The Second Coming

This poem by W.B. Yeats is one of my favorites; I love the language, the imagery, and the allusions.  That said, it is an often-misunderstood poem; The Second Coming, from the title loosely refers to Christ’s second coming, but also to the coming of the Spiritus Mundi (the spirit of the world). It describes a fallen world where “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”  It describes a world without Christ, where folks do what is right in their own eyes.  Still, I think the poem offers hope; the hope of Christ’s return; the hope of His justice and redemption of the fallen world.

Read the poem several times. What stands out to you?  What questions do you have?  Do you think the poem offers any hope?  How?


The Second Coming
W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
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
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.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel 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,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


Grace Discipleship: Pray Grace Church leaders


Click on the list of Grace Church leaders and pray for them each by name.