The Second Coming is a free-verse poem of 23 lines. It is a description of the world as Yeats sees it at that moment in time (1919). The poem is about the world being brought to its knees by anarchy and how the second coming is at hand. It symbolizes the beginning of an era and the ending of another. The poem is wrought with Biblical references. This comes as a surprise as Yeats found it hard …showed first 75 words of 2500 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2500 total…out from the poetry and is evidence of trying to relate the poem to its initial foetal stage of development, while the rest of the poem has already reached adolescence. The Norton Anthology of English Literature Seventh Edition Volume 2. pg 2085. W.W. Norton & Company. New York. 2000 The Norton Anthology of English Literature Seventh Edition Volume 2. pg 2110. W.W. Norton & Company. New York. 2000 Roget's Thesaurus. Everyman Edition. Cox & Wyman Ltd. 1984