'The Second Coming': Yeats and the Apocalypse

In this week’s episode of "Beyond the Verse", brought to you by PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+, Joe and Maiya take a deep dive into William Butler Yeats’ apocalyptic poem 'The Second Coming'. They explore Yeats’ use of biblical allusions, the recurring themes of societal collapse, and his cyclical view of history, which reflects the chaos and uncertainty of the post-World War I era.

Join the discussion as Joe and Maiya dissect Yeats’ background, his views on revolution and change, and how The Second Coming captures a world on the brink of a new, ominous era. They explore the poem’s opening lines, the metaphor of the falcon and the falconer, and the chilling imagery of the “rough beast” slouching towards Bethlehem.

Get exclusive PDFs on 'The Second Coming' available to Poetry+ users:

• Full PDF Guide
• Poetry Snapshot PDF
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  • with Rhyme Scheme
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Some other useful PDFs as part of Poetry+:

• William Butler Yeats PDF Guide
• First World War Poets PDF Guide
• Irish Literary Revival PDF Guide

For more in-depth analysis of Yeats and his works, visit PoemAnalysis.com, where you can access a wide range of analyzed poems and resources in our extensive PDF Learning Library.

Tune in and Discover:

• Yeats’ apocalyptic vision in 'The Second Coming'
• The biblical and classical allusions in the poem
• How Yeats’ personal life and the political landscape shaped his work
• The unsettling relevance of 'The Second Coming'  in today’s world

Transcript

'The Second Coming': Yeats and the Apocalypse (Transcript)
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Joe: [00:00:00] 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.



Maiya: Hello and welcome to Beyond the Verse, a poetry podcast, brought to you by poemanalysis.com and Poetry+. Now, today we're talking about the poem The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats, otherwise known as W. B. Yeats. Now we're gonna be covering some really interesting talking points today. We'll look at biblical allusions in the poem, we'll look at societal collapse, and the sense of apocalypse that Yeats creates, as well as the cycles of history. So, Joe, can you tell us a little bit about Yeats background as a poet?

Joe: So, William Butler Yeats was born on the outskirts of Dublin in 1865, and for listeners who aren't aware, Ireland was under British rule in this [00:01:00] period. Now, Yeats's family is of Anglo Irish descent, and he was a Protestant, a Protestant minority in Ireland at the time. By the time that this poem is written in 1919 and published in 1920, Yeats had established himself as Ireland's premier writer.

He was a huge figure in the Irish literary revival, which sought to promote themes and ideas. ideas that were Irish as distinct from British. And just three or four years after this poem, he went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. And I mean, his legacy since speaks for itself. He is among the premier poets of all time, but certainly with regards to the 20th century, he is often held up as being one of the greatest poets of that century.

Now, I think to zoom in on the moment at which this poem was written, I think is vital if we're to understand the poem itself. So obviously Maiya and I are speaking, just over a hundred years after. This poem was written, and 1919 is really significant for a few reasons.

Firstly, it marks the end of the First World War, so the most brutal conflict that mankind had ever experienced [00:02:00] had just finished. 1919 also marks the beginning of the Irish War of Independence.

So, within a couple of years of this poem being written, Ireland had achieved independence and the Irish Free State was founded and Yeats went on to serve as a senator in the Irish Free State. It's also the year of the Spanish influenza, this disease that swept through the world and just for a sense of scale here. Just after the First World War, which had already claimed the lives of millions of people, 1 percent of the global population was wiped out by the Spanish Influenza. Now as a comparison point, and obviously these things are not just measured in numbers, but the numbers can be an interesting way of illustrating these things, Covid, I believe, wiped out less than a tenth of that, less than 0.

1 percent of the global population. So imagine something 10 times deadlier. and off the back of the First World War. So this is a period of immense soul searching. I mean, all of the rules that people thought had governed the world they were living in had been torn up. And many of our listeners will be listening to this after last week's episode on Rudyard Kipling's poem, If.

And I think Kipling [00:03:00] and Yeats are actually born in the same year, 1865. Yeats's poem could not be more different to Kipling's insofar as the sense of complacency, the sense of entitlement, the sense of confidence in the world that is evoked in it is completely gone here. This poem is a poem of absolute uncertainty, but Maiya, I mean, let's just dive straight into the poem.

I read those first four lines earlier on. Where would you like to look at?

Maiya: I mean, let's look at that first, first line, and thank you so much for your reading at the start. I think this poem really illustrates from the first moment at which you launch into it, how absolutely devastatingly impactful the context of, history has been on the creation of this work. Yeats opens this poem with not one, not two, but three references in one line, turning, turning, and gyre, about this fundamental sense of change.

Explore that specific first line, because I think it really sets [00:04:00] the scene. For a poem that I personally find so incredibly impactful, but one that sets a very, very different tone to other poems that were being produced at the time.

Obviously, this poem, at its core, is apocalyptic. And this first line couldn't do a better job of setting the scene. So what do you think about it?

Joe: Well I think you're absolutely right and I think what that first line does is it establishes one of the key themes that are going to run through this poem but also run through Yeats's career more broadly. He had a very specific view of history which we're going to go on to talk about in just a moment but that sense of revolution, and I don't just mean revolution in terms of the armed uprising which of course is in itself an allusion to the Irish War of Independence but I mean revolution as in the sense of the movement of a wheel, the idea of something that monotonously and unstoppably moves forward.

