The Full Text of “Easter, 1916”
1I have met them at close of day
2Coming with vivid faces
3From counter or desk among grey
4Eighteenth-century houses.
5I have passed with a nod of the head
6Or polite meaningless words,
7Or have lingered awhile and said
8Polite meaningless words,
9And thought before I had done
10Of a mocking tale or a gibe
11To please a companion
12Around the fire at the club,
13Being certain that they and I
14But lived where motley is worn:
15All changed, changed utterly:
16A terrible beauty is born.
17That woman's days were spent
18In ignorant good-will,
19Her nights in argument
20Until her voice grew shrill.
21What voice more sweet than hers
22When, young and beautiful,
23She rode to harriers?
24This man had kept a school
25And rode our wingèd horse;
26This other his helper and friend
27Was coming into his force;
28He might have won fame in the end,
29So sensitive his nature seemed,
30So daring and sweet his thought.
31This other man I had dreamed
32A drunken, vainglorious lout.
33He had done most bitter wrong
34To some who are near my heart,
35Yet I number him in the song;
36He, too, has resigned his part
37In the casual comedy;
38He, too, has been changed in his turn,
39Transformed utterly:
40A terrible beauty is born.
41Hearts with one purpose alone
42Through summer and winter seem
43Enchanted to a stone
44To trouble the living stream.
45The horse that comes from the road,
46The rider, the birds that range
47From cloud to tumbling cloud,
48Minute by minute they change;
49A shadow of cloud on the stream
50Changes minute by minute;
51A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
52And a horse plashes within it;
53The long-legged moor-hens dive,
54And hens to moor-cocks call;
55Minute by minute they live:
56The stone's in the midst of all.
57Too long a sacrifice
58Can make a stone of the heart.
59O when may it suffice?
60That is Heaven's part, our part
61To murmur name upon name,
62As a mother names her child
63When sleep at last has come
64On limbs that had run wild.
65What is it but nightfall?
66No, no, not night but death;
67Was it needless death after all?
68For England may keep faith
69For all that is done and said.
70We know their dream; enough
71To know they dreamed and are dead;
72And what if excess of love
73Bewildered them till they died?
74I write it out in a verse—
75MacDonagh and MacBride
76And Connolly and Pearse
77Now and in time to be,
78Wherever green is worn,
79Are changed, changed utterly:
80A terrible beauty is born.
The Full Text of “Easter, 1916”
1I have met them at close of day
2Coming with vivid faces
3From counter or desk among grey
4Eighteenth-century houses.
5I have passed with a nod of the head
6Or polite meaningless words,
7Or have lingered awhile and said
8Polite meaningless words,
9And thought before I had done
10Of a mocking tale or a gibe
11To please a companion
12Around the fire at the club,
13Being certain that they and I
14But lived where motley is worn:
15All changed, changed utterly:
16A terrible beauty is born.
17That woman's days were spent
18In ignorant good-will,
19Her nights in argument
20Until her voice grew shrill.
21What voice more sweet than hers
22When, young and beautiful,
23She rode to harriers?
24This man had kept a school
25And rode our wingèd horse;
26This other his helper and friend
27Was coming into his force;
28He might have won fame in the end,
29So sensitive his nature seemed,
30So daring and sweet his thought.
31This other man I had dreamed
32A drunken, vainglorious lout.
33He had done most bitter wrong
34To some who are near my heart,
35Yet I number him in the song;
36He, too, has resigned his part
37In the casual comedy;
38He, too, has been changed in his turn,
39Transformed utterly:
40A terrible beauty is born.
41Hearts with one purpose alone
42Through summer and winter seem
43Enchanted to a stone
44To trouble the living stream.
45The horse that comes from the road,
46The rider, the birds that range
47From cloud to tumbling cloud,
48Minute by minute they change;
49A shadow of cloud on the stream
50Changes minute by minute;
51A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
52And a horse plashes within it;
53The long-legged moor-hens dive,
54And hens to moor-cocks call;
55Minute by minute they live:
56The stone's in the midst of all.
57Too long a sacrifice
58Can make a stone of the heart.
59O when may it suffice?
60That is Heaven's part, our part
61To murmur name upon name,
62As a mother names her child
63When sleep at last has come
64On limbs that had run wild.
65What is it but nightfall?
66No, no, not night but death;
67Was it needless death after all?
