The Second Coming

William Butler YeatsFiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1919

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Published two years after “The Second Coming,” “The Waste Land” (1922) by T. S. Eliot has similar apocalyptic themes and questions the morality of man following World War I. Differing from Yeats, however, Eliot’s wasteland is present, not impending, and he believes society can pull itself out of despair. Like Yeats, Eliot was a major figure in Modernism, and “The Waste Land” is a foundational work of Modernist poetry.

“The Masque of Anarchy” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Though Percy Bysshe Shelley was not one of Yeats’s contemporaries, Yeats greatly admired Shelley and found inspiration in his work. Shelley wrote “The Masque of Anarchy” (1819) in response to the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester, calling for peaceful resistance to tyranny. While Yeats’s response to the violence of World War I was different in his poetry, he eventually became a leader in the Irish resistance against British rule.

“The Faerie Queene” by Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser, a contemporary of Yeats’s and a fellow Irish Literary Revivalist, wrote “The Faerie Queene” in the tradition of Irish folklore. Yeats sought to represent his Gaelic heritage in similar plays and poems.