Diction In The Second Coming Yeats

Words: 546
Pages: 3

William Yeats was born in 1865 and lived through the first World War. He wrote "The Second Coming" after he witnessed all the terrible things that happened during that time. In the poem, "The Second Coming", Yeats depicts a dark time of apocalyptic things that could happen in our upcoming future. In Yeats poem, "The Second Coming", he uses diction to convey a meaning about the second coming and a huge apocalypse soon happening. Yeats portrays diction in the line "The ceremony of innocence is drowned." Yeats was trying to say that so many innocent people died during that time period that WW1 took place. It left nothing but a flood of dead people. This line illustrates a certain type of sadness because innocent people died.Yeats portrays diction in another line of the poem which was "Were vexed to nightmare by rocking cradle." Yeats was trying to say that the world is like a living nightmare. The world is moving like a rocking cradle back and forth, side to side, with no hope for humanity left until the second coming.

In the poem, Yeats illustrates
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However, he does also seem like he knows what's going to happen next. He knows that all of this chaos and destruction could end when the second coming arrives. Yeats in the line "Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out!" This line is clearly pointing out that Yeats is very sure that a second coming is soon to arrive. Yeats also presents his tone in the line "A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving it's slow thighs, while all about it. Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds." This line is depicting that when the second coming happens, the world will be nothing more than a plain desert with nothing left on it. His tone in this line shows that he was sure that when the second coming happens, the world would end up like