From the title of W.B. Yeats poem, "The Second Coming", one might expect to read about the glorious return of Christ to save his followers. However, Yeats portrays a dismal world where anarchy reigns over the innocence of man. The passage portrays a dark and foreboding atmosphere that serves as a warning to what may lie ahead for humankind if we continue on our current path.
The poem appears to be written in free verse which adds to the poems references to "things falling apart" and "anarchy loosed upon the world." This lack of structure within the poem helps the reader feel as if they are a part of Yeats' condemned world.
Yeats uses this poem to show his views of the world and its "right" paths of science, democracy and heterogeneity which are now beginning to come apart. This is shown in the first stanza. The lines "The falcon cannot hear the falconer", "the center cannot hold" and "mere anarchy is loosed upon the world" show the disintegration of our society. He follows this with the description of a "blood-dimmed tide", which could represent war tearing apart our civil world. It seems Yeats wishes to show us that we are approaching an inevitable end to humanity as we know it.
In the second stanza, we are introduced to the second coming. However it does not appear to be the Savior for our problems. Instead Yates writes of a sphinx with a "blank and pitiless" gaze. Why Yeats chose this image to represent the coming of a new age seems mysterious. However, from this image, we now know that a change has been set in motion. The gaze of the sphinx could stand for how this new messiah will look upon its people. Next, we are presented with an image of darkness. Our world of the past appears to have given way to a new time. In the final line of the poem we are left with a question of what `rough beast' will be our second coming.
First of alll, the poem is divided into nine stanzas, where each one has four lines. In addition to that, one can spot a few enjambements for instance (l.9-10). This stylistic device has the function to support the flow of the poem. Furthermore, it is crucial to take a look at the choice of words, when analysing the language.
The poet begins by describing the scene to paint a picture in the reader’s mind and elaborates on how the sky and the ground work in harmony. This is almost a story like layout with a beginning a complication and an ending. Thus the poem has a story like feel to it. At first it may not be clear why the poem is broken up into three- five line stanzas. The poet deliberately used this line stanzas as the most appropriate way to separate scenes and emotions to create a story like format.
"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.
...eme in his writing. Although the previous poems mentioned only represent a small fraction of Yeats’ writings, it is easy to see this repetitive idea. In When You Are Old the man’s love is never changing, however the woman’s realization of this is constantly wavering. Then in the poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree he wants to change his life from chaos to peace, and the lake never changes. Then in The Wild Swans at Coole the birds are always there, but the seasons change. The Second Coming also represents how mankind changes, but God’s principles are never-wavering. And lastly Sailing to Byzantium portrays how monuments never change, but what they mean to the viewers will always change. Yeats knew that this was something that future generations would also face, and therefore his poem will forever last in history but the importance of it is up to the future generations.
Yeats views the world and civilization as a cycle: the world revolves on a two thousand year period, and restarts every two thousand years ("Twenty centuries . . . come round at last"). Yeats' view may lead to an initial response of the inescapableness of the world's end, and therefore no need for concern, but his pessimistic outlook results from society's...
In regard to the Nationalists, he incorporates traditional Irish characters, such as Fergus and the Druids, to create an Irish mythology and thereby foster a national Irish identity. After the division of the Cultural Nationalists, Yeats feels left behind by the movement and disillusioned with their violent, "foolish" methods. He is also repeatedly rejected by Gonne. These efforts to instigate change through poetry both fail, bringing the function of the poet and his poetry into question. If these unfruitful poems tempt him from his ?craft of verse,?
...tion between loneliness and death. The first three lines of each stanza in this poem generally have four feet, while the last line have only two or three. This change calls attention to the last line, in which Keats makes references to images.
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...
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.
This opposition shows Keats highlighting the delicate correspondence between happiness, death and melancholy having humanistic traits. In order to experience true sorrow, one must feel true joy to see the beauty of melancholy. However, Keats’s poem is not all dark imagery, for interwoven into this poem is an emerging possibility of resurrection and the chance at a new life. The speaker in this poem starts by strongly advising against the actions and as the poem continues urges a person to take different actions.
For hundreds of centuries, man has pondered what revelations or spiritual awakenings will occur in future's time. Poet William Yeats, has written, "The Second Coming," which foretells how the Second Coming brings horror and repression to the world. Yeats takes into speculation that the future will certainly bring further darkness than is already present in the current world. He employs various symbols and allusions to assert his claims of the world's ultimate demise. The purpose of these symbols and allusions make it possible to fully understand Yeats's point of view of the fall of our present civilization and the rise of a new civilization with a gloomy future.
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...
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...
To begin, Yeats uses the universal symbol of the night sky to symbolize unimportance and anonymity in his poem When You Are Old. This poem is about Yeats personal life. The whole point of this three stanza short poem is to make the girl he loved when he was young remember him when she grew older. Starting in line 1 and skipping to line 2, he says, “When you are old. . . And nodding by the fire, take down this book.” He put this poem in a book for her and her alone, as a profession of his love for her that cannot die. The symbol itself, however, is not a personal one but more a universal relator. In the last line of the poem, referring to her view of him and all of the other young men in her life, he says he “hid his face amid a crowd o...
Analysis of William Butler Yeats' Poems; When You Are Old, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Wild Swans at Coole, The Second Coming and Sailing to Byzantium