68For England may keep faith
69For all that is done and said.
70We know their dream; enough
71To know they dreamed and are dead;
72And what if excess of love
73Bewildered them till they died?
74I write it out in a verse—
75MacDonagh and MacBride
76And Connolly and Pearse
77Now and in time to be,
78Wherever green is worn,
79Are changed, changed utterly:
80A terrible beauty is born.
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“Easter, 1916” Introduction
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"Easter, 1916," was written by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats to commemorate the Easter Rising in 1916, in which Irish nationalists led a rebellion to win independence from British rule. The leaders of the Rising were ultimately executed, and Yeats's poem balances critique of the rebellion and its political extremism with admiration for the rebels' dedication and bravery.
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“Easter, 1916” Summary
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The speaker begins by describing how he used to encounter "them," the men and women he will later identify as the Irish rebels who died during the Easter Rising, at the end of the day. Their faces might reveal some internal agitation or strong emotion, but the speaker first saw them only in the context of ordinary, everyday life, coming home in the evenings from jobs in shops or offices, meeting the speaker on the streets of Dublin outside the grey stone eighteenth-century buildings. The speaker would briefly acknowledge them with a nod and meaningless small talk just to be polite, or stop a short while and make meaningless small talk just to be polite. Even while he was talking to them, he would already be thinking of some way to make fun of them while talking to one of his own friends later at their posh club. The speaker had nothing more serious on his mind than a joke because he thought that they all were just living regular, unimportant lives. Now, though, everything is completely, totally different. Some event has occurred that was highly destructive but also helped bring about profound change.
The speaker then describes individual men and women who participated in the Rising. One woman tried earnestly but misguidedly to accomplish positive change. Her devotion to extreme political positions was reflected in her endless, strident arguing for her side. She used to show a more moderate, engaging personality when she was a young, beautiful woman who spent her time in leisurely pursuits like hunting. One man was a schoolteacher and poet, metaphorically riding the "winged horse" (a symbol of poetic inspiration in Greek mythology); another man was a poet and critic who was helping the first man develop his talent and cultivating his own. This poet might have become famous for his art, given his perceptiveness and his attractive, innovative style. There was another man whom the speaker perceived as an arrogant, good-for-nothing drunkard. This man was abusive towards people the speaker cared for very deeply. But the speaker admits that he must respect and acknowledge even this man. This man left also behind the unimportant activities of everyday life. This man also was completely, totally transformed by his participation in the Rising. This event was highly destructive but also helped bring about profound change.
The speaker suggests that people who, like the rebels, dedicate all their love, energy, and activity to one goal can sometimes start to seem inhuman in their single-minded dedication. Like an unmoving stone in a moving stream, such people can disrupt the flow of ordinary life around them. Almost all things in nature, whether animals, humans, or the weather, are in a state of constant change. Small events, like a cloud passing by above a stream or a horse's hoof slipping into the water, can have major consequences. The natural events of life, like wild birds mating, show that each living thing must adapt every minute for its own survival. But stones simply exist in the same state.
The speaker suggests that people who give up too much of their lives to pursue unchanging goals may lose their ordinary human feelings. He first wonders when all these sacrifices will be enough to achieve the goal, but then decides that it is Heaven, or God's, job to answer that question. The job for him and the rest of the community is simply to remember the dead with seriousness, respect, and love, just as a mother would watch over her sleeping child with gravity and love when the child has finally fallen asleep after running around in a frenzy. The speaker wonders if death may be something temporary and relatively painless, like sleeping through the night before waking up in the morning. He rejects that idea, however, to remind himself and the reader that the rebels are truly dead and will not come back. He next wonders if their deaths may have been unnecessary. Britain might have kept its promise to grant Ireland Home Rule, in spite of the nationalists' mistrust of the British. But again, the speaker decides it is not his or the public's job to answer that question. They don't need to know whether the rebels accomplished their goal; just knowing that they died for the sake of this goal is enough to earn them honor and respect. Still, the speaker cannot help wondering again if their extreme devotion to their goal may have clouded their judgment. But once again, he turns away from that speculation to remember the dead rebels. He lists by name some of the Rising's most important leaders—MacDonagh, MacBride, Connolly, Pearse. He affirms that for the rest of Ireland's existence, whenever the Irish gather to celebrate their country, these rebels will be honored, their identities having been completely transformed from that of ordinary people. The event was highly destructive but also helped bring about profound change.
