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Summary Of The Second Coming

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William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” Journal Observation In his blank verse poem “The Second Coming,” Irish poet William Butler Yeats describes the turmoil and darkness surrounding the lives of people on earth before the second coming of Christ. One way that Yeats communicates the spiritual darkness in the last generation is by using a metaphor. Yeats writes “darkness drops again…twenty centuries of stony sleep” (Yeats 1028). By describing the last generation before the coming of Christ as in a “stony sleep,” Yeats communicates the idea that the people lack awareness to the reality of the soon coming of Christ and remain indifferent to Him. Also, Yeats uses the lion to allude to the Bible’s description of God as the “Lion of Judah.” Thus, the Lion in the poem represents God returning as a righteous judge at the second coming to take His people with Him and judge the unrepentant. Interpretation In his poem “The Second Coming,” Yeats’ words serve to warn people of the dangers of falling spiritually asleep. As the violence causes “things [to] fall apart” all around them, people continue following their own evil paths with “passionate intensity” (Yeats 1028). However, they suddenly realize that they “lack all conviction” by failing to accept God’s salvation through the message displayed in Bethlehem (Yeats 1028). Since the people remained spiritually asleep, they become suddenly awakened and “vexed to [a] nightmare by a rocking cradle” (Yeats 1028), when Christ returns and they are found unprepared. Because they failed to accept Christ when they still had time, the second coming appears suddenly upon them and their hopes for salvation are lost as the lion comes to judge the world. By sharing the terrifying reality of the generation in “stony sleep” before God’s second coming, Yeats tells his audience their need to remain prepared for God’s return. Integration In Mathew 24:42-44, Jesus gives the warning “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

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