And that's a really important way of understanding what Yeats is trying to do in this poem. That word, gyre, at the end of the first line is a really important word because it's going to come up a lot in a book that Yeats went on to write called A Vision, which I believe was published in [00:05:00] 1925, where he basically laid out his view of the way that history has worked.

And he sees history very differently to perhaps the way that modern listeners might conceive of it. We tend to think of history as being the story of incremental gain, whether that's with regard to medicine, technology, with regard to women's rights, with regard to racial equality, Yeats sees history as something that pivots on one, or two, or three big moments. He talks about the Trojan War, that semi mythical event, and any listeners who are interested can go and check out our episode on Sappho's the Anactoria poem where we talk more about the Trojan War.

But he identifies the Trojan War as being one such moment in history. He also talks about the birth of Christ some 2, 000 years prior to his lifetime as being one of those moments in which history turns, and that's why I really stressed the context a few minutes ago because If you were living in 1919, especially, you know, in Ireland, let's say, the context of the First World War, the Spanish Influenza, the War of Independence, you could see why people were beginning to think [00:06:00] this is one of those moments on which history pivots.

And I think, as you said, Maiya, that evocation of cycles, of turning, of revolution, in the first line, really establishes that.

Maiya: And it's not just the establishment of this, this wheel, really, that's being created, this constant sense of turning, but let's laser focus in on that word. Widening. This is written in the wake of some of these horrendously world shattering events. And yet the poem is looking to the future and almost suggesting that it's only going to get worse.

The widening of this space. Widening of this space. is allowing for more room for more devastation. And that sits so heavily in this poem as something that really spirals out of control. And I, I definitely find that the voice in this poem as strong as it is, you really feel that, that uncertainty and that lack of control as we move through and to move on to the second line, really, the [00:07:00] falcon cannot hear the falconer.

Now, I have things I want to say about this line, because it's so, so rich in context. So, one, the falcon is a bird of prey, and generally, in the relationship between the falcon and the falconer, you're looking at a human animal relationship in which the power and the duty and the The sense of control very much sits with the human.

This line completely blows that out. The water, it says the falcon cannot hear the falconer. There is a total loss , and lack of control here. And it adds to that sense of worsening because not only is the human in this poem in the second line, unable to control something they have for so long been able to have dominion over. It's almost another world. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. It's not that they're choosing to disobey. It's that something so incredibly large is looming that , the senses have been completely destroyed.

Joe: I love that, and I just want to add to that even further, because, [00:08:00] I mentioned earlier on the comparison point and because it's fresh in our mind having done that episode last week on if that confident voice that Kipling has, that sense that he understands the world he's living in, I think really stands in opposition to a line like this.

Because as you said, we as a species, we take for granted the idea that we are the masters of nature, that we are in control of our own destinies. And the thing, I think. I'm really reminded in this line is that the falconer takes its title from the animal.

And actually it's not an expression of dominion over nature. It's a reminder of how actually we only define ourselves in opposition to nature. And we are not the masters. I mean, again, in the context of the Spanish flu, this is a natural occurrence beyond our ability to control and that sense of apprehension at what happens when the world changes and we can't keep up with that change, I think is a really strong point that Yeats makes early in this poem.

Maiya: An opposition is definitely something that threads through this poem, but if you compare those two lines, you're also [00:09:00] looking at a contrast of action and actioner. The person who enacts the action is actually set towards the latter half of the line. When you open, turning is the action. It's happening without someone controlling that, without someone setting that into motion.

The falcon is placed far closer to the reader than the falcon it is. There is a sense of distance that is played upon almost instantly in the poem.

Joe: Okay, moving forward to line three and so simple, but it might be my favourite line in the whole poem. And it's that line, things fall apart. The centre cannot hold. And the simplicity of those first three words I find so affecting because it speaks to something we all know.

It speaks to the impermanence of our civilisation, of our own mortal lives, we like to kid ourselves that we'll never grow old and that the things we build will never fall down, and every civilisation has told themselves this [00:10:00] for thousands of years.

Now, Listeners might recognize those first three words because those first three words went on to be the title of Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, which in my view is one of the finest novels ever written. And I think what Achebe takes from this poem is that sense of the inevitability of decline. And in Achebe's context, Achebe was a Nigerian novelist, and that novel is all about the collapse of traditional life in Africa after the arrival of colonial figures

and again, what it speaks to is that sense of apprehension we all have that, that the things we hold dear are fleeting and ephemeral and temporary. And just on that second half of the line, the centre cannot hold. And I'd love to get your thoughts on this, given that Yeats is placing this poem at the dividing line between two eras.

In a way, I think , he's very much portraying this moment in 1919 as one of those inflection points, one of those gyres that I mentioned earlier on. We can almost view that. Literally, if we think about one era and another and there is a bridge between them, that notion [00:11:00] of the centre cannot hold. It's almost as if the point between those two eras is going to collapse as though a bridge between two ridges were about to collapse.

