The Second Coming (poem)
William Butler Yeats' most famous poem. It is not about the Apocalypse and the second coming of Christ -- rather, it's a window into Yeats's own cosmology and worldview, predicting the fall of the Christian world order and the rising of a new empire. It was written just after World War I, the failed Irish Rising (in which Yeats lost several close friends), and the Russian Revolution (which probably explains a lot).
Incidentally, it's considered one of Yeats' best works and is referenced endlessly in all forms of pop culture.
Widely considered one of the most definitive examples of Modernist poetry.
Not to be confused with the British TV series of the same name.
Tropes used in The Second Coming (poem) include:
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The Second Coming is alluded to by:
Anime and Manga
- Sailor Moon: Translated back into English, badly, in the Mixx manga release; corrected in the Kodansha release.[context?]
Comic Books
- Batman
- Specifically, a miniseries titled The Widening Gyre.
- Beast quotes it in X-Factor #70. Colossus thinks it's from Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov ("it sounded Russian").
- The same writer, Peter David, also quotes the poem in Incredible Hulk #425.
Literature
- American Gods: The New Gods tend to speak in cliches, so it's not surprising that one of them had the whole damn poem memorized.
- Quoted by Starkey, a government employee in Stephen King's The Stand, after a human-made virus, which will certainly destroy civilization escapes. "The beast is on its way. It’s on its way, and it’s a good deal rougher than that fellow Yeets ever could have imagined. Things are falling apart. The job is to hold as much as we can for as long as we can."
- A Robert B Parker novel about political corruption is entitled The Widening Gyre.
- Chinua Achebe's best known work is called Things Fall Apart.
- One of Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 novels is called The Center Cannot Hold.
- Parodied by eccentric bum Bert Nix in The Big U by Neal Stephenson
- Recited by the poet Martin Silenus in Hyperion. He doesn't take it too seriously.
Live-Action TV
- Andromeda's first season finale is called "Its Hour Come 'Round At Last".
- Angel: An episode entitled "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" forebodes the arrival of a demon known as The Beast.
- G'Kar quotes the poem in Babylon 5, equating the escalating prelude to the Shadow War to things falling apart.
- Heroes: One episode replaced the standard episode-ending Mohinder Fauxlosophic Narration with him reciting the poem in whole, which was a vast improvement.
- The Sopranos[context?]