世界英文文學首頁   /   作家  /  William Butler  Yeats  威廉.巴特勒.葉慈  /  作品
The Second Coming
作者Author  /  William Butler  Yeats  威廉.巴特勒.葉慈

Study Questions

 
 
Understanding & Analysis 
 
  1.  The poem begins with the image of a falcon flying out of control. Do you know what falconry is? Describe it. Yeats is using this image from falconry to suggest the situation of the modern world. In what ways do you think the modern world is like the distant, circling falcon?  Can you give a specific examples of the 'things [that] fall apart"?
  2. This poem is heavy with allusions to the Bible and Yeats' own world views.  To fully understand it, you need to read the Text with Annotations.   BUT before doing that,  please read the poem out loud and feel tone of the speaker (e.g. the repetitions, exclamation and question at the end).
  3. After you've read the annotations, do you know what the Second Coming is? Is the Second Coming that Yeats expects the same as the Christian idea of the Second Coming?
  4. What vision does the speaker of the poem have? How does he respond to that vision? Can you explain in your own words what the speaker comes to know in lines 19 and 20?
  5. Explain the last two lines.
  6. What does Yeats suggest about the modern world in this poem?
 
 
   
Application & Wild Association
 
  1. Yeats wrote this poem in 1919, after the experience of World War I as well as other wars and human atrocities.  Do you think the situation of the world today is as bad as lines 3-8 suggest?
  2. Singer Joni Mitchell turns the poem into a song "Slouching Towards Bethlehem."  Does the two convey the same feelings about the modern world?  Which do you like better?
  3. Do you want to see another reproduction of Yeats' "Second "Coming"?  As a lively example of how famous the poem is, this page "reproduces" the poem by using titles from various books.
 
   
  文本
導讀問題
Copyright ©2009 國科會人文學中心 All Rights Reserved.