The falcon is described as “turning” in a “widening gyre” until it can no longer “hear the falconer,” its human master. A gyre is a spiral that expands outward as it goes up. Yeats uses the image of gyres frequently in his poems to describe the motion of history toward chaos and instability.
In respect to this, what beast slouches towards Bethlehem?
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? This poem is in the public domain. William Butler Yeats, widely considered one of the greatest poets of the English language, received the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Likewise, people ask, who is the rough beast in The Second Coming?
Of great significance in Yeats’ poem is the “rough beast,” apparently the Anti-Christ, who has not been born yet. And most problematic is that the rough beast is “slouch[ing] towards Bethlehem to be born.” The question is, how can such an Anti-Christian creature be slouching if it has not yet been born?