Poetry Project
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William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was born in Dublin into an Irish Protestant family. His father,
John Butler Yeats, a clergyman's son, was a lawyer turned to an Irish Pre-Raphaelite painter.
Yeats's mother, Susan Pollexfen, came from a wealthy family - the Pollexfens had a prosperous
milling and shipping business. His early years Yeats spent in London and Sligo, where his
mother had grown and which he later depicted in his poems. Reincarnation, communication
with the dead, mediums, supernatural systems and Oriental mysticism fascinated Yeats
through his life.
As a writer Yeats made his debut in 1885, when he published his first poems in The Dublin
University Review. In 1887 the family returned to Bedford Park, and Yeats devoted himself to
writing. In 1889 Yeats met his great love, Maud Gonne (1866-1953), an actress and Irish
revolutionary who became a major landmark in the poets life and imagination. Yeats
worshipped Maud, whom he wrote many poems. She was married in 1903 to Major John
MacBride, and this episode inspired Yeats's poem 'No Second Troy'. "Why, what could she
have done being what she is? / Was there another Troy for her to burn." MacBride was later
executed by the British.
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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.
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Yeats, althought a commited nationalist, was
generally opposed to using violence to
secure Irish independence, this lead him to
many confrontations with the leaders of the
Irish nationalist movement. However, after
the rising and the execution of the leaders by
the British. The deaths shock him as much as
it did the ordinary Irish people and led him
to work throught his feelings on the
situation. The line ‘’A terrible beauty is
borm’’ at the end of each stanza is Yeats
disant of the killings as he believed the Irish
Republican movement was done.
The poem begins with Yeats describing the
relationship he and the leaders of the Rising
had ‘’ I have passed ... To please a
companion’’. Yeats and the leaders had a
rocky relationship at best and only ever
made small talk with each other.
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In the second stanza, the narrator(Yeats)
proceeds to describe in greater detail the key
figures involved in the Easter uprising,
describing them without actually listing
their names. The female revolutionary
described at the opening of the stanza
is Countess Markievicz, who was wellknown to Yeats and a long-time friend. The
man who "kept a school / And rode our
winged horse" is a reference to Patrick
Pearse, and the lines about Pearse's "helper
and friend" allude to Thomas MacDonagh.
In Yeats's description of the three, his torn
feelings about the Easter uprising are most
keenly communicated. He contrasts the
"shrill" voice of Countess Markievicz as a
revolutionary, with his remembrance of her
uncomparably "sweet" voice when she was a
young woman; and he contrasts the haughty
public personae of Pearse against his
impression of his "sensitive" nature,
describing how "daring and sweet" his ideals
were even though he and MacDonagh had
to resort to "force".
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In the third stanza the narration goes into the third person as the narrator talks about many different
images. The images( ‘clouds’ ‘horses’ ‘birds’) help Yeats convey the theme of change as all has change
with the death of the Rising’s leaders. Only one image doesn’t follow this theme and that is the image
of stone(‘The stone's in the midst of all’). Among the imagery of change (‘Changes minute by minute;’
‘Minute by minute they change;’) the symbol of the stone is used to highlight the determination of the
Rising’s leaders through the constant changing of public opinion on Irish independence.
The fourth stanza is in the first person narrative like the first two stanzas. Yeats again uses the image
of a stony heart to show the determination of the Irish republicans cause (‘Can make a stone of the
heart. O when may it suffice? That is Heaven's part, our part To murmur name upon name…’)
In the second half of the last stanza, the narrator wonders aloud whether the sacrifices were indeed
warranted: "Was it needless death after all?" , contemplating the possibility that the British might still
allow the Home Rule Act 1914 to come into force without the uprising. However, Yeats made the
point that what's done was done. All that is important is to remember the revolutionaries' dream and
carry on: "We know their dream; enough/ To know they dreamed and are dead." There is no point
arguing over whether these revolutionaries should or shouldn't have acted so rashly for their cause as
they did: "And what if excess of love/ bewildered them till they died?“.
In the end, the narrator resigns to commemorating the names of those fallen revolutionary figures,
viz. Thomas MacDonagh, John MacBride, James Connolly and Patrick Pearse, as eternal heroes of the
Irish Republican movement (symbolised by the colour green), with Yeats adapting the final refrain to
reflect the price these people paid to change the course of Irish history:
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The structure of the poem represents the date of the
1916 Rising. There sixteen lines in the first and third
stanza(1916), twenty- four in the second and fourth
stanza(April 24th) and four stanzas in the poem(April is
the fourth month of the year).
I hate learning languages
And eating bacon for dinner,
My stubborn family,
And my arrogant friends,
Burger King, a rip off of McDonalds,
And all the hipsters in the that hang out in Nandos.
I hate Soccer, ‘Huh, Some Sport’
And U.C.I cinemas, thank God their out of business,
And it’s suck ups I hate most of all, just like my little sister.
John Power
Love is Red,
Red for danger,
Love is pink,
Pink for St. Valentine,
Love is harsh ,
Harsh to Heart,
Love is important,
Important for your family,