Irish history in verse.?

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.

Irish history in verse.?
W.B. Yeat's recollection of the Irish uprising, Easter 1916, and the Irish civil war 1917-1922 is an attempt to put into verse the horrors of war and the horrors of oppression. He recognises that even wars of liberation bring terrible suffering to people caught in the middle. Is the sacrifice worth the end result: "the terrible beauty" of a free Irish state?





Yeats, along with Maude Gonne, John Millington Singe, etc., were attempting to express a separate Irish form of literature that grew out of the average Irish experience and out of the Irish Republic.





Did they suceed? Yes, I think they did. Does this poem reflect those turbulent years? Yes it does.
Reply:It's not history. It is a recollection and only fair verse at that.