Poems of W.B. Yeats: The Rose

Why does the poet say, “Surely the second coming is at hand?”

The Second Coming (written in the year 1919, after the First World War)

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The falcon spiralling through the air out of control is a metaphor for the world plunging into chaos and hence, the second coming. Although we might assume that the second coming is of Jesus Christ, the speaker reveals that it is something very different.