Easter, 1916
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Easter, 1916 is a poem by W. B. Yeats describing the poet's ambivalent emotions regarding the events of the Easter Rising staged in Ireland against British rule on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916. The uprising was unsuccessful, and most of the militant Irish republicans involved were executed for treason. The poem was written between May and September of 1916.
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[edit] Commentary and Interpretation
Yeats disapproved of violence as a means to securing Irish Home Rule, and as a result was estranged with many of the figures who eventually led the uprising[1]. The speaker of the poem admits to having exchanged only "polite meaningless words" with the revolutionaries prior to the revolt, even going so far as to think of "a mocking tale or gibe" about them. However, this attitude changes with the refrain at the end, which has rhythmic similarities to the popular ballads of the era as well as syntactic echoes of William Blake: "All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born."[2]
In the second stanza, the speaker proceeds to describe in greater detail the figures involved in the uprising and his relation to them without actually listing names. For example, Yeats despised John MacBride, who was Maud Gonne's former husband, and who had abused both Gonne and their daughter during the marriage[3]. MacBride is alluded to a "vainglorious lout" who had "done most bitter wrong" to those close to the speaker's heart. Despite these charges, the speaker admits, again, that "A terrible beauty is born."
The third stanza differs from the first two stanzas by abandoning the first-person narrative of "I" and moving to the natural realm of streams, clouds, and birds. The speaker elaborates on the theme of change ("Minute by minute they change ... Changes minute by minute") and introduces the symbol of the stone, which opens and closes the stanza. Unlike the previous images, which are characterized by their transience, the stone is the sole item that does not change[4].
The fourth and last stanza of the poem resumes the first person perspective of the first and second stanzas. The speaker tackles the issue of guilt and justice by making an allusion to Shakespeare's play Hamlet with the second line, "That is heaven's part" (the parallel line occurs in Act I, scene V, regarding Gertrude's guilt: "Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven").[5] Further in the stanza, the speaker considers the possibility that the deaths were "needless," before moving on to making a comparison with himself; the "excess of love" recalls the character of Oisin in Yeats's long poem "The Wanderings of Oisin."[6] Finally, the speaker names some of the revolutionary figures, and repeats the reprise.
The extent to which Yeats was willing to eulogize the members of the uprising can be seen in his usage of the phrase "motley green;" his abhorrence for green as a political symbol was such that he forbade green as the color of the binding of his books[7]. Moreover, the date of the Easter Rising can be seen in the structure of the poem: there are 16 lines (for 1916) in the first and third stanzas, 24 lines (for April 24) in the second and fourth stanzas, and four stanzas in total.
The poem may have been written to retract some of Yeats's sentiments in an earlier poem entitled "September 1913".
[edit] The Poem
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
[edit] References
- ^ Vendler, Helen (2007). Our Secret Discipline. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, pg 17. ISBN: 0-674-02695-0
- ^ Vendler, pg 20
- ^ Vendler, pg 17
- ^ Vendler, pg 19
- ^ Vendler, pg 23
- ^ Vendler, pg 23
- ^ Vendler, pg 24
