The Second Coming: Structure

Previous Next

“The Second Coming” consists of two stanzas. The first stanza describes the dire conditions of the present, which is characterized by instability, violence, and apathy. The speaker’s analysis demonstrates their sense that some kind of social, political, and spiritual upheaval is already in process. They explicitly confirm this sense of upheaval in the opening lines of the second stanza (lines 9–10):

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

With these lines, the speaker turns their attention from the present moment to the future. The speaker then offers a speculative vision of what is to come as a result of the present cataclysm. This vision is foreboding and ambiguous. Its foreboding quality comes from the speaker’s description of a sphinx-like “rough beast” (line 21) that awakens from its twenty-century slumber and rises out of the desert. The fact that this beast “slouches towards Bethlehem to be born” (line 22) indicates that it will replace Christ as the key symbolic figure of a new age—possibly through violent means. Yet the speaker’s vision is incomplete. Indeed, they are either unable or unwilling to speculate about what the new world order might look like under the rough beast’s reign. As such, their sense of the future remains ambiguous.

The two stanzas of “The Second Coming” are unequal in length, the first being eight lines and the second being fourteen. These numbers will have significance for students of the sonnet. The fourteen lines of the second stanza will stand out in particular, since that’s the standard number of lines for any type of sonnet. With this in mind, it’s also curious to note that the eight lines of the first stanza might be likened to the eight-line octave that opens a traditional Italian sonnet. These stanzas’ resemblance to sonnets is admittedly minimal. After all, key to the internal organization of a sonnet is some kind of strict rhyme scheme, which “The Second Coming” clearly lacks. But despite how minimal it may be, the resemblance to the sonnet is significant for the poem’s structure. The first stanza’s emphasis on upheaval is reflected in its formal incompleteness: that is, it breaks off after the opening octave, signaling a collapse of form. In the second stanza, however, as the speaker announces the coming of a new world order, this announcement is reflected in a “complete” sonnet form. Though consisting of the expected fourteen lines, its newness is marked by its refusal to rhyme.