And the thing I love about that is there is no going back. And that's one of the things I think is really important here. Yeats is Identifying this as a moment of change, but a moment of permanent change. I'd love to get your thoughts on that.

Maiya: Absolutely, we can't forget the context here that Yeats is writing in conversation with these events that directly preceded the publication of this poem World War I, the Spanish Influenza, I think are great examples to use when you're talking about this poem because they have such a huge impact on human confidence in their ability to continue life in the same way that it was before. That Yeats refers to here, I personally have always read as if this was the shaken core.

Of the Western world, in a way. I think from where Yeats is writing, when [00:12:00] the West went to war, and suffered, you know, immense casualty, and had been so used to being a colonial powerhouse, really, to suffer at such, such extremes, that, I think, is what Yeats is referring to there with the centre, being what the West considered to be the centre of that world.

At that time, which was themselves, I, I don't know how you feel about it.

Joe: I think that's a fascinating reading and I hadn't really thought about it, but you're absolutely right. I mean, obviously Yeats has a slightly complicated relationship, the notion of empire being an Irish poet rather than an English poet. But if we view the First World War as a calamity that took place in Europe.

Given Europe's dominance alongside the United States in this period of time, it perhaps would be more understandable if things were being wounded at their extremities, right, in, in the British Empire or, you know, the colonies that other countries continue to have. But the fact that the First World War and the Spanish Influenza had taken hold on the continent of Europe, I think you're absolutely right.

I think it speaks to [00:13:00] that sense that these dominant powers could be harmed and were vulnerable at their core,

so I love that comparison you've made between the center and that sense of these countries and these people being shaken to their very core, because of course you know, if you you were somebody who was invested in the idea of colonial rule or empire, you might be able to account for things happening somewhere far away from Europe, and you might be able to acknowledge those things without them shaking your core belief that Europe was the centre of the world.

The fact that it was Europeans, not exclusively of course, but largely, who were dying in the war, and of the Spanish Influenza, is a reminder of the fact that this world view that perhaps Kipling and other poets prior to the First World War held, had been in the Permanently changed.

Maiya: I think what's particularly interesting, even about what you were saying just now, is that there is an image that's evoked of there being a centre and spokes that come out. I really, truly have the image, every time I read this poem, of the creation of a wheel, [00:14:00] you know, the turning and turning, the centre cannot hold.

I think the West or, , you know. At least Yeats conception of it in this poem, is that the West is the center of that wheel, and the spokes that go out relate to the rest of the world as a whole. If one of those breaks, then there is a pressure put on, but it's not just one of those spokes breaking, it's the whole wheel changing shape, changing dimension, shattering to pieces.

There is an absolute sense of the apocalypse just occurring right in front of his eyes. Even with the lines that follow these first four, I certainly feel like the speaker is staring into the abyss. Truly, there is a sense of relentless pressure and almost a tunnel vision, really.

Joe: Definitely and I'm really glad you mentioned that word apocalypse because it's a word we're going to return to again and again as this episode goes on. I think the lines that follow this one, we get that first hint at the kind of biblical apocalypse that Yeats is alluding to in the [00:15:00] title, The Second Coming, which again we're going to talk about later on.

The mention of water. It's the listeners who don't have the poem in front of them. We get a mention of the blood dimmed tide is loosed and the following line reads the ceremony of innocence is drowned. I don't think we can engage with a poem that is talking about apocalypse and a poem that's talking about drowning and tides without going to it.

Noah and Noah's Ark, which again, if you subscribe to Yeats's view of history, could be one of those moments at which history pivots. The idea that God sends the flood to kind of cleanse the earth. , what I think is really interesting about this is it can be read in several ways. Obviously, the ceremony of innocence that is drowned, I think it's hard to read that without thinking about the context of the First World War and the Spanish influenza that I've already mentioned.

Largely speaking, we agree that, looking back, the vast, vast, vast majority of people who died in those events were innocent people, people who were just trying to go about their lives and were killed for no reason. And again, that stands in opposition to Noah's Flood. The story of Noah in theory, is God sends a flood because mankind has become [00:16:00] wicked and greedy and selfish.

So, again, we have this sense of, is this a post biblical flood? Is this the kind of cleansing but without the moral figure to decide who gets cleansed? And I think that's also evoked in the blood dimmed tides, because if we think of, , the way we conceive of water in a poetic sense, we often think of it as something that cleanses, something that washes away the pain, the misery, or the sin, of course.

In this poem, the tides that come are dimmed with blood. There is no sense of cleansing. You cannot be cleaned by water that is unclean. And we're going to talk about this later on, but this, to my mind, is Yeats subverting the idea of divine intervention. He is saying, yes, this is an inflection point, but this is not God coming to protect humanity or save them or cleanse them.

This is something different and altogether more sinister.

Maiya: Slightly in contrast to that, Joe, and I'd actually love to hear how you think this would interplay, but Yeats evokes Egypt in a lot of ways in this poem. Every [00:17:00] time I read that line about the blood dimmed tide, I cannot help but think, I think it came from Exodus, when Moses turns the River Nile red with blood. And that, to me, where in Exodus it serves as a warning, but in this poem, the warning is too late. I'd be so interested to know whether you think, and this is potentially how I interpret this poem, is that Yeats is manifesting these Biblical illusions. In a way that doesn't signal that saviour complex, or that there might be a way out. He signals them at a point that it's far too late to ever recover from.

