, he thought, was ending. Something new — and terrifying — was being born. "The Second Coming" is his vision of that birth.

The Poem's Structure

Part 1 (lines 1–8): The falcon and the center. "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer." Control is lost. "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." Anarchy, blood-dimmed tide, innocence drowned.

Part 2 (lines 9–22): The vision. "A shape with lion body and the head of a man" — the rough beast — "slouches towards Bethlehem to be born." The Second Coming isn't Christ. It's the anti-Christ. Or something worse.

Key Literary Devices

Symbolism: The falcon = humanity, lost from its master (tradition, order). The rough beast = the new age, monstrous and inevitable. Bethlehem = irony. The birthplace of Christ becomes the birthplace of the beast.

Apocalyptic imagery: "Blood-dimmed tide," "ceremony of innocence drowned," "twenty centuries of stony sleep" — Yeats draws on Biblical and mythological language.

The closing line: "Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born" — "slouches" is the genius word. Not marches. Not rides. Slouches. Casual, inevitable, almost lazy. The horror is in the ordinariness.

The Meaning: History's Terrible Turn

Yeats isn't celebrating. He's witnessing. The poem captures the feeling of living through collapse — when the old order is gone and the new one is monstrous. Chinua Achebe took "Things fall apart" for his novel's title. The phrase has entered the language. The poem's power is its accuracy: sometimes the centre cannot hold.