Dogs_of_War

Dogs of War The Dogs of War In his poem, “The Second Coming”, William Butler Yeats uses strong, precise syntax to make the reader feel the intensity of his words while conveying a dark atmosphere that gives the reader an uncertain and seemingly hopeless sense of what is to come. Some would argue that “The Second Coming” is referring to the second coming of Christ because of the religious aspects of the poem; but I believe that the poem is a warning, telling the reader of the downfall of man that we will bring upon ourselves rather than by Christ. Particularly in the first stanza, Yeats uses punctuation to separate each point that he is trying to project. Each semi-colon represents a singular, complex idea while commas are used to contrast the idea within the semi-colons. Each pause in the poem is focusing on a specific idea. Each break forces the reader to contemplate the different aspects of destruction. Words such as “anarchy”, “blood-dimmed”, and “vexed” are used to magnify the intensity of the poem. Reading the words may not have much of an effect, but saying them out loud bring thoughts of suffering and pain to one’s mind. The overall war, world, second, coming, sphinx, poem, line, enemy, christ, yeats, wars, each, destruction, reader, perhaps, man, longer, believe, about, words, stanza, represents, new, men, lost, just, fought, destroy, come, cannot, blood-dimmed, beast, anarchy, worst, william, while, upon, twenty, total, tactics, person, out, ourselves, one, loosed, lines, intensity, innocence, idea