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What does turning and turning in the widening gyre mean?
The falcon is described as “turning” in a “widening gyre” until it can no longer “hear the falconer,” its human master. A gyre is a spiral that expands outward as it goes up. Yeats uses the image of gyres frequently in his poems to describe the motion of history toward chaos and instability.
What is the meaning of Yeats poem The Second Coming?
“The Second Coming” was intended by Yeats to describe the current historical moment (the poem appeared in 1921) in terms of these gyres. Yeats believed that the world was on the threshold of an apocalyptic revelation, as history reached the end of the outer gyre (to speak roughly) and began moving along the inner gyre.
What is the rough beast of Bethlehem?
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? William Butler Yeats, widely considered one of the greatest poets of the English language, received the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature.
What does the rough beast symbolize in the Second Coming?
The work, although seemingly taken quite seriously by Yeats’ scholars, is of little value in understanding either meaning in poetry or the meaning of the world, particularly in terms of historical events. Of great significance in Yeats’ poem is the “rough beast,” apparently the Anti-Christ, who has not been born yet.
What is meant by the widening gyre?
The ‘gyre’ metaphor Yeats employs in the first line (denoting circular motion and repetition) is a nod to Yeats’s mystical belief that history repeats itself in cycles. But the gyre is ‘widening’: it is getting further and further away from its centre, its point of origin.
Is moving its slow thighs meaning?
This is where the speaker tells us what he thinks is going on, but the repetition means that he’s maybe not so sure and is slowly trying to figure things out. It’s a revelation, he says, which is when the true meaning of something is revealed.
What is gyre theory?
It simply is. Yeats conceptualized history as a series of interpenetrating gyres. Historical eras overlap, one ending as the next one begins. He believed that these gyres or eras of history tended to fall into roughly 2,000-year periods. While one tends to dominant, the other is always implied and weakly present.
What beast slouches towards Bethlehem?
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? “The Second Coming” is a poem written by Irish poet W. B. Yeats in 1919, first printed in The Dial in November 1920, and afterwards included in his 1921 collection of verses Michael Robartes and the Dancer.
What does slouches towards Bethlehem to be born mean?
The poem is alluding to the Book of Revelation. The “rough beast” is the Anti-Christ. The scene is set for the final showdown and the Second Coming.