We can’t have National Poetry Month without something by William
Butler Yeats, one of the heavy hitters in any poetic all-star game. Since this
is Easter weekend, let’s have his “Easter 1916”.
The Easter he’s talking about, though, is the Irish uprising that
began in Dublin on 24 April, Easter Monday. The poem 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 after the rebellion failed.
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.
