The Second Coming

In the Second Coming the speaker describes a nightmarish scene: the falcon,

turning in a widening “gyre” (spiral), cannot hear the falconer, “Things fall apart; the

center cannot hold”; anarchy is loosed upon the world. “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,

and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned.” The best people, the speaker

says, lack all conviction, but the worst “are full of passionate intensity”.

This passage is written in iambic pentameter, however the meter is loose, and the

exceptions frequent that it seems closer to free verse with frequently heavy stresses. The

rhymes are likewise haphazard; apart from the two couplets with which the poem opens,

there are only coincidental rhymes in the poem, such as “man” and “sun”.

The first stanza opens up with violent image...