The Gyre

The gyre in “The Second Coming” symbolizes the growing world. It is one of the most iconic images of twentieth-century poetry. A gyre is a conical spiral motion or form, often referring to an oceanic surface current. The gyre in Yeats’s poem represents the increasing chaos and instability of the human world as history progresses. Rather than the world being a stable structure, it is perpetually in motion and growing outward. Yeats used gyres to represent different historical periods. The gyre in “The Second Coming” represents the epoch that began with the birth of Jesus Christ “twenty centuries” ago (19).

The Beast

The Beast symbolizes the approach of modernity in a post-war world. After the speaker exclaims “The Second Coming!” a strange form emerges in the distance (11). In place of the Messiah, “a shape with lion body and head of a man” emerges from the...