Page 378 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

Unit 30: Tennyson, Arnold and Yeats

“The Second Coming” was intended by Yeats to describe the current historical moment (the poem Notes
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. In his definitive edition of Yeats’s poems, Richard J. Finneran quotes
Yeats’s own notes:
The end of an age, which always receives the revelation of the character of the next age, is represented
by the coming of one gyre to its place of greatest expansion and of the other to its place of greatest
contraction... The revelation [that] approaches will... take its character from the contrary movement
of the interior gyre...
In other words, the world’s trajectory along the gyre of science, democracy, and heterogeneity is
now coming apart, like the frantically widening flight-path of the falcon that has lost contact with
the falconer; the next age will take its character not from the gyre of science, democracy, and speed,
but from the contrary inner gyre—which, presumably, opposes mysticism, primal power, and
slowness to the science and democracy of the outer gyre. The “rough beast” slouching toward
Bethlehem is the symbol of this new age; the speaker’s vision of the rising sphinx is his vision of the
character of the new world.
This seems quite silly as philosophy or prophecy (particularly in light of the fact that it has not come
true as yet). But as poetry, and understood more broadly than as a simple reiteration of the mystic
theory of A Vision, “The Second Coming” is a magnificent statement about the contrary forces at
work in history, and about the conflict between the modern world and the ancient world. The poem
may not have the thematic relevance of Yeats’s best work, and may not be a poem with which many
people can personally identify; but the aesthetic experience of its passionate language is powerful
enough to ensure its value and its importance in Yeats’s work as a whole.

30.4.2 Yeats as an Irish Poet

The Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was the leader of the Irish Literary
Renaissance during the early 20th century. Yeats’s early lyrical poetry and drama drew inspiration
from Irish legend and occult learning, but his later writing became increasingly engaged with his
own time.
W. B. Yeats, b. Dublin, June 13, 1865, d. Jan. 28, 1939, was perhaps the greatest English-language
poet of the 20th century. The major defining elements of Yeats’s poetic career were visible by his
24th year. He had formed a profound attachment to the county of Sligo, where he stayed for long
periods while living in London (1867-83); his interest in the occult led him to found (1885) the
Dublin Hermetic Society and to join (1887) the London Lodge of Theosophists; his 1885 meeting
with the nationalist John O’Leary prompted his discovery of Ireland as a literary subject and his
commitment to the cause of Irish national identity; in 1889 he fell in love with Maud Gonne and
published The Wanderings of Oisin. Yeats’s lifework was an attempt to “hammer into unity” these
evolving areas of his experience.
Between 1889 and 1902, Yeats sustained these original commitments. Irish myth and landscapes fill
the poems of The Rose (1893). William Butler Yeats’ edition of Blake (1893; with Edwin Ellis)
influenced his own thought. He enshrined his unrequited love for Maud Gonne in the stylized,
erotic, symbolic verses of The Wind among the Reeds (1899). A meeting (1896) with Lady Isabella
Augusta Gregory and visits to Coole Park provided a model of social grace and generosity that was
practically useful and, in his poetry, of symbolic importance. Head of the Order of the Golden
Dawn (London, 1900), he became (1902) President of the Irish National Theatre Society (later the
Abbey Theatre) for which he had written, among other plays, the patriotic Cathleen ni Houlihan
(1902). Motivating such activities was Yeats’s desire to raise national consciousness by cultural
means and to extend his own awareness of himself as a poet, as a shaper not only of verses but of
the world.

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