"The Second Coming," a well-known poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

Yeats goes on to describe the chaos and threat of a change that he believed would occur in the year 2000. Note that William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, is generally regarded as one of the finest poets of the 20th Century.

Read the poem in your Elements of Literature textbook, p. 1201. Note the symbolism (a literary movement that began in France during the nineteenth century and advocated the use of highly personal symbols to suggest ideas, emotions and moods.) Make a chart.

Focus: Symbolism

Symbol / Representation/Meaning
gyre
falconer/falcon
mere anarchy
blood-dimmed tide

What words does Yeats use to describe "the Beast"? What do you see?

Read with a Purpose

What do you think Yeats foresees for the future?

Reading Skill: Visualizing Imagery

While reading, you noted descriptions of one of the poem's central images, the beast, in an idea web. Now, write a summary of what you see when you visualize the image of the beast described in the poem. Note some of the specific words that make this imagery especially vivid.

Literary Analysis

What do you think the poet means by the word "center" in line 3? What condition does the phrase "the center cannot hold" describe?

If you had to name one dominant emotion expressed by the speaker, what would it be?

The first two lines of the poem present the image of a falconer who is unable to limit the flight of his released falcon. How does this image help convey one of the poem's central themes?

Literary Skill: Irony

A discrepancy between what is expected and what happens is called "irony". How does the idea of the Second Coming become ironic in the second stanza? How is this irony frightening?

Vocabulary:

Match:

1.anarchya.troubled

2.convictionb.disorder

3.intensityc.great vigor

4.revelationsd.act of making known

5.vexede.firm belief

Enrichment

Extra Credit: Compare and contrast the Second Coming in Yeats' poem and in Revelations. With which do you agree?