The setting of “The Second Coming” is one of the more ambiguous elements of the poem. There is no one, discernable location in which the poem takes place. Rather, the poem begins with a God-like view of the entire historical epoch — the “gyre” (1). The speaker then leads the reader into more specific elements of the tangible world, such as the “falcon,” for example (2). However, right when the reader is given a concrete image, the speaker telescopes out again to large-scale abstractions — “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” (3). In this way, the poem enacts the experience of “things fall[ing] apart” by removing concrete and recognizable images from the poem.

The location of the second stanza is more ambiguous, as the speaker seems to cry out into the void “The Second Coming!” (12). Then, out of the sands of time, the half lion-half man emerges...