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The Second Coming
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The Second Coming

poem by Yeats
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The Second Coming, poem by William Butler Yeats, first printed in The Dial (November 1920) and published in his collection of verse entitled Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921). Yeats believed that history is cyclical, and “The Second Coming”—a two-stanza poem in blank verse—with its imagery of swirling chaos and terror, prophesies the cataclysmic end of an era. Critics associated the poem with various contemporary calamities, such as the Easter Rising of 1916, the Russian Revolution of 1917, the rise of fascism, and the political decay of eastern Europe.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.