Saint Patrick's Day Poem

During the Easter week of 1916 Irish rebels took over the General Post Office in Dublin and battled British forces for control of the city. The Irish surrender and the British government executed several leaders of the revolt. William Butler Yeats, who believed strongly that violence was the wrong way to shake off English rule, nevertheless commemorated those who led the Irish and were executed in his poem Easter 1916:

           Easter 1916

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter of desk among gray
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 hi 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 plashes within it;
The long-legged moorhens  dive,
And hens to moorcocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of it 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
On limbs that had run wild.
What was 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,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Yeats begins by thinking of times he had encountered a few of the rebel leaders in the course of everyday life. What unfolds is a mini narrative of previous encounters with those who fought that Easter week. He had “met them at close of day,” acknowledged them as they “passed,” exchanged “polite meaningless words,” and essentially felt that they and he “But lived where motley is worn.” These men and women seemed to him plain, insignificant human beings. But something has changed, and the stanza closes with the refrain that proclaims, “All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born.”

Stanza 2 drops us abruptly among “characters” who obviously fought against the British. Each seems quite ordinary and certainly far from heroic. Yeats withholds their names: “That” woman who apparently argue for the Irish cause “Until her voice grew shrill”; two other men, one who “had kept a school,” and the other who possessed a “sensitive…nature”; finally, “A drunken, vainglorious lout.” All of them have performed in what Yeats terms “the casual comedy;” but as in stanza 1, the poem’s refrain tells us the revolt was certainly no comedy, and that these rebels are “Transformed utterly” by what they did and again that within Ireland “A terrible beauty is born.”

Something quite unexpected and unusual happens in stanza 3. He contrasts devotion to a single purpose to the “living stream” of time and change. The unnamed persons above become “Hearts with one purpose alone / Through summer and winter seem / Enchanted to a stone.” The rebel’s single-minded resort to violence disturbed Yeats. He supported the Irish goal of self- determination but recoiled from the violence that the rebels used to achieve that end. How could he resolve these conflicting points of view?

In the final stanza, Yeats moves back and forth within his ambivalence regarding the violent methods of the rebels. He asks first whether “Too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the heart?” Fighting against the stronger, dominant English seemed to harden hearts and cause senseless deaths. His judgment of the rebels quickly falls back as he decides to leave judgment to “heaven’s part.” He muses that the rebels are akin to children to be named by the poet the way “a mother names her child / When sleep at last has come / On limbs that had run wild.” This fantasy fades when he asks and answers, “Was is it but nightfall? / No, no, not night but death.” He realizes that the rebels are more than simply zealous, unbending ideologues; they were “Bewildered” by “excess of love” and were patriots who fought and died for their freedom. The ambivalence he expressed earlier in the poem gives way to his view that they are the agents of the terrible beauty [that] is born.” He pronounces the names he left unsaid before in a roster of heroes to be honored forever:

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.