The poem "The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats presents a vision of Christianity superseded. Discuss.

The poem's Christian themes are written into the title. Yeats, however, was not a Christian. He turned away from Christianity for an interest in occult spirituality, and he was a student of the esoteric mysteries of the universe. Yeats was deeply invested in spirituality, and he consistently sought a philosophy of life, a journey that led him towards occultism and a sort of religious faith in the power of words.

In this poem, Yeats supersedes Christianity by using it as stand-in for all order, ethics, and tradition. The poem's title is borrowed from the Book of Revelations. It is important to note that Christ's return to earth after the end times is a "second coming" (the first, of course, having been Christ's return after his crucifixion). Notably, in the Bible, Christ's return always occurs after a death—of himself, or of the world, in the case of the Book of Revelations. In this poem, Yeats predicts that the world is spinning towards a kind of death, but what rises out of the ashes will not be Christ—it will be a mysterious "rough beast."