Easter 1916
By W. B. Yeats
Text And Analysis
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.
In the first stanza, Yeats describes the uneventful scene of Dublin before the tragedy happens. We can see
streets where there are dark grey eighteenth century houses and people coming home towards evening after their
work who nod or say ‘polite meaningless words.’
Yeats here describes them with conciseness which is one of the characteristics of his style. His expression
is very beautiful. But such a beautiful and simple description is in striking contrast to the fear of the coming
tragedy. He suddenly changes his tune almost at the end of the stanza. ‘... they and I ... lived where motley is
worn’ but unexpectedly the tragedy happened, and ‘All changed, changed utterly’, and ‘A terrible beauty is
born.
This powerful oxymoron ‘terrible beauty’ is used as a refrain at the end of each stanza except the third one
in this poem which was completed four months later. In the finished poem the word ‘again’ is dropped, but the
refrain makes the poem strong, animated and well-proportioned whether the word ‘again’ is included or not.
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.
In the second stanza, Yeats describes the executed men not sentimentally but realistically.
Constance Gore-Booth who passed her younger days ‘in ignorant good-will’; Patrick Pearse who ‘kept
a school’; his friend, Thomas MacDonagh, a poet and dramatist whom Yeats had liked since 1909; James
Connolly, a trade union organiser ‘who had carried through the streets a coffin with the words “British
Empire” upon it,’2） throwing it into the river were among those executed. Also there was John MacBride,
‘A drunken,vainglorious lout’ who ‘had done most bitter wrong’ to some who were close to Yeats.
3）4） But
Yeats thinks that, in spite of this, we can number him too in the song about such an extraordinary occurrence,
because ‘dykes that separate man from man have now been broken’5） and each has ‘resigned his part In the
casual comedy ... Transformed utterly’; that is to say, even if Yeats hates this man, he has been transfigured and
splendid because this political and historical event was so big. So Yeats here is very generous in a way
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.
Is the third stanza on the riverside a facet of Yeats’s imagination or is it a view he is really seeing and
brooding over? The scene from the riverside is disinterestedly described like a picture scroll spread out. He
imagines the horseman sliding into the river. ‘A shadow of cloud on the stream’, ‘moor-hens’ and so on. This
is a natural scene where everything is passing peacefully. All the animals and all the living things are moving
‘minute by minute’. But there is a stone in the river which resists the flow of the stream. In spite of the water
flowing all around it, it never moves. The stone which resists the natural stream symbolises the rebellion which
opposes and is willing to stop the stream of the world and of life. Even such warm hearts as are described at the
beginning of the first stanza are changed into a stone at last after they kept on pursuing only one purpose － the
freedom and independence of the fatherland － ‘through summer and winter’. The very stone symbolises the
rock-like integrity of purpose of the men who died bravely in that rising. Similarly life may go on in the same
way as water goes on round the stone in the river, but these political fanatics and idealists never change.
As above mentioned, only this third stanza does not have the refrain ‘A terrible beauty is born’ which is so
effective in this poem. But there is a line ‘The stone’s in the midst of all’ at the end of this stanza. Yeats here
contrasts this stone to all things which live and change. He technically makes this stanza stronger and more
forceful by bringing out this immovable stone ‘in the midst of all’. So this sentence takes the place of the line
‘A terrible beauty is born’ at the end of the other three stanzas; in other words, ‘The stone here symbolizes the
“terrible beauty” of those who are born by their deaths into human greatness.
The fourth stanza begins with:
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart
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.