Joe: think that's a fabulous point and I think There's no coincidence that both the stories in the Bible we've just mentioned are from the Old Testament. And we're going to talk a little bit more in the second half of the poem about when Yeats draws upon New Testament stories. But the theme that runs all the way through is that you're absolutely right.

We get the horror of these biblical stories. We get the misery. We get the suffering. We don't get the salvation. [00:18:00] And that's the bit that's really troubling. Of course, whether or not you're thinking about the story of Moses or the story of Noah, Now, in both those stories, the righteous, the innocent, are saved.

They are spared the worst, right? Moses manages to lead the oppressed out of Egypt. Noah and his family and the animals survive. There is no sense of that in these lines. In these lines, 

these disasters are completely indiscriminate. Innocent, bad, good, young, old people in this poem suffer the consequences of those biblical allusions.

Maiya: And let's not forget that these two characters, Noah, Moses, that have these huge, huge stories within the Bible, were both positioned at various points in the water. Obviously there is the very famous story of Moses being sailed down the river as a child in a basket. You have Noah's Ark, the depiction that Yeats is offering here is what if both of those stories ended in the drowning?

What if there was no futurity for these two [00:19:00] characters? And also, what does that then say about the future that we have in front of us? What is the future that he is beholding?

Joe: I completely agree, and we're going to talk about this more in the second half of the podcast, about the way in which Yeats conflates the figure of the divine saviour with the figure of, satanic damnation.

And I think it's a fascinating way that Yeats portrays this moment in time as being a time of biblical intervention without biblical salvation. And it's that contrast, I think, with those biblical stories that gives the poem its, its edge and its enduring power to shock. I mean, it's an absolutely awe inspiring read.

And I don't use those words lightly. You almost feel like you're reading something biblical in some of these descriptions. I mean, it's so affecting.

Maiya: Absolutely, that first answer is one that, every time I read it, it has the same impact. It shakes me to my core, never mind someone who is actively considering what is effectively the demise of [00:20:00] humanity, the The huge monumental change that is about to fall upon Yeats consideration of a generation, of an era.

Joe: Yeah, I don't think we can stress enough the importance of that moment in time. And it's very easy to look back 100 years later and say, well, civilization didn't end, but that's hardly consolation to the people who were living in it. Yeats's wife was actually pregnant at the time Yeats was writing this poem. And pregnant women, who caught Spanish Influenza, 70 percent mortality.

And she caught Spanish influenza and she was recovering. But Yeats was looking at this on an individual level with regard to his wife and on a societal level with regard to the war and the influenza and the war of independence we've mentioned. And nobody could tell him he was wrong if he concluded that the world was collapsing.

Maiya: So speaking of that collapse, I think it is high time we move to the first and second lines of that second stanza. Surely some revelation is at hand Surely the second coming is at hand That repetition is one that's always struck me as incredibly [00:21:00] important as, in many ways, the lines echo each other.

I think they serve very different purposes. Revelation and the second coming are almost put at odds with one another. When, in theory, they should be relating to the same thing.

Joe: I think you're absolutely right. And I mean, this is Yeats at his very, very best. And perhaps we should have started with this, the title of the poem The Second Coming is an allusion to the second coming of Christ. Now, many listeners who are familiar with the Bible might think, well, didn't Christ already come a second time when he was resurrected?

Yes, but that's not what's being referred to here. The second coming of Christ is a very, very contested thing amongst biblical scholars, basically this idea that Christ will one day come back. And it is tied to this notion of apocalypse. Now, the reason this is significant with regard to that word revelation is because the book of revelations in the Bible is where these things happen.

play out effectively. It's the final book of the New Testament and it looks forward into the future. Now, effectively, the book of Revelation begins with the collapse of civilization, the apocalypse, the rise of the devil and his armies and [00:22:00] the appearance of the beast.

We'll talk more about the beast later on in this poem. These forces are then defeated by the second coming of Christ who leads the armies of heaven down to earth. Defeats Satan, casts him out for a thousand years, and resurrects the saints. And it's, it's ultimately a happy ending. But I really agree with you, Maiya, about the relationship between those two lines. Because on the one hand, they seem to flow from one to the other very naturally.

Just like in the Bible, you have revelation, and You have the apocalypse and then you have the arrival of Christ. Now, the thing I find interesting here is two things. First of all, the lack of capitalization of revelation and the word some, there is some revelation doesn't mean it's the revelation that stands in contrast to the capitalization of second coming, which again implies that that is the official second coming.

And what is the relationship between. the unofficial revelation and the official coming of Christ, if indeed that's what Yeats is referring to. There's a bit of a disconnect there. And the second thing I find interesting is that word surely, because again, I think that is a nod and a hint to [00:23:00] misunderstood biblical scholars, at the less generous end, false prophets who have claims to know when Christ is coming back over the centuries.

But it's also an expression of longing. If all these bad things are happening as they were in the context in which Yeats wrote the poem, surely Christ must be next.

And there's that real sense of desperation with the repetition of that word.

