The Second Coming by the name is apocalyptic in its’ own right. The second coming of Jesus, meant by the name is a major change which can be effective for hundreds of years. In the poem, much of the poem can be described in a negative, feral light. A lion’s body with a head of human is illustrated as well as desert birds. Common association could be wasteland and turmoil given the portrayal and words in the poem such as “darkness”, “vex”, “blood-dimmed”. I believe since there is a major change happening and the author’s descriptive uses of words, that this is an apocalyptic poem.
2 thoughts on ““The Second Coming” is arguably an apocalyptic poem, but people tend to get confused about apocalypses not always having to be bad; they could simply be times of great change (one world ending and another beginning and so on and so forth). It could be interesting to consider apocalypses as a genre and whether you think this is an apocalyptic poem and if so, how and why or not?”
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I agree too that this is an apocalyptic poem because of the choice of words the author chose to use. However, I believe the poem has a deeper complexity to it with relations with the bible, “the second coming” of Jesus, and the world’s end. The poem tries to convey a sense of skepticism in the joyous return of Jesus to save his children because of the questioning of the last sentence in the poem referencing to Bethlehem, a holy city for those who are saved.
In general I think that a lot of these apocalyptic poems are more about change then the world ending. Maybe the authors during the time period of their literature were opposed to or afraid of change and wanted to paint it in a more negative light or in this case, an apocalypse. In this case I do not think it is a completely apocalyptic poem contrary to the authors word choice.