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The word to The Second Coming by Yeats
The word to The Second Coming by Yeats
The word to The Second Coming by Yeats
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In "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats, Yeats uses allusions, symbols, and vivid imagery to convey his cynical and despondent tone about the new evil, corrupt, and immoral era following World War I.
Yeats begins the poem with an image of a "widening gyre" or a vortex of spiraling motion. This image immediately implies the chaos and disorder in a society that is spiraling wider and wider out of control and becoming more corrupt. Yeats elaborates on and supports this idea with "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold" and "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world" to further symbolize how the universe is collapsing with confusion and the absence of principles. Yeats also implies the danger and disaster to come with an image of a falcon who "cannot hear the falconer" to further illustrate suspense and danger that humanity is facing. This image also suggests that similar to the falcon that is flying around in a "widening gyre, society has wandered too far away from its morals and is doomed with curruption. Yeats continues his cynical tone with "everywhere the ceremony of innocenc...
When You are Old, by William Butler Yeats, represents and elderly woman reminiscing of her younger days. A past lover whispers to her as she looks through a photo album. Basically, Yeats is showing that as the woman gets older, she is alone, but she does not have to be lonely. She will always have her memories for companionship.
"The blood-dimmed tied is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned". As many currently see our society today, Yeats was in fear of what the future had in store, and felt it necessary to warn society of their abominable behavior. All of the good in the society has been taken over and overwhelmed by the horrible actions. No longer do ceremonies, or acts of kindness, take place, which Yeats believes is a direct effect of the loss of youth and innocence. "That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle". This quote from "The Second Coming" informs the society that if they do not begin to correct their transgressions against one another as a whole they will awake the anti-Christ. The anti-Christ will come to claim his Jesus and correct the predicament that they have gotten themselves in to.
William Yeats is deliberated to be among the best bards in the 20th era. He was an Anglo-Irish protestant, the group that had control over the every life aspect of Ireland for almost the whole of the seventeenth era. Associates of this group deliberated themselves to be the English menfolk but sired in Ireland. However, Yeats was a loyal affirmer of his Irish ethnicity, and in all his deeds, he had to respect it. Even after living in America for almost fourteen years, he still had a home back in Ireland, and most of his poems maintained an Irish culture, legends and heroes. Therefore, Yeats gained a significant praise for writing some of the most exemplary poetry in modern history
The various levels of interpretation that a poet, such as W.B.Yeats, welcomes to his poems is difficult to grasp upon first reading his poetry. What appears to be a straight forward poem, such as, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, is actually an intellectual cultural criticism of Yeats’ modern day society. The poem, written as a testament to Lady Gregory’s son, captures the innermost concerns and perceptions of an Irish airman in World War I. However, through Yeats’ sentimental and poetic style, the poem incorporates a double meaning, and hence, focuses on Irish nationalism and its lack of an international consciencesness. The airman is Ireland personified, and his outlook on war and society is a window into the desolate situation that Ireland faces.
In “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop” Yeats employs two themes, the theme of good versus evil, and the theme of sexuality. He conveys the theme of good versus evil through the Bishop’s statements in the first stanza, as well as J...
Yeats opens his poem with a doom-like statement. He states "Turning and turning in the widening gyre." This enhances the cyclic image that Yeats is trying to portray. Here, Y...
'Thing fall apart the centre cannot hold' is a line in W.B Yeats poem 'The Second Coming' because of its stunning, violent imagery and terrifying ritualistic language, "The Second Coming" is one of Yeats's most famous poems, its set in a world on the threshold of apocalypse must like the three texts. The texts 'Henry IV Part 2' by William Shakespeare, 'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood and the poem 'The Waste Land' by T.S Eliot deals with the topic of disintegration of and within civilisation. The authors each explore this disintegration with their own medium, Shakespeare through a play, Eliot a poem and Atwood a novel, despite the differences in form all three texts contain similarities in content, exploring conflict in gender, the role of power and religious influences.
The book Things Fall Apart , by Chinua Achebe , is very similar to the poem , The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats.
To begin, the poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, uses the lake Innisfree to send a symbolic message. Yeats begins by telling us where it is he is leaving to. “I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made…” (Pg. 1141, lines 1-2) Once he tells us of where he is going, he then uses lake as a symbol to describe his place of peace and serenity. “And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, dropping from the viels of the morning to where the cricket sings; there midnights all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, and evenin...