Maiya: And it's followed critically by an almost immediate dismissal of that second coming. The moment at which Yeats proclaims, or the speaker proclaims, the second coming, exclamation mark, there are then seven consecutive lines, with no punctuation, completely enjambed, that discuss the troubles that plague the mind of the speaker. All of the worries, all of the concerns, this really dark image starts to loom over the poem. And not just the poem, but also this hope for the second coming. I think that repetition is incredibly important. Surely the second coming is at [00:24:00] hand.

The second coming. Hardly are those words out when a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi troubles my sight. There is an absolute dismissal and a real refusal, actually, to fall in step with it. Those who do believe the second coming is, is due, or present, or hoping for it at least. Because the speaker has been so disenchanted with all of the horrible things that they've experienced, that the moment they are offered a moment of solace or a moment of peace, their mind becomes incredibly troubled.

Joe: Lots more to discuss after the break.

Now, regular listeners to Beyond the Verse will know that I love what I call the rabbit hole experience, that ability to find a poem or a poet and then go fully in depth, working out everything about them and all their inspirations and their influences. Well, if any of our listeners are enjoying this podcast episode about WB Yeats's The Second Coming, they can subscribe [00:25:00] to Poetry+ at poemanalysis.

com. They can read the PDF on W. B. Yeats, but not just that. If that doesn't satisfy their curiosity, they can then go and read a PDF on the Irish Literary Revival that was a huge part of Yeats's career. They can go and read about the different forms that he engaged with. They can go and read about modernism that he influenced.

That rabbit hole experience is available to Poetry+ subscribers in our PDF learning library.

Maiya: So Joe, obviously before the break we were discussing the troubling visions that plagued Yeats in this poem. Now I'd really love to hear your thoughts on the spirit of the desert that's evoked in these visions.

Joe: Thanks, Maiya. The first place to start, I think, is the contrast, right? In the first answer, we had water. We had far too much water. Water that was enough to drown thousands of people, it seems.

And now we have a desert. And that contrast between drowning and being in a place without water completely is, again, I think, an apocalyptic image. The idea that there is no balance. [00:26:00] This world that we live in is a world of extremes, you're either drowning or you're dying of heat stroke. But I think more than that, with the Evocation of the Desert, we have to go back to one of Yeats's key poetic influences, which is Percy Shelley. Now, about a hundred years before Yeats is writing this poem, Percy Shelley is writing some of his finest works, including, of course, the poem Ozymandias, which I'm sure you and I are going to cover in a, in an episode eventually, because it's a very, very famous poem.

And that poem is really evoked strongly here. And for listeners who aren't aware, I'll do it quickly. Let's play it now. Ozymandias is a poem that is all about this, , collapsed statue of an Egyptian pharaoh that is found in the desert by a traveller thousands of years after the collapse of the Egyptian empire.

Now, when we're talking about societal collapse and we get an evocation of a poem a hundred years earlier that is itself concerned with a society that has collapsed in a desert, we can't ignore that correlation. But what do you take from that?

Maiya: I think Ozymandias is a great poem to bring up in relation to this. Definitely a poem that we [00:27:00] will have to cover in the very near future, I hope. But I think the desert in itself is something that is worth talking about. Obviously there are huge biblical allusions that come with that. The 40 days, and 40 nights that Jesus spent in the desert and the battle with the devil that occurred, the desert in this poem becomes a setting for the beastly, for the demonic, for the darker side of this apocalypse that we've been talking about throughout this poem. And now one of the things that really strikes me is the use of the statue.

Obviously in Ozymandias you have this statue that's crumbling and very directly relating itself to the fall of civilization. Here we have a very active and very structured beast. Yeats describes in perfect detail, how it moves, what it looks like, the slow and laboring steps that it takes.

That to me is so much more terrifying than stumbling [00:28:00] across something that is already decaying. This poem is angry, I want to say. I mean, Joe, how do you feel about the creation of the beast in the desert here?

Joe: Well, I think it's really important to mention that we know what beast this is and it stands in contrast to the Beast of Revelation, which is this kind of strange, almost otherworldly figure. This is a statue of the Sphinx.

And of course, you know, anybody who has either visited Egypt or seen pictures of the Pyramids of Giza will know that the Sphinx is a statue that stands alongside those things. Now, this is a fascinating symbol and 

well, this is a real rabbit hole moment because let me do a deep dive on the significance of that creature. So the sphinx is a creature from Greek and Egyptian myth, which has the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the head of a human. Features very prominently in stories around Oedipus, , as a kind of trickster figure, a figure that, , tells riddles, and if people can't solve their riddles, they eat them, basically.

That's , the image of the Sphinx. Now, gradually, like a lot of these classical images and classical creatures, the creature takes on different significance as time goes on. One of the things the Sphinx [00:29:00] represents in ancient Greece, and ancient Egypt as well, is the figure of the guardian. So Sphinx was built, they think, next to the pyramids.

The idea that it would sort of guard the tombs , of pharaohs. Now, Having that figure, the figure of a guardian, in the desert, in a poem that is about societal collapse, about the inflection point between one civilisation and another, raises fascinating questions. The first one, of course, being, what is this thing protecting?

