"The Second Coming"

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" (1123)

William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming" is as confusing as it is provocative. It contains vibrant imagery, although it is difficult for the reader to picture what Yeats actually intended for us to perceive. The first stanza gives us an image of a "gyre" or spiral, swirling around and around. Where is this gyre? Is it of the world, or is it somewhere else? We can assume that it must be of the world since it discusses it's inhabitants: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." This gyre, which seems to be the force that is continually holding things together, has finally lost its momentum and is now failing to support its inhabitants. When such a thing happens, the speaker begins to assume that a "second coming" is upon us.

At first thought, the reader can assume that Yeats speaks of the second coming of Jesus Christ. However, the description of the "messiah" seems very different from the common perception of Christ. The speaker describes it as a "rough beast." Christ, a beast? We begin to wonder if Yeats has any intention of this poem having even the slightest religious slant. After reading the poem completely, we see that this is supposed to speak to something much less organized than the church.

The scene that Yeats describes is chaos. We do not see any real human reaction to this "second coming" other than the speaker himself. He talks about some of the "people" in the scene, but does not explain how they feel about this "second coming." In fact, the speaker himself hardly explains his impressions of the "second coming." All he/she reveals is this : "The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out when a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi troubles my sight." The reading gives a footnote explaining that "Spiritus Mundi" is a "notion of the collective unconsciousness." Is this supposed to imply that the speaker is the only one who is aware of this Second Coming?

If the rest of the world is unconscious to what is going on, and the speaker is the only one who sees it, how can we really know that the poem implies that this is happening to the world? At this point, we can't rule out the idea that the Second Coming is actually happening in the speaker's own mind.

Is the Second Coming really the returning of a Messiah at all? The turbulent imagery of a Sphinx moving across the desert, a stone statue moving itself, maybe alludes to something other than an apocalyptic revelation. Could the Second Coming not be some sort of awakening, some sort of shift in thinking that causes one to believe that the world really is ending? Did the speaker have a "moment?"

Although this poem is extremely difficult to understand, it still seems very apparent that this "event' happens within the mind of one person. However, we can also wonder if it really is happening everywhere, but only one person (the speaker) is aware of it. Imagine, a real apocalyptic Second Coming, and no one can really see it.