The Second Coming as a warning to humanity, discuss.

"The Second Coming" is a deeply ominous poem, full of foreshadowing. Like mythical Greek oracles of old, delivering prophecies in the form of fragmented predictions of the future, it is full of grandiose, dramatic premonitions that do not necessarily make the future much clearer: all it is sure of is that something is going to happen, and the world will never be the same.

Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" during a chaotic time in world history. World War I had just ended, bringing unprecedented violence and chaos to the world. Also, Yeats had just witnessed the bloody Irish War of Independence, which split Ireland into two parts, as well as the Bolshevik Revolution that tore Russia apart. Traditional borders were collapsing, and precarious new ones were being drawn. Yeats believed, as many historians do, that history operates in cycles, with nothing lasting forever and with events always repeating themselves. He also believed that beginnings always lead back to where they began—to endings, to the absence of whatever constituted the circle.

This poem modifies the Christian idea of the "Second Coming" to imply that the world is returning back to how it was before Christianity: without religious morality to guide it, and without an ethical compass to lead it into the future.