"The Second Coming"
By William Butler Yeats

Transcription, correction, editorial commentary, and markup by Students and Staff of the University of Virginia
     

Sources

[Dublin] Churchtown and Dundrum : The Cuala Press, 1920Yeats' poem was initially printed in The Dial, and then subsequently published in Michael Robartes and the Dancer (Cuala Press, 1920). Cuala Press was an important private Arts and Crafts press in Ireland, set up by Yeats' sisters, Elizabeth and Susan, and associated with the Irish Literary Revival of the early 20th century. This digital edition uses the first printing in Michael Robartes and the Dancer, available on Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Michael_Robartes_and_the_Dancer/dWs6AQAAMAAJ). For more information about the Cuala Press, see The Library of Trinity College, Dublin.,

Editorial Statements

Research informing these annotations draws on publicly-accessible resources, with links provided where possible. Annotations have also included common knowledge, defined as information that can be found in multiple reliable sources. If you notice an error in these annotations, please contact lic.open.anthology@gmail.com.

Original spelling and capitalization is retained, though the long s has been silently modernized and ligatured forms are not encoded.

Hyphenation has not been retained, except where necessary for the sense of the word.

Page breaks have been retained. Catchwords, signatures, and running headers have not.

Materials have been transcribed from and checked against first editions, where possible. See the Sources section for more information.

Citation

Yeats, William Butler. "Easter, 1916". Michael Robartes and the Dancer, The Cuala Press, 1920 , pp 19-20 . Literature in Context: An Open Anthology. http://anthologydev.lib.virginia.edu/work/Yeats/yeats-second-coming. Accessed: 2024-04-28T19:31:31.411Z

Linked Data: Places related to this work.

MICHAEL ROBARTES AND THE
DANCER, BY WILLIAM BUTLER
YEATS.



 THE CUALA PRESS
 CHURCHTOWN
DUDNRUM JUNE 1924 19 THE SECOND COMING. 1Turning and turning in the widening gyre 1The falcon cannot hear the falconer; 2Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 3Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 4The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 5The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 6The best lack all conviction, while the worst 7Are full of passionate intensity. 8Surely some revelation is at hand; 9Surely the Second Coming is at hand. 10The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out 11When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi 12Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand 13A shape with lion body and the head of a man, 14A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, 15Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it 16Wind shadows the indignant desert birds. 20 17The darkness drops again but now I know 18That twenty centuries of stony sleep 19Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, 20And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, 21Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

Footnotes