Question

Symbolism used in the seccond coming poem by yeats

Answer 1

Yeats opens "The Second Coming" with an image of a falcon escaping the falconer, swinging outward in a "widening gyre" -- a term Yeats coined to describe a circular path or pattern. As the falcon flies in great arcs away from the falconer, so the world spins out of control. The "gyre" was Yeats' symbol of a human epoch of 2,000 years. The poem frames a 2,000-year historical progression, with the birth of Christ marking the beginning and the war marking the end.