The first stanza of Yeat’s Second Coming brings up a picture of man lacking something utterly important to his being – “The Falcon cannot hear the falconer.” Moreover, this imagery is carried throughout the rest of the stanza – examples of this include: the negative phrases “innocence is drowned,” “lack conviction;” and also the only “fullness” being attributed to those who are the “worst.” Through Yeats’ word choices, the reader begins to join in the story. Not only is he hearing of the falcon being without a falconer, but he himself beings to personally feel the inadequacy and incompleteness of the world that is being described.
Now, it is the beginning of the second stanza, Yeat’s is audience is left wondering. He must offer some resolution, so what does he do? This stanza brings up an idea normally associated with hope, the “second coming,” but instead of elevating such a thing as divine and resolute, instead of the great exuberance with which it began, the second stanza quickly fades into the despair of the first.
“Hardly are those words out/ When a vast image of Spiritus Mundi/ Troubles my sight…”
This idea of the second coming is fearful, it “troubles.” Moreover, the “beast” of the second coming has a stare just as merciless as the hopeless fate of the falcon in the first stanza.
So we now move into the third stanza. Now, there is some sort of resolution to these lines, but it is of a rather peculiar sort. The situation does not change, the stanza begins, “the darkness drops again..,” but the difference here is that the speaker now “knows.” Whereas the first two stanzas were “pitiless,” “blank,” “anarchy,” now there is some order coming into sight. The speaker sees the end of a previous age, the “twenty centuries” that were “vexed to nightmare by a mocking cradle” and the beginning of a new one, the age of the “rough beast.” It is interesting though the somber and almost gloomy tone which the author takes towards this beast, towards this ‘thing’ that is going to replace the old, anarchical, hopeless age. This beast does not swoop in, or overthrow, rather he (almost begrudgingly it would seem) “slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.”
Why is a slouching, rough, pitiless thing the only resolution offered in this poem? What is this beast?
I commented on Nick Hampton's "Poetry=Art"
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