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“Easter, 1916” Themes
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Heroism and Bravery
In “Easter, 1916,” the speaker is moved to admire the heroism and bravery displayed by the Irish rebels in trying to throw off British rule—even though he didn’t wholly admire or agree with the rebels beforehand. The poem chronicles the rebels’ flaws and the speaker’s earlier, dismissive attitude towards them (and it's worth noting that the poet himself, historically, was also critical of extreme nationalism and didn’t initially support the violence of the Easter Rising). But these conflicted, critical feelings only makes the speaker’s respect for the rebels all the more meaningful. The bravery and commitment the rebels displayed in dying for their ideals is so great that it compels even the skeptical speaker to admire it. The poem shows that true heroism can transcend personal flaws and, as the refrain says, transform a person utterly.
In the poem’s first stanza, the speaker explains how he used to see the rebels as foolish or hardly worth noticing. The speaker did not take the rebels seriously in the past. He only exchanged “polite meaningless” small talk with them or mocked them to his friends with a “gibe” (a joke). The reference to “motley,” the clothes of a jester, shows that he saw them as comic figures.
In the second stanza, the speaker then details the individual flaws of certain rebels, revealing how they irritated or angered him. The speaker criticizes a certain woman for lack of judgment, possibly brought on by her devotion to political “argument.” He also calls one rebel a “drunken, vainglorious” man, and informs the reader that this man had wronged people that he, the speaker, cares for.
But ultimately, the speaker’s admiration for the rebels overcomes his criticisms. He affirms that their bravery in being willing to die for their cause has transformed them into heroic figures, figures that his poem must honor. The first two stanzas end by saying that the rebels have been changed or transformed, that “a terrible beauty is born.” The terror is the high price the rebels had to pay for seeking Ireland’s freedom; it refers to their deaths, and the deaths of many others in the violence. But at the same time, this beauty refers to the heroism the rebels revealed in being willing to die for this cause.
In the fourth stanza, the speaker asks whether this high cost was truly necessary: “was it needless death after all?” It is possible that England would have granted Ireland freedom without this rebellion. The rebels may have been misguided in instigating a violent uprising. But the speaker again puts aside this criticism to honor them for their bravery: “We know their dream; enough / To know they dreamed and are dead.” In other words, regardless of their flaws of judgment or character, it is enough to make them heroic that they were willing to die for their cause. The speaker honors the rebels as heroes by listing out their names in the final lines of the poem and affirming again how they have been “changed utterly.” This act of bravery means they are no longer defined by the flaws the speaker noted earlier. They have been transformed from people the speaker criticized to people the speaker must admire forever, “[n]ow and in time to be."
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Personal Fulfillment vs. Public Sacrifice
In “Easter, 1916,” the speaker is conflicted about the value of sacrificing everything for the sake of a public cause. He regrets the personal gifts and opportunities the rebels abandoned when they devoted themselves to political action. He also suggests that total devotion to a cause can make a person lose their sense of human feeling and judgment. Thus even as he registers the rebels’ heroism and bravery, the speaker firmly acknowledges the costs of their commitment. While becoming heroes, they may have lost some of their humanity as well as their lives—and the speaker cannot ultimately say whether the sacrifice was worth the cost.
The speaker contrasts the rebels’ private lives with what politics made them become, noting that many of them gave up personal benefits for their cause. The speaker remembers one rebel's elegant life as a young, attractive woman engaged in aristocratic pursuits like riding "to harriers" (hunting) before she became involved in politics and started spending her “nights in argument.” He wonders whether another man, a talented poet with “daring and sweet” thought, might have “won fame” if he had never become a political activist. By describing how politics changed the rebels, as well as the talents and opportunities they gave up, the speaker lays out the individual cost of commitment to political goals and ideals.
The speaker also suggests that total commitment to a cause, while honorable, can exclude a person from normal human life and cloud their judgment. Initially, the speaker seems to applaud the rebels’ dedication by noting they have “[h]earts with one purpose alone.” But he then says that such single-minded dedication can “make a stone of the heart,” making them unable to care about ordinary human life.
