A Poetic Perspective

A Poetic Perspective:

William Butler Yeats 

Some of Yeats' poems are based on important events and people in Irish history. A few of those pertinent to the information covered in this site are posted below. "Easter, 1916" clearly refers to the Easter Rising and mentions several of the soldiers by name. It captures the kind of sadness and melancholy that must have fallen over Ireland after the leaders were executed. "Sixteen Dead Men" refers to a number of Irish patriots, including Wolfe Tone and Padraig Pearse. "The Rose Tree" (my favorite) tells the story of Padraig Pearse and James Connolly talking about what needed to be done to restore Ireland's beauty and heritage. The images of red and roses draw the reader's mind to blood and the tree draws the reader's mind to images of strength, sacrifice, rebirth, and resurrection. "Parnell's Funeral" also names a number of Irish politicians prominent in Yeats' time and what might have happened had they taken on certain qualities that Charles Stewart Parnell possessed.

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, 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.

 ____________________________________________

Sixteen Dead Men

O BUT we talked at large before

The sixteen men were shot,

But who can talk of give and take,

What should be and what not

While those dead men are loitering there

To stir the boiling pot?

You say that we should still the land

Till Germany's overcome;

But who is there to argue that

Now Pearse is deaf and dumb?

And is their logic to outweigh

MacDonagh's bony thumb?

How could you dream they'd listen

That have an ear alone

For those new comrades they have found,

Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone,

Or meddle with our give and take

That converse bone to bone?

 ____________________________________

The Rose Tree

'O WORDS are lightly spoken,'

Said Pearse to Connolly,

'Maybe a breath of politic words

Has withered our Rose Tree;

Or maybe but a wind that blows

Across the bitter sea.'

"It needs to be but watered,'

James Connolly replied,

"To make the green come out again

And spread on every side,

And shake the blossom from the bud

To be the garden's pride.'

"But where can we draw water,'

Said Pearse to Connolly,

"When all the wells are parched away?

O plain as plain can be

There's nothing but our own red blood

Can make a right Rose Tree.'

 __________________________________________

Parnell's Funeral

I

UNDER the Great Comedian's tomb the crowd.

A bundle of tempestuous cloud is blown

About the sky; where that is clear of cloud

Brightness remains; a brighter star shoots down;

What shudders run through all that animal blood?

What is this sacrifice? Can someone there

Recall the Cretan barb that pierced a star?

Rich foliage that the starlight glittered through,

A frenzied crowd, and where the branches sprang

A beautiful seated boy; a sacred bow;

A woman, and an arrow on a string;

A pierced boy, image of a star laid low.

That woman, the Great Mother imaging,

Cut out his heart. Some master of design

Stamped boy and tree upon Sicilian coin.

An age is the reversal of an age:

When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone,

We lived like men that watch a painted stage.

What matter for the scene, the scene once gone:

It had not touched our lives. But popular rage,

Hysterica passio dragged this quarry down.

None shared our guilt; nor did we play a part

Upon a painted stage when we devoured his heart.

Come, fix upon me that accusing eye.

I thirst for accusation. All that was sung.

All that was said in Ireland is a lie

Bred out of the c-ontagion of the throng,

Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die.

Leave nothing but the nothingS that belong

To this bare soul, let all men judge that can

Whether it be an animal or a man.

II

The rest I pass, one sentence I unsay.

Had de Valera eaten parnell's heart

No loose-lipped demagogue had won the day.

No civil rancour torn the land apart.

Had Cosgrave eaten parnell's heart, the land's

Imagination had been satisfied,

Or lacking that, government in such hands.

O'Higgins its sole statesman had not died.

Had even O'Duffy - but I name no more -

Their school a crowd, his master solitude;

Through Jonathan Swift's clark grove he passed, and there

plucked bitter wisdom that enriched his blood.