There's nothing there. There is nothing left. You are protecting nothing more than the memory of a civilisation that has been and gone. Now, that would be enough in and of itself for Yeats to include the Sphinx as an image, but my goodness, the Sphinx has an afterlife like few creatures ever. By the time of the 19th century, so just a little bit before Yeats , was really of age, the Sphinx had become to mean several different things.

Now, there is a slightly misogynistic reading here, which is that the Sphinx is often cast as female. And for certain poets in the decadent movement of the 19th century, the Sphinx had become [00:30:00] associated with this kind of femme fatale figure, , this lustful presence that is the reason that You know, quote unquote, good men make bad decisions.

They are lured into doing bad things. For that readership, the Sphinx becomes this kind of symbol of societal excess and therefore societal decline. You know, the evocation of Oscar Wilde's poem, The Sphinx, for example, in which that figure represents the kind of tantalizing, luring presence that draws individual men, but also societies more broadly, into their own decline.

And to have that figure in this poem is absolutely fascinating to me.

Maiya: One of the things I'd really like to touch on in what you just said is that sense of being lured or being drawn into something. Now, I've always felt that The speaker in this poem begins, obviously, in the blood dimmed tide, the innocence drowned. You have this real sense of location where there is an abundance of water. Now, when , this vision troubles him, somewhere in the sands of the [00:31:00] desert, there is, again, this sense of distance and this sense of separation. However, it feels as if it's encroaching on the speaker or feels as if it's encroaching on that society. Now that's what I personally find the most threatening thing in this poem is that this Sphinx figure is not just approaching a society that is doomed, at least for Yeats to collapse, but almost walking towards something that Yeats holds dear, which is the speaker's sense of self and the speaker's outlook on life.

They're not just devastating cities, societies, but very much plaguing, in the biblical sense, plaguing the speaker with these doomed visions and these looming feelings of absolute disrepair.

Joe: I think one of the things that this poem does is it kind of plays tricks on you in a similar way to what I mentioned earlier on. You brought it up, the relationship between surely some revelation is at hand and surely the second coming is at hand.

Yeats leads you [00:32:00] along the path of thinking you know what's coming, revelation, the apocalypse, the second coming of Christ. But those words, surely the lack of capitalisation instilled doubt into those readings. So I've just given a long explanation about what the Sphinx represent and the femme fatale figure.

In this poem, the Sphinx has the head of a man, not a woman. And so again, Yeats is almost tempting the reader to think they know what's going on, and then removing the certainty from under them.

Maiya: And Yeats is incredibly careful in this poem, and I think it absolutely speaks to his level of craftsmanship, really. In that every time a small bit of hope might be introduced in the poem, he's very careful to undercut it again. Obviously, the sphinx in this poem is described with a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun.

And the sun, in many ways, is a very hopeful motif. , it's used consistently to provide light in a very literal sense. It warms, it provides growth. But Yeats makes absolute certain that any reader will understand that this is a fleeting moment. [00:33:00] The darkness drops again. And I really enjoy, in many ways, as horribly depressing as this poem is in its content, I love the way that this poem is just relentlessly pushing towards this darkness and ensuring that the reader is very much trapped within that world.

And it makes it very hard to escape from. I, I I don't know if you read it in the same way.

Joe: No, I definitely agree, and I think one of the ways in which Yeats traps the reader in this poem is by offering them the glimpse of escape, the glimpse of salvation. And as we've said, the salvation, spoiler alert for the listeners, never really arrives. And again, that's going back to the second coming of this, the hope, the salvation is always deferred.

I'd like to get your thoughts on something just a little bit later in the poem, if I could jump ahead slightly, which is that the real shadows of the indignant desert birds. So again, we have that mention of the desert again, and we don't get the species of bird here. But again, the thing that comes to my [00:34:00] mind is that image of the vulture.

And again, in a poem that's about an inflection point in Yeats's mind between one civilisation and the past, a point of no return, the idea of a scavenger, for my mind, really speaks to that willingness that we have, that innate desire we have to pick the carcass of whatever came before us, whether that's artistically, whether that's in terms of learning lessons from the past, we have this obsession with picking the bones clean of history.

Maiya: It's an incredibly loaded point. I think, again, very important to note, this is not the first bird we've seen. We have the falcon, we have the bird of prey, we have this image of the vulture that is brought about, at least, by this Yeats's description of this, desert bird that is circling the shadows. It always brings to my mind something that I think is partially intentional in the poem, at least. Is that, obviously we've spoken about the biblical allusions in the poem, but we've also touched on the classical allusions. , and the ancient Greek harpy is an image that I'd really, really like to [00:35:00] explore throughout this poem. Now, in ancient Greek mythology, harpies are half human, half bird hybrids. Obviously, this plays into the beast element as well. We're already looking at something that is a sort of creature human hybrid and not quite tangible by the human condition, let's say, and they are associated with horror and terror and storms and have this really unsettling nature.

They hunt and stalk men that arrive in, in the locations that they live in. It's a really fascinating that, obviously, as you say, the Sphinx in this is, described as male. However, you have this interplay of birds who I think could be construed as female. And in that sense, you're not looking at a poem that is truly gendered.