The speaker depicts this ordinary life metaphorically with a scene from nature. When the “moor-hens dive / And hens to moor-cocks call,” they represent human life’s most basic emotions and events: hunger, love, sex, birth. The stone doesn’t share in any of these things but simply exists “in the midst of all.” The stone also does not change. Everything else—horse, birds, the “living” stream—changes constantly. In not changing, the stone is more dead than alive. This image suggests that the rebels, too, even before losing their lives, died in a sense by losing their human feeling. They may have also lost their judgment. Their “excess of love” for their single purpose may have “bewildered them,” blinding them about how best to act.
Of course, the speaker acknowledges the goal of all this sacrifice. The rebels also gave up their “part[s] / In the casual comedy.” That is, by giving up personal happiness, they entered into a greater, more profound story, one that will always be remembered. At the same time, the speaker still cannot say if such sacrifice is worth the cost. The speaker ends by writing out the rebels’ names and affirming that they will be remembered “[n]ow and in time to be, / Wherever green is worn.” In other words, Ireland will never forget their deaths or the “dream” they died for. But after noting how costly “[t]oo long a sacrifice” can be, the speaker also asks, “O when may it suffice?” Even if someone gives all they have for a political goal, it may still not be enough to achieve that goal.
Ultimately, the poem does not decide whether, for the rebels, the political gain outweighs the personal loss. The refrain “A terrible beauty is born” registers both the rebels’ noble devotion to their cause and the devastating price they paid for it—as well as the speaker's uncertainty about how to make sense of all this.
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Death and Mourning
In “Easter, 1916,” the speaker is conflicted about how to commemorate those who have died for a cause. Should commemoration comfort those who are mourning, or force them to face the harsh reality of death? Should the dead be honored only if people know what their sacrifice achieved? Though the speaker initially asks whether the rebels’ sacrifice was necessary to reach their goal, he ultimately rejects that question. He concludes that the appropriate way to commemorate the dead is to honor and remember them without deciding whether they made the right choice or knowing what that choice achieved.
In the final stanza, the speaker considers representing death with the comforting image of sleep. He says the mourners should remember the dead by naming them “[a]s a mother names her child / When sleep at last has come.” This is a comforting, consoling image of death, suggesting that the mourners can still protect the dead and also that they are not really dead, just asleep, and so will wake again. The image of death as sleep is a Christian one tied to a belief in the resurrection of the dead, which is also invoked by the word “Easter” in the poem’s title.
But the speaker then rejects this image, saying: “No, no, not night but death.” The rebels aren’t asleep for a night but dead forever, and the mourners must accept this difficult truth. In this way, the speaker refuses to romanticize or soften the reality of the rebels’ actions: they have nobly died for a cause, but they are still dead.
The speaker also asks whether and how the rebels’ actions were helpful and necessary for reaching the goal of Irish independence. With “O when may it suffice?” the speaker asks, on the one hand, whether any amount of sacrifice can be enough to achieve idealistic political goals. On the other hand, the speaker also asks if the rebels’ sacrifice was needed to obtain this particular goal: “Was it needless death after all?” England may have “ke[pt] faith” and granted Irish independence without the Easter Rising. Asking if “excess of love / Bewildered them till they died?” the speaker wonders if the rebels may have made a misjudgment in starting the Rising.
Ultimately, however, the speaker refuses to answer the question of what the rebels achieved. Instead, he honors them while leaving open the possibilities that their sacrifice may have produced something great or something tragic. Even while raising questions about the Rising, the speaker says it is not the mourners’ job to answer those questions. Their “part [is] / To murmur name upon name.” That is, their job is to honor the dead and their dream without knowing whether their deaths helped to accomplish that dream. It is “enough / To know they dreamed and are dead.”
The speaker performs this job of mourning and honoring the dead in the poem’s final lines when he names the rebels and notes how their deaths brought about a “terrible beauty.” The rebels may have helped accomplish their political goal, and they have certainly achieved immortality as heroes for their country and their cause. But they became immortal in memory at the cost of their mortal lives, so their deaths may have accomplished something great or merely have been a great loss. But either way, the speaker concludes, the right way to commemorate them is by honoring their names and remembering why they died.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Easter, 1916”
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Lines 1-6
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,The opening lines introduce the speaker and the people, "them," who will be the subject of his poem. He does not specify right away exactly who these people are—their identity will be developed over the course of the poem. Right away, however, the reader does know that there is a contrast between their dull "grey" surroundings and the "vivid faces" of the people the speaker encounters. They may be coming from their ordinary, everyday jobs at shops or offices, but on the inside, they have some unusually high degree of emotion or passion.
