The "Yeatses"

Yeats’ The Second Coming was a complicated poem. I found the poem obscure and confusing, because it did not reflect the Biblical truth of the Second Coming:

. . . while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness. . . Titus 2:13-14 (NIV)

“At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other”. Matthew 24: 30-31 (NIV)

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him”. Matthew 24: 42-44 (NIV)

These brief passages reveal what the Bible tells us of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, and Yeats’ poem does not reflect the scriptures. Yeats writes of darkness, a “rough beast” slouching towards Bethlehem, and gyres (from what I understand of this, time is moving down a spiral gyre, or cone, toward the end of the age). Yeats reflects on the Spiritus Mundi and a rousing sphinx—this poem appears to be a blasphemous approach to the Second Coming! I think this poem reflects the “contradictory views” of Yeats, and I think this poem also reflects the many different “Yeatses”. In conclusion, I can’t come to a definite meaning of this poem, but I did notice Yeats ties the ancient with the modern, and perhaps the symbolisms Yeats uses are meant to reflect a “new age” (this idea also arises in Leda and the Swan)—for Yeats “continually remade himself in new symbols, new styles, and philosophies” (Norton 92).