Constructed ResponseThe questions below refer to the selection “The Second Coming and Sailing to Byzantium.”
What is the speaker’s view of society in “The Second Coming”? Support your answer, citing details from the poem.
In “The Second Coming,” the speaker sees society as chaotic, violent, and falling apart. He believes the world has lost its order and moral center, as shown by the lines “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” and “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” He also describes a “blood-dimmed tide,” which suggests destruction and suffering. The speaker thinks good people have become weak or silent, while dangerous people are gaining power, as shown in “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” Overall, he views society as decaying and moving toward disaster.
Which lines from “Sailing to Byzantium” support Yeats’s idea that Byzantium symbolizes the world of art? Explain why your answer choice is correct.a. “Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. / Caught in that sensual music all neglect / Monuments of unaging intellect” (lines 6–8).b. “An aged man is but a paltry thing, / A tattered coat upon a stick, unless / Should clap its hands and sing, and louder sing / For every tatter in its mortal dress . . .” (lines 9–12).c. “Consume my heart away; sick with desire / And fastened to a dying animal / It knows not what it is . . .” (lines 21–23).d. “Once out of nature I shall never take / My bodily form from any natural thing, / But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make / Of hammered gold and gold enameling . . .” (lines 25–28).
The best choice is d. These lines show that Byzantium symbolizes the world of art because the speaker wants to leave behind his natural, mortal body and take on a form made by “Grecian goldsmiths.” That image of “hammered gold and gold enameling” represents art that is carefully created and lasting, unlike human life, which ages and dies. Byzantium therefore stands for the eternal, perfect world of artistic creation.
Yeats believed that history occurs in two thousand-year cycles of birth, growth, and decay. Explain how lines 21–22 from “The Second Coming” reflect this philosophy:And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
These lines reflect Yeats’s belief in cyclical history because they suggest that one two-thousand-year age is ending and another is beginning. The phrase “its hour come round at last” shows that history moves in repeating cycles, not in a straight line. Bethlehem symbolizes the beginning of the Christian era, but instead of a savior being born, Yeats imagines a “rough beast” coming to birth. This shows that the old age has decayed and a new, darker age is about to replace it.
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