John L. Waters, March 31, 2001
Yeats starts out with the image of a falcon wheeling about in the sky, far away from the falconer whom released it. The bird continues to wheel and gyre further and further away from the falconer. This metaphor stands for the young people who have given up the standards of their parents and grandparents for the new art, the new literature, the new music, and the other novelties of Yeats' time. The poem was composed in 1920.
There is another interpretation of the falcon-falconer image, and that is the image of the head or intellect as the falcon and the rest of the body and the body sensations and feelings (heart) as the falconer. This idea is reinforced and repeated later in the poem when Yeats brings in the image of the Sphinx, which is a re-connection of these two components. In the image of the Sphinx, the head-intellect is connected to the body. That is the Sphinx isn't broken apart. The giant sculpture is still intact.
The last two lines of the first stanza are simply a commentary on the times. Yeats says "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." This also suggests a dissociation between the best, which Yeats identifies as head people, the intellectuals, and the worst, whom Yeats associates with the mob who are those who react with passionate intensity not with careful intellectual study and expression.
In the first stanza of the poem Yeats gives us the first bird metaphor. In the second part of the poem Yeats gives us the second bird metaphor in the form of indignant desert birds." These creatures appear to have been roosting on the Sphinx, but when the massive beast began to move its "slow thighs" the birds became agitated and took off. The poet shows us the image a little later. The birds are flying around above the slowly moving Sphinx.
At the start of the second stanza Yeats calls for a revelation, saying "Surely a revelation is at hand." And Yeats himself becomes the revelator. Yeats is a revelator because he gives us a powerful image for The Second Coming. This is the image of a "rough beast" which has the head-intellect of a man and the fierce emotions and body intelligence of a beast. Furthermore, Yeats suggests that the body movement of the beast, the "slouching" movement is what is moving the Christ closer and closer to its "Bethlehem" or birthplace. Yeats adds the image of the head-intellect connected to the body-mind of a beast to the image Isaiah gave as a little child for The Messiah. This makes Yeats a modern revelator or prophet.
It's significant that Yeats describes the Sphinx as "A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun," because spiritual masters are known to gaze blankly as they transmit "the message" to their disciples. Yeats equates this gaze and this transmission with the Sphinx, which he also uses to denote the Second Coming of Christ.
After Yeats presents this brilliant visionary image, he says "The darkness drops again." His vision ends and he starts thinking again. He concludes that "twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle." This is a puzzling line, because the rocking cradle suggests the manger where Jesus was laid. But a manger doesn't rock unless some animals are jostling it about in their movements. And this again suggests that animal body movement figures strongly into this idea of Christ which Yeats presents in this poem.
This poem is a riddle. Yeats ends by asking a question. Throughout the poem there are hints as to what the answer to the riddle is. But Yeats doesn't come right out and give the answer to the riddle. Yeats uses the image of a cat, ie, the Sphinx in justaposition with the two images of birds. First Yeats presents the broken image of the falcon dissociating from its trainer and master the falconer. Then Yeats presents the broken image of many birds flying around the Sphinx. But the cat itself is a single whole image. Furthermore, the cat eats birds. The cat is mightier than the birds. The idea of being mighty is amplified by the very size of the Sphinx. This suggests the power of the process which integrates the human intellect with the animal power of the bodily intelligence of the animal beast. However this idea rather conflicts with the conventional Christian idea that Christ overcomes the Beast of Revelation. So Yeats is challenging certain images in conventional Christianity.
One last comment. The image of a great cat, the Sphinx, suggests a great independent spirit and heretic leader in Egypt who lived at about 1350BC and was called "the heretic Pharaoh." This man's name was Akhnaton. The image of a cat fits this man because a cat tends to be very independent minded and determined once its mind is set. The suggestion Yeats is making is that Akhnaton had something important to contribute, which is heretical. When we examine Akhnaton we find that he was a lover of nature, of animals, and of children. He also introduced naturalistic art which is a precursor of Greek science. This may be stretching Yeats quite a bit, but I thought I should throw it in. In this poem Yeats himself is presenting certain ideas which are heretical and might have offended some orthodox Christians.