The end of the world in Yeats' Second Coming and Cummings' what if a big windHellfire and brimstone, a huge environmental environmental disaster, a third world war; How will the world end? This issue can interrupt conversations or start arguments that last hours; it can start a religion or cause people to renounce their faith. The answer to the ever-present question of how the world will end is a paradox; knowing the answer means that the final hour has come. Both EE Cummings and William Butler Yeats express their premonitions of when and why this fantastic event might occur. Both prophesy about the horrible destruction of the world in their poems, "And if it were a wind" and "The Second Coming"; however, Cummings and Yeats disagree on the final cause of this destruction. While both use graphic images, strong contrasts, and unique syntax to warn readers of humanity's evils, Cummings predicts that society's irresponsible use of technology will bring about the end of the world, while Yeats believes that humans themselves , "the most full of passionate intensity," will ultimately cause the downfall of civilization. Cummings' use of intense and somewhat disturbing imagery in his poem "what if a wind" pushes readers to realize the extent of devastation caused by catastrophic, preventable destruction. The first stanza of the poem, which describes images such as the sun "bloodying the leaves," evokes terror in the reader. The thought of the sun, usually associated with warmth and love, destroying something it helped develop, directly parallels the current role of technology in society. Technology, usually considered beneficial to humanity, slowly destroys the society it… has been made up of paper thinkers since the beginning of time. EE Cummings and William Butler Yeats felt compelled to express their thoughts on the impending destruction of humanity. However, what they were not aware of at the time they wrote their prophetic poems was how frighteningly likely their predictions were. Yeats's comments regarding world leaders and their "passionate intensity" prophesied the Holocaust of World War II and the autocracies created by Hitler and Stalin, while the masses "devoid of all conviction" sat and watched with passive indifference. E.E. Cummings' description of man's abuse of technology was exemplified by the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These poets raised an alarm which was ignored; hopefully we are now ready to heed their warnings so that their dire predictions do not ultimately prove true.