There is also a contrast drawn between these people and the speaker. The speaker does not seem to take their passion seriously. Rather than engaging with these people in a meaningful way, he simply "pass[es]" them with a mere nod or, if he must speak with them, only says "polite meaningless words." Whatever it is that animates these people, he does not wish to get involved with it. These contrasts—between the speaker and these people, between these people and their surroundings—prepare the reader for some conflict to arise later in the poem. The opening line foreshadows the result of this conflict by setting the poem at "close of day." At first, this phrase refers simply to evening, to night falling. But later in the poem, the speaker will use "nightfall" as an image of death. The speaker didn't know it at the time, but he was encountering these people near the close of their lives, shortly before their deaths.
The opening lines also introduce the poem's meter. The poem is written in a mix of trimeter and tetrameter, generally having three or four stressed syllables (beats) per line, but with an irregular number and varying placement of unstressed syllables. The first four lines, for example, scan this way:
I have met them at close of day (8 syllables)
Coming with vivid faces (7)
From counter or desk among grey (8)
Eighteenth-century houses. (7)Lines 1 and 3 start with an unstressed syllable and end with a stressed syllable; lines 2 and 4 do the opposite. Line 1 begins with an anapest; line 3 begins with an iambic foot. Iambic feet are common in the poem, and the poem is fairly consistent with its three stressed syllables per line, but the unstressed syllables introduce considerable variety in the poem's overall rhythm and meter. This variation, besides adding interest to the pure sound of the poem, helps reflect the speaker's inner conflict about the people and events he is describing. He has difficulty deciding how to judge them, just as the poem seems to have difficulty deciding what exact rhythm to follow.
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Lines 7-12
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, -
Lines 13-16
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born. -
Lines 17-23
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? -
Lines 24-30
This man had kept a school
And rode our wingèd 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. -
Lines 31-35
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; -
Lines 36-40
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. -
Lines 41-44
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream. -
Lines 45-50
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; -
Lines 51-56
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. -
Lines 57-62
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 -
Lines 63-69
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. -
Lines 70-74
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— -
Lines 75-80
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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“Easter, 1916” Symbols
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Stone
The image of the stone in the third and fourth stanzas is one of the poem's most important symbols for the Irish rebels. The symbol is an important poetic tool for the speaker because it provides a single image with multiple possible meanings, effectively capturing the speaker's conflicted feelings about the rebels and their actions.
Most obviously, the stone symbolizes the rebels' hearts, especially the way their hearts are devoted to a single cause. This symbol can have positive implications of steadfastness and dedication. Many Irish readers would be familiar, for example, with the Christian biblical passage in which Jesus Christ tells his follower Peter, "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church" (Matthew 16:18). As a rock is a strong foundation for a building, a heart as firm as a stone is a strong foundation for a social cause like that of the rebels.
But the symbol can also have negative implications. A heart of stone may not have the kind of love or tenderness that a person ought to have. In another well-known Bible verse, God tells his people, "I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26). Thus, the stone can symbolize the rebels' loss of appropriate human feeling as well as their dedication. When the stone "trouble[s] the living stream," this could mean that the rebels provide an example of purpose and dedication to all the people around them, who might otherwise only bother with ordinary, insignificant activities. Or it could mean that the rebels bring destruction upon the innocent people around them through their fixation on one, potentially violent, goal.
This ambiguity allows the symbol of the stone to capture the speaker's conflicted response to the rebels—especially because, at line 57, he acknowledges that it is the rebels' "long [...] sacrifice" that has made their hearts stone-like. That is, it was their fine qualities of dedication and sacrifice that made them lose other fine qualities like compassion. The close relationship between the rebels' virtues and their flaws is what makes it so difficult to know how to judge them, and the symbol of the stone helps convey that difficulty.
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Sleeping child
The speaker uses the image of the sleeping child to symbolize the rebels after they have died. He declares that the public should commemorate them by murmuring their names:
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.This image has several connections to the deceased rebels. Sleep is a common metaphor for death, used numerous times in the Christian Bible (see this guide's Literary Device entry for "Allusions"). The sleeping child represents the rebels in a way that softens the horror of their deaths, suggesting that they are at peace and even that they may wake.
Children also traditionally represent innocence. With this image, the speaker softens his previous critique of the rebels, suggesting that they shouldn't be condemned as guilty of a crime—even if, as the child misbehaved while awake, they had "run wild" in the violent, destructive tactics they adopted. Children may cause destruction without knowing it or intending it, and so with this symbol the speaker acknowledges that the rebels, too, did not intend for people to be harmed when they began the Rising. They only wanted to fight for their country's independence. The speaker makes a similar point in lines 72-73—even repeating the word "wild"—when he asks, "And what if excess of love / Bewildered them till they died?" Their extreme love for their country and their cause may have led them to extreme action without fully understanding or intending all the consequences.
Additionally, the mother who tends the child may be a symbol of Ireland. One's home country is often called "the motherland," and the citizens may be thought of as that country's children. Ireland, then, would be the mother of the rebels. (Yeats himself uses the image of Ireland as a mother in his poem "Remorse for Intemperate Speech," and the Proclamation of the Republic, which was read out during the Rising, refers to the citizens as Ireland's children.) As citizens who make up the country, the remaining community now has the mother's job of "nam[ing] her child"—that is, remembering the rebels' names and honoring them for their deaths. The symbol of the sleeping child adds a new dimension to the poem's characterization of the rebels and also helps the speaker in his quest to find an appropriate response to their fate.
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“Easter, 1916” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Rhetorical Question
The speaker uses rhetorical questions to convey his conflicted feelings and uncertainty. In the fourth stanza, the speaker asks four different questions about the rebels. It is not merely that he has questions, but the fact that his questions cannot be answered—and that he continues to ask questions even after he knows they cannot be answered—that conveys how difficult it is to know how to respond to the Rising.
The speaker first asks in line 59, "O when may it suffice?" In other words, when it comes to situations like the rebels', how much "sacrifice" will "suffice" to achieve a goal? He does not find an answer to this question, but he also denies that it can be answered: "That is Heaven's part." Humans can never be completely certain what their efforts will achieve, so the question "What is necessary to achieve our goal?" is not the kind of question they can answer. Nevertheless, the speaker cannot help asking the same kind of question again in line 67: "Was it needless death after all?" That is, was it necessary for the rebels to die to help secure independence?
Asking this question again when the speaker has already judged that it cannot be answered shows how difficult it is for him to arrive at one settled response. He would like to simply put aside his questions and doubts and honor the rebels for their bravery. Still, he cannot help wondering what their bravery achieved and how it might have misled them. Maybe all the brave acts in the world will never be enough to reach the goal. On the other hand, maybe these brave acts weren't even needed to reach this goal. Should he pity them for their fruitless effort? Or should he criticize them for their bad judgment?
Once again, though, the speaker rejects these questions. It is "enough," he declares, to "know they dreamed and are dead." He doesn't need to know what their deaths accomplished to know he should honor them for being willing to die. And yet, he still asks one final question: "And what if excess of love / Bewildered them till they died?" He still wants to know what drove them to their deaths. This question, too, goes unanswered. He moves instead to writing out the rebels' names in tribute. But even as the poem ends by honoring the rebels, its multiple unanswered questions show how difficult it was for the speaker to arrive at this response.
The questions also undercut any straightforward political message that readers might take away from the poem. The speaker honors the rebels, and the rebels used violence to try and achieve their goal. But that doesn't mean that violence itself should always be honored or admired; the speaker emphasizes that there is far too much doubt about the rebels' judgment and effectiveness for that. Suggesting that the rebels should be honored but not necessarily imitated is part of what makes this poem so complex. The rhetorical questions help create that complexity.
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Oxymoron
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Refrain
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Simile
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Metaphor
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Repetition
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Climax (Figure of Speech)
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Allusion
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Consonance
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Enjambment
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Extended Metaphor
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"Easter, 1916" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Gibe
- Motley
- That woman
- Rode to harriers
- This man
- Wingèd horse
- This other
- This other man
- Vainglorious
- Lout
- Some who are near my heart
- Resigned
- Plashes
- Moor-hens
- Suffice
- England may keep faith
- MacDonagh
- MacBride
- Connolly
- Pearse
- Green
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A taunt or mean-spirited joke.
