W. B. Yeats' "The Second Coming" is one of the most misunderstood and overrated poems ever anthologized. It could have used at least one more revision.
The ludicrous image of a fetus “slouching” toward a geographical location “to be born” is never acknowledged by critics, but it is a serious flaw that simply completes the other serious flaw in Yeats’ misunderstanding of the true meaning the Second Coming.
First Stanza: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre”
In the first stanza of W. B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” the speaker is bemoaning the world situation. The speaker is saying that things are getting bad, and he attempts to provide some examples and analyses. “Things” are falling apart, because the center cannot hold them together.
It is like a falconer who has lost control of his falcon, who is circling upward in ever-widening circles so far away from the falconer that the bird cannot hear his instructions any longer. Governments are being toppled, and bloody revolutions are killing people. Ordinary life is “drowned” in all that blood.
Then the speaker makes the observation that “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” This complaint is a universal one, and every period of history is filled with this phenomenon. But, of course, this claim is an exaggeration: not all the best “lack all conviction” and not all the worst “are full of passionate intensity.”
Second Stanza: “Surely some revelation is at hand”
The speaker then muses on the idea that such turbulent times must be heralding in some dramatic upheaval, and he calls it “some revelation,” but then he lands on the idea of the “Second Coming.” But the notion of the “Second Coming” is so disturbing to him that he retreats from its implications, that is, its Christian implications.
This speaker has concocted a cache of images, “Spiritus Mundi,” which he feels better satisfies his radical notion of how the world is made, so instead of musing on the return of the Christ, his mind selects the Egyptian sphinx.
Then in a pure flight of fantasy, the speaker imagines that instead of the “Second Coming,” which is a well-known prophesy, entailing a return of virtue and Godliness, the revelation he envisions is possibly something quite the opposite. Instead of Christ returning, this speaker wonders “what rough beast” might appear. Perhaps instead of Christ, an anti-Christ will appear.
Commentary
The profundity of this poem has been greatly exaggerated. Yeats’ statement on poetics, which he called A Vision, has been widely analyzed. Serious critics take it seriously, when, in fact, the work is delusional, and this poem is never analyzed on it own merits without resorting to some sort of attempt to explain Yeats’ theory of the gyres.
Only two points need to be made to dismiss this Yeatsian fallacy: (1) He got the positioning of the gyres wrong; instead of intersecting, they should be stacked, with the small ends meeting. That way the explanation of historical cycles would be closer to the accurate explanation of the Yugas as described by Sri Yukteswar in The Holy Science. (2) Regarding “The Second Coming,” Yeats demonstrates that he did not understand the true meaning of the phenomenon. Instead of Christ as Jesus returning to earth, the Second Coming refers to the individual soul of each practicing devotee becoming God-realized.
Yeats’ reference to the Second Coming obviously alludes to the misconception of the phrase; that is why he implies that some “rough beast” might be in the offing. But notice that this “rough beast” is not yet born. The Second Coming of Christ is usually explained as a return of Jesus already born, not being reborn as an infant.
But the speaker surmises that this “rough beast” “[s]louches towards Bethlehem to be born.” How can it be slouching toward a geographical location, if it is not yet born? The mother carrying the fetus could be slouching toward Bethlehem, but the fetal “rough beast” simply could not.
