The Second Coming: Key Poetic Devices

Allusion

An allusion (uh-LOO-zhun) is a passing reference to a literary or historical person, place, or event, often made without explicit identification. Yeats’s poem is packed with allusions, starting with the title. The phrase “Second Coming” refers to the prophesied return of Christ at the Last Judgment. However, for Yeats the Second Coming marks the beginning of a new world order rather than the apocalypse foretold in the biblical Book of Revelation. He makes this clear at the end of the poem, where the speaker prophesies that some “rough beast . . . Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born” (lines 21–22). Bethlehem is the historical birthplace of Christ. The rough beast’s imminent birth is thus presented not as the end of the world so much as the birth of a new era in which the rough beast will replace Christ as the dominant figure. In other words, Yeats’s use of the phrase “Second Coming” at once alludes to Christian theology and redefines it.

In addition to these allusions to Christianity, Yeats makes several historical references. In lines 4–8, for instance, he alludes to the Russian Revolution, which had taken place in 1917, just two years before he wrote this poem:

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

The allusion here is admittedly opaque, but the speaker’s reference to “anarchy,” “the blood-dimmed tide,” and “the ceremony of innocence” all powerfully conjure the Revolution’s tumultuous violence. The speaker also alludes to the famous sphinx monument that still stands near the pyramids at Giza in Egypt. The speaker imagines that the “rough beast” takes the shape of this mythological creature: “A shape with lion body and the head of a man” (line 14). Finally, the speaker references Yeats’s own personal theory of history. The notion of the “Spiritus Mundi” mentioned in line 12 refers to Yeats’s belief that every person’s mind is linked to a vast intelligence. He called this intelligence the Spiritus Mundi, or “world spirit.” His reference to “the widening gyre” in line 1 alludes to a connected idea, in which history cycles through periods that contrast radically from one another. This contrast is determined by the contrary motions of two metaphysical “gyres.”

Repetition

Repetition occurs at several points in “The Second Coming.” Yeats uses two types of repetition. One type is known as diacope (die-ACK-uh-pee), which involves the recurrence of the same word or phrase, separated by one or more words. The poem opens with an example of diacope: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre” (line 1). Another example of diacope appears in lines 4–5:

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

A final pair of examples may be found in lines 9–11:

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming!

This same passage also includes the poem’s sole instance of a second type of repetition, known as epistrophe (eh-PISS-struh-fee). Epistrophe involves the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive clauses or sentences. Here, the repetition of the phrase “at hand” at the end of lines 9 and 10 furnishes an example of epistrophe. (Incidentally, the recurrence of “hand” at the end of each line also happens to form an example of what’s known as identical rhyme.) Taken together, these examples of repetition give the poem’s language a prophetic quality. The recurrence of words and phrases communicates the speaker’s sense of certainty and urgency about what’s to come.

Rhetorical Question

Rhetorical questions aren’t generally meant to be answered. Rather, writers use them to make a point or create a dramatic effect. Only one rhetorical question appears in “The Second Coming,” but its placement at the poem’s end makes it significant. Lines 21–22 bring the poem to its unsettling conclusion:

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

If these lines have an unsettling effect, it’s because the speaker’s use of a question here has ominous implications. Their question is rhetorical because the speaker leaves it hanging and unanswered. We readers are therefore left to consider its meaning for ourselves. That said, the speaker has already offered several images designed to feed our imaginations with terrible visions. They began by telling us that “mere anarchy [has been] loosed upon the world” (line 4) and prophesying that “the Second Coming is at hand” (10). Then they sketch a terrifying image of a sphinx-like creature emerging from the sands of Egypt. It is this creature that now “slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.” Yet even as the speaker describes this beast, they also introduce a question about what its birth will mean for the world. It is this question they leave us readers to ponder.

Sibilance

Sibilance is a special type of consonance. The term consonance refers to the repetition of consonant sounds. By extension, sibilance refers to the specific repetition of the hissing sound associated with the letter S. Sibilant sounds are remarkably common throughout “The Second Coming.” Consider lines 4–8, which contains an abundance of both voiced and unvoiced /S/ sounds:

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

This passage also contains two /SH/ sounds, as in the words “conviction” and “passionate.” The following lines further intensify the presence of sibilant /S/ and /SH/ sounds (lines 9–13):

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight

These and other examples of sibilance in the poem may be interpreted in relation to the poem’s dominant Christian references. The speaker envisions the end of the Christian era, which is signaled by the arrival of some “rough beast” (line 21). Though the speaker associates this beast with the mythical creature known as a sphinx, the ubiquitous /S/ sounds evoke the hissing of a snake. In the Christian worldview, the snake is symbolically connected to the fallen angel Satan. Satan famously assumed the form of a snake to infiltrate the Garden of Eden and tempt Adam and Eve into disobeying God. The poem’s sibilance has an unsettlingly Satanic quality that creates a subtle sense of foreboding.

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