The poem "The Second Coming," which includes the famous lines "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold," was written by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The poem was written in 1919 and reflects the chaotic atmosphere of post-World War I Europe. It uses Christian imagery of the Apocalypse and the Second Coming to allegorically describe the turmoil of the time. Yeats is considered a major figure in modernist poetry, and this poem is one of his best-known works.