It's looking at humanity as a whole. You're looking at this really dense mythology that pushes the boundaries of what it is to be human and what it is to exist in a world that is on the brink of collapse. I, I know that there are [00:36:00] many more classical allusions we could talk about.

But let's not move away from birds too quickly. I know you had a point that you wanted to, to bring up, so please do tell us a little bit more.

Joe: Well, as you said, this is one of the things that really sets Yeats apart, the ability to blend different mythologies, blend different literary, historical, and mythical traditions together. So you've just been talking about the classical illusion of the harpies.

I'm going to bring it back to the Bible with the story of Noah again. So we mentioned earlier on how the flood in the Bible is a cleansing flood. It is sent by God to reward the innocent and to punish the evil. At the end of that story, of course, when Noah is on the ark safely, he sends out birds to come back to the boat so they can work out when the waters have fallen to a level where they can then get off the ark.

The bird that comes back with a branch in its claws is a dove.

Now the significance of that bird being the one to bring the branch back to Noah, that symbolism of hope and peace and the promise of new life that comes with it, could not be further away from the birds that we get here. The [00:37:00] idea that post flood, in this desert landscape, the bird that we get as a vulture, Which is an animal associated with the death of something else.

Obviously vultures are best known as being scavengers of things that are already dead. So, there is no salvation, there is no moment beyond the apocalypse in this poem.

We only get the horror, we don't get the divine intervention. You know, my second rabbit hole experience of our preparation was looking at the figure of Prometheus.

Now this might seem like an odd link, but let me explain how we got there. So the first stanza of this poem is often associated with Percy Shelley's drama Prometheus Unbound, for listeners who aren't aware, the figure of Prometheus is a character from Greek mythology who was punished by Zeus for basically giving fire to humanity. And again, in this Yeatsian view of the past, we can almost view that mythical moment as one of these inflection points.

The moment that man discovered fire. And, you know, its ability to transform their lives. That fire is not just literal. It's not just something that gives mankind the ability to cook and forge metal and all those things. That fire [00:38:00] also represents divine spark, divine inspiration. In many ways, the act of Prometheus bringing fire to mankind is The moment in which mankind was set out on a journey that would lead them to no longer need gods.

Now, why is that significant for this poem? Well, Prometheus occupies a really strange position in Shelley's poem, which as I've said is evoked by Yeats in the first stanza of this. Prometheus, on the one hand, is a devil figure. If we think of what Satan represents in the Bible, Satan is a rebel against God, just like Prometheus is a rebel against Zeus, the king of the Greek gods.

However, he's also a saviour. He's also a kind of Jesus Christ figure, the one who brings something to humanity. In the case of Prometheus, it's fire. In the case of Jesus Christ, it's divine salvation. And they suffer the consequences, and they can bear those consequences because of their love for humanity.

So what Prometheus represents in this poem is this interesting composite. between a devil figure and a salvation figure like Jesus Christ. Of course, there are other allusions to Prometheus. I mean, [00:39:00] it's not just Percy Shelley, but Percy Shelley's wife, Mary, who readers will know, wrote the novel Frankenstein, the subtitle of Frankenstein being The Modern Prometheus.

This evocation of the classical figure who occupies this middle ground between on the one hand resembling the devil and the other hand resembling the Son of God, that feels incongruous. You cannot be both salvation and beast. What do you think about that, Maiya?

Maiya: I think we are exploring a poem that is written in the liminal space, on the brink of collapse, but not quite there yet. The question that is asked at the end of the poem, What rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? There is a real sense that the worst is, is yet to come.

And truly, I think Prometheus and the allusions to him throughout this poem really have an impact on the human understanding of what it means to be saved or to be in a situation in which you could be saved. And hope is something that is decimated in this poem. There [00:40:00] is a real lack of hope for that Promethean figure or that god like figure to step in and to make those changes and to save humanity and create this whole new world. The new world that is created in this poem is one that is dark and terrifying and full of horror.

There is obviously a huge abundance of horrible things that happen in this poem. And yet, the speaker still seems so unsure of what else is left to come. I definitely get the feeling that through all of these classical and biblical allusions, what Yeats is actually doing is telling a brand new story.

I feel like a lot of these stories, and Prometheus is a perfect example, the parallels between Prometheus and Lucifer, or Prometheus and the Jesus figure. , you are looking at this really rich history of repeated stories, or echoes, or mimics, and this is a story that Yeats is creating. This is a poem that is, I think, quite groundbreakingly new, [00:41:00] despite its, you know, time period, despite its context.

I don't doubt for a second that people reading this poem at the time it was published were shaken by it. However, even as a modern reader, I think this applies and you can read it anew every single time.

Does it have that effect on you as well?

Joe: I think definitely, and I think one of the things that we can say for almost every civilization throughout history is everybody thinks that the apocalypse is about to happen. That sense of immediacy is one of the things that gives the poem its power. I think that regardless of the circumstance that you're reading it in, we can all find evidence that the world is getting worse or the world is about to collapse.

I mean, we don't need to go into too many contemporary examples because I'm sure listeners will know their own, but I think that flexibility is one of the things that really gives the poem its power.

I'd just like to come back to those last two lines that you talked about, and I think I agree with everything you've said. I, I love that point you make about this being a new story, but a new story made out of old ones. And I think that's very much in keeping with the modernist sort of ethos of make [00:42:00] it new, that notion of fragmenting previous stories and making something new, a new composite, if you will, out of those previous stories.

You spoke about the uncertainty, and you're absolutely right when you said we remain uncertain. In many ways, we grow less certain as this poem goes on. If we think about that opening couple of lines, things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. There is an absolute confidence in those lines.

As we get to the beginning of the second stanza, we have surely, surely, a suggestion that confidence is wavering. And the poem itself ends with a question, rather than any sense that the poem ends with new certainty or new clarity, it actually ends with even less certainty than it began with. But I'd just like to talk about, finally, the beast itself. So Yeats mentions the beast, and this is another callback to Revelation.

The Beast is this bizarre figure in Revelation, and it's represented as having seven heads and ten horns, but it's also described as the Antichrist. Now, when I said that the figure of Prometheus was important for this poem, here is why it's so important. Just as the figure of Prometheus is a composite figure, in many ways, between the Devil and [00:43:00] Jesus Christ, what this poem seems to end with is a composite figure between the Antichrist and Christ itself.

We have the Beast going to Bethlehem to be born. And again, what Yeats seems to be suggesting, therefore, is that this is an apocalypse like there have been apocalypses before, but this one is happening almost in a post biblical age.

Maiya: And I think especially given how Yeats seem to view these defining eras across thousands of years of humanity, as opposed to these. As you were mentioning earlier, much smaller communities or much smaller civilizations. It really gives a sense that What began in the Bible with the birth of this Antichrist, the birth of this beast, is going to signal a brand new age.

Just as much as you look at the Bible and the emphasis that it places on that as a defining moment, this poem, and especially , the questioning at the end, that uncertainty leaves you really rattled , from leaving this poem and not knowing what's ahead, but knowing that whatever is ahead is going [00:44:00] to be a once in a generation, once in a civilization moment is one of the most , impactful.

poetic ideas, I think, of, to be honest, , this generation of writers.

Joe: I completely agree, you know, one of the things that I think is interesting here is the evocation of Friedrich Nietzsche, and 1882 essay basically pronounced God is dead, and we don't need to go into exactly what he meant by that, but When a professor at my university was asked how to explain modernism in relation to postmodernism, the answer he gave was exceptionally simple.

He said, modernism means God is dead. Postmodernism means man is dead. Now, again, that's for another time, but I think what we have here is Yeats playing on those ideas. First of all, there's a very personal sense of, this Amidst these horrors, what role does faith play? How can you believe in salvation when the innocent are slaughtered?

But also in a broader sense of the modernist literary movement as kind of a movement influenced more by classical mythology and more by an [00:45:00] increasingly secular tradition. What does it mean that Yeats seems to suggest that this poem ends rather than with the rebirth of Christ, but with the birth of this other more frightening and obscure figure altogether, is he signaling the end of the Christian era.

Maiya: I mean, it's a huge question and I actually have one that has kind of just come to me as you were, as you were talking about these much larger scale events. I think it's very easy to forget that, you know, Throughout all of this, Yeats is obviously contending with things that are happening in his own personal life, and one of the things you mentioned was that at this time, his wife was pregnant, and suffering, and recovering. We talk about birth in this poem as if it is the birth of this great thing, and I almost wonder, Joe, do you think that This final line is actually really asking what world am I bringing this child into? This child that is born into this new generation, into this new era, what will they become? And, and how will they deal with it? 

Joe: It's [00:46:00] something I, that she never thought of before, that relationship between the fact that his own wife was pregnant and, and of course we mentioned earlier on the high mortality rate among pregnant women.

I think you're absolutely right that this kind of preoccupation with birth and the uncertainty at the end could, in many ways, be a manifestation of Yeats's doubts about his own wife's likelihood of survival, and his child as well. On the one hand, this could be the birth of something special and precious, and the evocation of Bethlehem would represent that.

On the other hand, this could be the worst thing that ever happened to Yeats, and could result in the death of his wife and his unborn child. So that uncertainty that composite nature of on the one hand salvation on the other hand damnation Could in many ways be an elevated way of exploring that sense of fear that he was going through when his wife was so unwell

Maiya: Though I hate to close off a fascinating discussion on this poem, we are unfortunately running out of time, Joe. So, can you tell us a little bit more about what we're talking about next episode?

Joe: I'd love to. So next episode will be our 10th and we hope you're enjoying Beyond the Verse so far and we would love you to [00:47:00] share with friends, we'd love you to rate us on wherever you get your podcasts and Keep up the good work as listeners.

We're really enjoying having your questions and next time we're going to be doing a special Q& A episode with me, Maiya, and Will, the founder of Poetry+ and poemanalysis.com. So if you have questions that you would like answered in that episode, please email them to beyondtheverse@poemanalysis.com.

And don't forget that if you want to guarantee your question gets answered in that episode, sign up for a membership at Poetry+ at poemanalysis.com. But for now, it's goodbye from me.

Maiya: And goodbye from me and the team at Poetry+ and Poemanalysis.com. See you next time!