ELA 20-1 (AT-MB)

ELA 20-1 Poetry Unit: The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats

W.B. Yeats wrote this poem after watching the destructive behavior of humanity after WWI. You will read and interpret its meaning and discover the connection with THINGS FALL APART by Chinua Achebe

Vocabulary Define the following words and phrases:

1. gyre:

2. anarchy:

3. vex: 

4. What do you think “the second coming” is referring to?

5. What is the “Spiritus Mundi”

The Second Coming  by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre 1

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 5

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand. 10

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, 15

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, 20

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

1.  How do you respond to the final image in lines 13 - 22? What images and emotions does it evoke?

2.  Why do you think the speaker says that “the best lack conviction” while the worst are “full of passionate intensity”?

3.  What do you think is the “rough beast” in Yeats’ poem?  What do you predict will happen when it is born?

4.  What kind of mood does Yeats create in this poem?

5.  Why did Achebe choose to title his novel with a phrase from this poem?