Identify the elements of Symbolism in "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats. Thanks a million.

shahrzadeh,

Yeats's "THE SECOND COMING" is vastly rich in symbolism. Diction such as "gyre, "falcon," "the blood-dimmed tide," "the ceremony of innocence," and "the worst who are full of passionate intensity" symbolize important aspects of Yeats’s theory of cycles in history.

Yeats also uses capital letters for the “Second Coming” because the term is connected to the putative second coming of Christ, which traditionally is to begin a thousand-year cycle of divine rule, after which there will be a Day of Judgment. The title is used ironically here because the second coming described in the poem is the ushering in of a period of war and rumors of war, with no salvation in sight.

In falconry, the falcon is controlled by the falconer, who symbolizes order and control. The “desert birds,” by contrast, are without order at all. They are opportunists who seek carrion, which symbolizes the qualities of the new and forthcoming age of war and violence.

The sphinx in the story of Oedipus, for example, was a creature that held the population of Thebes in check through violence. The significance and symbolism of the second coming of such a beast is that it will go to Bethlehem, the traditional birthplace of Christ, and be born to initiate an age of repression and violence, as was evidenced in the World War which had just concluded before Yeats wrote “The Second Coming.”