What is The Second Coming according to Yeats?
Yet for all its metaphorical complexity, “The Second Coming” actually has a relatively simple message: it basically predicts that time is up for humanity, and that civilization as we know it is about to be undone. Yeats wrote this poem right after World War I, a global catastrophe that killed millions of people.
What does the term Spiritus Mundi in The Second Coming mean?
Definition of Spiritus Mundi Spiritus Mundi is a Latin term that literally means, ”world spirit. ” In Spiritus Mundi, there is, according to William Butler Yeats, ”a universal memory and a ‘muse’ of sorts that provides inspiration to the poet or writer.
How is The Second Coming a prophet poem?
As the title of the poem suggests, Yeats poem is a prophetic poem that clearly shows Christ’s second return to the earth after the world has been engulfed in sin and sorrow.
What does the falcon symbolize in The Second Coming?
Symbolism of The Gyre Yeats opens “The Second Coming” with an image of a falcon escaping the falconer, swinging outward in a “widening gyre” — a term Yeats coined to describe a circular path or pattern. As the falcon flies in great arcs away from the falconer, so the world spins out of control.
What is the rough beast in The Second Coming?
Of great significance in Yeats’ poem is the “rough beast,” apparently the Anti-Christ, who has not been born yet. And most problematic is that the rough beast is “slouch[ing] towards Bethlehem to be born.” The question is, how can such an Anti-Christian creature be slouching if it has not yet been born?
What beast slouches towards Bethlehem?
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? This poem is in the public domain. William Butler Yeats, widely considered one of the greatest poets of the English language, received the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature.
What does the Centre Cannot hold mean?
It means chaos is descending upon the world; the forces that should bring order are failing to do so. It is a phrase borrowed from military battlefield. It is a line from a poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War.
What is Sphinx in The Second Coming?
The Sphinx The sphinxlike creature described in the poem symbolizes both destruction and rebirth. It also symbolizes the pagan world that predated the Christian era.
What does the center Cannot hold mean?
That “the center cannot hold” is an ironic reference to both the imminent collapse of the African tribal system, threatened by the rise of imperialist bureaucracies, and the imminent disintegration of the British Empire.