In William Butler Yeats' poem, "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," he focuses on man's inner nature. He touches on the many jumbled thoughts that must race through one's mind at the point when they realize that their death is inevitable. In this poem, these thoughts include the airman's believed destination after leaving Earth, his feelings about his enemies and his supporters, his memories of home, his personal reasons for being in the war and, finally, his view of how he has spent his life. Through telling the airman's possible final thoughts, Yeats shows that there is a great deal more to war than the political disputes between two opposing forces and that it causes men to question everything they have ever known and believed.
Though written only two years after the first version of "The Shadowy Waters", W.B. Yeats' poem "Adam's Curse" can be seen as an example of a dramatic transformation of Yeats' poetic works: a movement away from the rich mythology of Ireland's Celtic past and towards a more accessible poesy focused on the external world. Despite this turn in focus towards the world around him, Yeats retains his interest in symbolism, and one aspect of his change in style is internalization of the symbolic scheme that underlies his poetry. Whereas more mythological works like "The Shadowy Waters" betray a spiritual syncretism not unlike that of the Golden Dawn, "Adam's Curse" and its more realistic fellows offer a view of the world in which symbolic systems are submerged, creating an undercurrent of meaning which lends depth to the outward circumstances, but which is itself not immediately accessible to the lay or academic reader. In a metaphorical sense, then, Yeats seems in these later poems to achieve a doubling of audience, an equivocation which addresses the initiate and the lay reader simultaneously.
Both William Butler Yeats' "Second Coming" and T.S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi" present a renewal process, but each one focuses on different goals and subjects; Eliot on a particular person's transformation, whereas Yeats predicts a renovation of the entire world as a result of an escalation of chaos. And while Yeats attempts to present a definite picture of what he believes will happen at the time of this renovation, as a human being, lack of foresight leaves him to conclude with nothing more than an unanswerable question. Eliot, on the other hand, uses ambiguity to support and develop his theme: death is the way to rebirth. But for Eliot this rebirth, which must be necessarily obscure, is full of doubt, accompanied by pain, and extremely perplexing to the newly-born (www.fgcu* 6). Eliot utilizes a vague diction and imagery, and his narrative tone progresses to philosophical and doubtful discourse. In contrast, Yeats maintains a pessimistic tone created by his futility on the bleak situation toward which the world proceeds. As opposed to projecting an inevitable and pessimistic demise of the Christian era and a renewal of the world as Yeats does in his poem, "Second Coming," Eliot presents the renewal of a Magus, his way of life and beliefs as a result of the birth of the Christian era.
One of Yeats' major symbols, the "widening gyre", is used systemically to show the destruction of the current civilization and the emergence of a new one. The continuing "turning and turning" of the gyre (line 1) illustrates the last breath of a period of history and its plunge into a new repressive world. Additionally, the widening of the tornado-like gyre parallels the intensity of the old world's present chaos. As the spiral of the gyre grows, the falcon (line 2) flies higher and higher where it can no longer hear its master, thus signaling the crumbling of the natural order of the world. The "center [of the gyre] can no longer hold." The symbolic occurrence of the gyre's ongoing function further shows to replenish itself by the arrival of the "rough beast" which marks the beginning of the new era. Furthermore, the hovering of the "indignant desert birds" symbolizes the formation of the new gyre, which begins as a small compact spiral, just as the previous one once was. Consequently, the desert birds are present ...
This refrain enforces his disgust at the type of money hungry people that the Irish have become. In the third and fourth stanza, however, Yeats completely changes the tone of his poetry. He praises the romantics of Irish history, such as Rob...
John Keats employs word choices and word order to illustrate his contemplative and sympathetic tone. The tone could be interpreted as pessimistic and depressing because the majority of the poem focuses on Keats’ fear of death. However, if the reader views the last two lines of the poem in light which brings redemption, one might see that Keats merely wants to express the importance of this dominant fear in his life. He does not desire for his audience to focus on death, but to realize that man does not have control of when it comes. The poet uses poetic diction, a popular technique of the early nineteenth century. The poem also demonstrates formal diction that Keats is often known for. Although Keats meant for most of his words to interpret with denotative meanings, he does present a few examples of allusion and connotation. His connotations include “teeming,” defined as plen...