In W. B. Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming,” the climax presents a rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem.
The poem begins with an image of disorder: a falcon cannot hear the falconer, and “the centre cannot hold.” Yeats then imagines a revelation or second coming, but instead of a reassuring Christian return, he sees a vast, disturbing creature with a lion body and the head of a man.
The final stanza asks what ancient creature has reached its hour and moves toward Bethlehem to be born. Its description as a “rough beast” gives the poem its unsettling conclusion. The animal is not simply a lion, horse, or sphinx; it is a composite, ominous figure.
Yeats wrote the poem in 1919, in the aftermath of World War I and amid political upheaval in Ireland and Europe. It was published in 1920. The poem’s language has become widely quoted because it expresses the fear that an old order is collapsing while a frightening new era approaches.