Proud-pied April: We know their dream

As this is the actual hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising (24 April 1916), and as it is not possible to get through National Poetry Month without something from William Butler Yeats, let’s have the granddaddy of them all, “Easter 1916”. It’s the one that has, in its closing lines, come to define modern Ireland.

Yeats was an Irish nationalist, but not a revolutionary. He decried the use of violence, until the Brits began summary executions. He was so appalled by the response that he was even willing to count John MacBride as a hero/martyr, naming him in the litany that also includes Pearse and Connolly. MacBride was the "drunken, vain-glorious lout" who married Maude Gonne, the woman Yeats loved hopelessly his whole life, thus twice-loathed by the poet. But in the face of the institutional barbarism of the British authorities, he was willing to give his rival some props.

You can see Yeats trying to feel his way through his reaction to the rising—moving through chitchat at the club, speculating on what contributions the individual Fenians might have made and wondering if such a blood sacrifice was necessary, because "England may keep faith". In the end, though, what's done is done, and nothing will be the same.

“Easter 1916”

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, vain-glorious 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 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

Where 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.