Expl. (1) Turning and turning ……………… and everywhere.
These lines are taken from the poem The Second Coming written by W.B. Yeats. The Second Coming is one of the most famous of Yeats poems. The first stanza focuses attention on the contemporary anarchic situation, Yeats believes that the process of history is a cyclic one. It is like the movement of rapidly rotating gyres or cones. The poet believes that the present cycle of history is almost over. A new civilization is to be born out of the ruins of the older one.
The poet in a vision sees a gyre or cone rotating rapidly round a fixed centre, informing about and signalling towards a change of civilization and age. Yeats refers to the disintegrating state of the world. There is anarchy and lawlessness all around. Therefore Yeats foresees the end of this materialistic world. Its circumference gradually widens and ultimately even the centre fails to control its movements. The falconer has lost control over the falcon because of the lack of contact, man has to cease to hear the call of soul (spirit) because the world is too much with him. Since intellect the materialism (science, technology and rationalism) is too much with us, it is leading us towards destruction.
Expl. (2) Surely some revelation is coming is an hand.
These are the first two lines of the second stanza of Yeat’s prophetic poem ‘The Second Coming. Yeats here seems to write like a budding Fascist. But the fact is that Yeats is not to much a Fascist. Yeats here refers to the growth of Fascism in the last phase of his life. The Cup of sin in the world is full to bring evils predominate. There is bloodshed. The world is wild with violence. This situation of lawlessness (mere anarchy) prepares us for an impending revelation. This expectation is raised by certain key-phrases Surely, is at hand’ and ‘the second coming.
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The poem is here moving into the dimensions of prophecy and so the shape of its revelation is established with ominous vagueness.
Expl. (3) The darkness drops………………. to be born?
These are the concluding lines of Yeat’s famous poem The Second Coming. Yeats foresees the end of the present civilization. A new civilization is about to be born. The sight of the anarchic vision gives the poet a feeling that a second coming is imminent. The poet refers to his vision of some clumsy and awkward shape. like that of a figure with a lion’s body and man’s head. He sees this shape in some far desert and moving slowly with a clumsy, awkward movement towards Bethlehem, the birth-place of Christ, as if it, too, would be born there. It symbolises the death of the old civilization and the birth of the new one, just as the sphinx burns itself after five hundred years and is born once again. It symbolizes mindless and merciless violence, and its birth is the death of the present civilization. It is coming to undo what has been done, for a new era is to be ushered.
