The Second Coming (poem) - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• Chinua Achebe's watershed English language novel Things Fall Apart takes its title from Yeats's poem.

• Joan Didion's non-fiction collection "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" takes its title from this poem.

• The episode "The Second Coming" of the TV series The Sopranos is titled after the poem, and features it prominently.

• Dr. Melfi quotes the poem in The Sopranos episode "Cold Cuts."

• DC Comics' series Batman: The Widening Gyre, written by Kevin Smith, and illustrated by his lifelong friend and muse, Walter Flanagan, was titled after the opening line of this poem and draws heavily from Yeats' various complex themes and symbology.

• The Roots' album Things Fall Apart takes its title from Yeats's poem.

• Ethan James' album What Rough Beast and its title track are based on Yeats's poem.

• "The Second Coming" is quoted by actor Sam Waterston playing CIA director Richard Helms in the film Nixon.

• "The Second Coming" is quoted in Alan Moore and David Lloyd's comic V for Vendetta by the character V.

• Night Ride Home, Joni Mitchell's 1991 album contains a song based on the poem – "Slouching towards Bethlehem".

• In the TV series Babylon 5 episode "Revelations", the alien G'kar quotes the poem, and is impressed by the literary abilities of mankind.

• The poem is featured in Stephen King's novel The Stand.

• In Harry Turtledove's "American Empire" trilogy the title of the second book, "The center cannot hold", references a line of the poem.

• In the television series Sons of Anarchy, the third-season episodes "Turning and Turning" and "The Widening Gyre" are named after the first line of "The Second Coming." The character Opie Winston also has "The Centre Cannot Hold" tattooed on his chest.

• In the TV series Heroes, Season 3 Episode 1 is titled "The Second Coming", and the narrator recites the poem in the closing moments of the show.

• Several episodes of the TV series Andromeda, depicting a universe in chaos following a great war, are named after phrases from this poem ("Its Hour Come Round At Last", "In The Widening Gyre" and "Pitiless As The Sun").

• In the TV series Angel, Season 4 Episode 4 is titled "Slouching Toward Bethlehem", after a phrase from the poem.

• In the TV series The West Wing, Season 6 Episode 21 "Things Fall Apart" takes its title from Yeats's poem.

• Lou Reed quotes lines 7 and 8 of the poem during one of the many monologues on his 1978 album Live: Take No Prisoners.

• In "Graduation", the final episode of the TV series Kim Possible, Mr. Barkin tells Ron Stoppable that life after graduation is all downhill and "the center cannot hold". Ron has no idea what the phrase means, but he doesn't like the sound of it and it causes him a great deal of anxiety about his post-high school future with Kim.

• The band Bright Eyes makes reference to "The Second Coming" in their song Four Winds, "It's the son of man slouching towards Bethlehem."

• Part of the poem is quoted in Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods.

• Part of the poem is quoted in opening of the second season opener of the television series Grimm, "Bad Teeth".

• The line "The ceremony of innocence is drowned" is featured prominently in Myfanwy Piper's libretto for Benjamin Britten's opera The Turn of the Screw (1954).

• The band Marillion use the line "slouching towards Bethlehem" in the song "Gaza" from their 2012 album "Sounds That Can't Be Made."

• In the denouement of his first novel in The Dresden Files series, Storm Front, Jim Butcher paraphrases the opening stanza of the poem as Harry contemplates the world growing ever darker.

• The line "falcon cannot hear the falconer" is said in the movie Wall Street by Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas.