Summary of the second coming.

This is one of the most profound poems imaginable.  It
takes a great deal of patience and deliberation to explicate.  However, upon doing so, I
guarantee that it will be a poem whose words and thoughts will remain in the mind's eye.
 Context is needed in order to fully grasp it. Yeats is writing in the aftermath of
World War I, where he had seen so many fine youth of a nation go out in the belief of
nation, government, and spiritual identity and fight in a war where there were really no
winners.  No European nation could claim victory with the large amount of death and
destruction.  They say that the orphans from World War I amassed more than anyone could
imagine. It is in this setting where Yeats composes his poem.  The opening lines of the
poem set this mood of complete loss and disenchantment with what is.  The "widening
gyre" helps to bring to light that some uncontrollable vortex is encompassing all
consciousness.  In this black hole, inversion reigns supreme.  There is the idea that
what was intended is not meant to be.  The "falcon cannot hear the falconer" and "things
fall apart" while "the center cannot hold."  These images help to bring to light a world
where there is no central or guiding force or authority, and a sense of looseness in
identity and focus has emerged.  What was once believed no longer applies.  This is
especially poignant when considering the millions of soldiers who fought in believing in
nationalism, militarism, spiritualism, paternalism, and any other "-ism" one can find.
 (Alongside of this poem, might I suggest reading Pirandello's short story, "War.")  
This condition continues until the first stanza's closing couplet, revealing a world
where terror is the only adjective to describe:  "The best lack all conviction/ while
the worst are filled with passionate intensity."  With such a conclusion, the sense of
despair looms large in the poem. The second stanza appeals to the Christian hope of the
title.  The belief is that Jesus Christ will emerge at the point where salvation is most
needed and redeem humanity.  Yet, in true Modernist form, Yeats inverts such a
totalizing and transcendent image.  As the stanza opens with notes of hope in that the
"Second Coming is at hand," Yeats describes what he sees with a mixture of fear and even
more horror than the first stanza.  What ends up appearing in sight according to Yeats
is not the redeemer, but actually an Anti- Christ vision that he suggests emerges
because individuals have been "vexed to stony sleep."  The combination of being plunged
into despair by the events of World War I and the hope that redemption will surely
happen help to allow traction to this beast, who Yeats says, "Slouches towards Bethlehem
to be born."  If you throw the word, "waiting" in between "towards" and the Holy City,
you can make a nice comparison to Beckett's "Waiting for Godot."  The poem is even more
meaningful when considering that Yeats writes it about a decade before the rise of
Hitler, and the description of the Nazi leader as the "beast" might be highly
appropriate.  Yeats' closing vision reminds the reader that while the First World War
was horrific, it will be nothing in comparison to what lies ahead.   Yeats never
pretended to be a political scientist or a political advisor, but what he writes in 1920
proved to be more politically prophetic than what any other thinker of the time period
could have envisioned.