The Second Coming (poem) | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 14 pages of analysis & critique of The Second Coming (poem).

The Second Coming (poem) | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 14 pages of analysis & critique of The Second Coming (poem).
This section contains 3,942 words
(approx. 14 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Edward A. Bloom

SOURCE: "Yeats's 'Second Coming': An Experiment in Analysis," in The University of Kansas City Review, Vol. XXI, No. 2, Winter, 1954, pp. 103-10.

In the following essay, Bloom analyzes "The Second Coming" in light of Yeats's philosophical writings, calling the poem "a masterpiece of complexity. "

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,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank...

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This section contains 3,942 words
(approx. 14 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Edward A. Bloom
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Critical Essay by Edward A. Bloom from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.