Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition

Background details and bibliographic information

The Second Coming

Author: William Butler Yeats

File Description

Electronic edition compiled and proof-read by Beatrix Färber

Funded by School of History, University College, Cork

1. First draft.

Extent of text: 718 words

Publication

Distributed by CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland.
Text ID Number: E910001-066

Availability [RESTRICTED]

The works by W. B. Yeats are in the public domain. This electronic text is available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of private or academic research and teaching.

Notes

This poem was written January 1919 and first published in The Dial in November 1920 (A. Norman Jeffares, p. 238).

Sources

Literature (a small selection)
1. W. B. Yeats, The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats, consisting of Reveries over childhood and youth, The trembling of the veil, and Dramatis personae (New York 1938).
2. Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks. Corrected edition with a new preface (Oxford 1979). [First published New York 1948; reprinted London 1961.]
3. Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach, The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W.B. Yeats (New York: Macmillan 1957).
4. W. B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions (New York: Macmillan 1961).
5. W. B. Yeats, Explorations: selected by Mrs W. B. Yeats (London/New York: Macmillan 1962).
6. Richard Ellmann, The Identity of Yeats (New York 1964).
7. A. Norman Jeffares, A New Commentary on the Poems of W.B. Yeats (Stanford 1984).
8. A general bibliography is available online at the official web site of the Nobel Prize. See: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1923/yeats-bibl.html

The edition used in the digital edition
1. William Butler Yeats The Second Coming in , Ed. Richard J. Finneran The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Macmillan Press, London, (1991) pages 189–190

Encoding

Project Description

CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts

Sampling Declaration

The whole poem.

Editorial Declaration

Correction

The text has been proof-read twice.

Normalization

The electronic text represents the edited text.

Hyphenation

The editorial practice of the hard-copy editor has been retained.

Segmentation

div0= the individual poem, stanzas are marked lg.

Interpretation

Names of persons (given names), and places are not tagged. Terms for cultural and social roles are not tagged.

Profile Description

Created: (1919)

Use of language

Language: [EN] The poem is in English.

Revision History

• (2014-05-01)

  Beatrix Färber (ed.)

• File parsed and validated; SGML and HTML files created.
• (2014-05-01)

  Beatrix Färber (ed.)

• Structural markup applied according to CELT practice; TEI header created with bibliographical detail.
• (1996)

  Students at the CELT Project, UCC (ed.)

• First proofing.
• (1996)

  Donnchadh Ó Corráin (data capture)

• Text captured

Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition: E910001-066

The Second Coming: Author: William Butler Yeats

p.189

1. Turning and turning in the widening gyre
   The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
   Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
   Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
   The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
   The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
   The best lack all conviction, while the worst
   Are full of passionate intensity.
2. Surely some revelation is at hand;
   Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
   The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
   When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
   Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
   A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
   A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

   ---

   p.190

   Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
   Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
   The darkness drops again; but now I know
   That twenty centuries of stony sleep
   Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
   And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
   Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?