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Easter, 1916”
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Form
"Easter, 1916" is divided into four stanzas of different lengths:
Stanza 1: 16 lines
Stanza 2: 24 lines
Stanza 3: 16 lines
Stanza 4: 24 linesEach individual stanza is further divided into quatrains by the poem's rhyme scheme, which creates four-line units rhymed abab.
Some readers of the poem have found symbolic significance in these structural units. The Easter Rising took place on April 24, 1916. April is the fourth month of the year, and the poem is divided into four-line units. The 24 lines of the second and fourth stanzas may represent the 24th day of April; the 16 lines of the first and third stanzas may represent the year 1916. Since the poet highlights the date's importance in the title, it is plausible that he would also embed the date into the poem's form.
The stanzas help structure the speaker's thought process in the poem, from his initial dismissive attitude to his final attitude of respect. Stanza one describes how he used to mock the rebels before the Rising; stanza two describes how many rebels used to live more sociable, artistically driven lives before the Rising. Stanza three combines criticism of the rebels with admiration through the symbol of the stone; stanza four wavers between judging and honoring the rebels, but ultimately ends with honor.
Dividing the poem into stanzas also creates an opportunity for the speaker to use a refrain throughout the poem (at the end of stanzas one, two, and four) to repeat his most important message. While the stanzas convey the development of the speaker's feelings, the refrain signals, even from the first stanza, that the speaker sees something both tragic and profound in the Rising.
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Meter
"Easter, 1916" is written in a mix of loose iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, but there are also frequent variations on this pattern for particular dramatic effects. Recall that an iamb consists of two syllables in an unstressed-stressed pattern (da DUM); in tetrameter there are four iambs per line, while trimeter has three.
Trimeter is not common in English verse as a way of writing an entire poem, though a pattern of alternating between tetrameter and trimeter (what's known as common meter) is often used. Here, the frequent trimeter creates a chant-like quality to the poem, giving it almost the sound of an incantation or spell. This haunting, spell-like quality is appropriate for a poem that commemorates the dead and ends by naming them. It was an Irish tradition to recite the names of the dead, and this recitation was even believed to have a certain magical quality that could make the dead somehow present.
Some of the poem's lines are perfectly iambic, like lines 17-20:
That wo- | man's days | were spent
In ig- | norant | good-will,
Her nights | in ar- | gument
Until | her voice | grew shrill.Again, though, within this overall trimeter structure, the speaker varies the rhythm. The final lines, for example, can be scanned like this:
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.Here, the varied rhythm creates several dramatic effects. Coming after two regular iambic lines, the stress on "Now," the first syllable of line 77 creates a trochee (stressed-unstressed), breaks the pattern and catches the reader's attention. It also gives extra emphasis to the word, insisting that the rebels are to be honored at this very moment. The three stressed syllables in a row of "changed, changed utterly," slow the reader down in preparation for the end of the stanza and the poem, while the unstressed syllables at the end of the line (a feminine ending) create a sense of suspension rather than finality, as the reader moves to what is actually the last line. The last line re-introduces a regular pattern with "terrible beauty is," though it isn't the usual iambic rhythm: it is dactylic (stressed-unstressed-unstressed). The additional unstressed syllables lengthen the line, continuing to slow the poem down. This longer line, together with the even metrical pattern and the final stressed beat, creates a sense of finality and conclusion at the poem's end.
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Rhyme Scheme
The poem's overall rhyme scheme is abab, so that the line endings go:
ABABCDCDEFEF, etc.
However, the speaker substitutes slant rhymes for perfect rhymes in many of the lines. Many of the line endings share the same consonant, for example (consonance), but have different vowels: "thought" and "lout" at the end of lines 30 and 32, or "dive" and "live" in lines 53 and 55. The generally regular rhyme scheme contributes to the spell-like or incantatory quality of the poem's sound. The imperfect rhymes, meanwhile, make the rhyme scheme less emphatic and keep the poem from acquiring too much of a sing-song or monotonous tone.
The words that end a poetic line are often particularly significant, and the rhyme scheme can have the effect of linking these significant words together. When the words are related in sound, the reader more easily sees how they are related in meaning. Lines 41 and 43, for example, rhyme "alone" and "stone." The rhyme highlights the fact that it is because the rebels dedicate themselves to "one purpose alone," to one single goal, that their hearts have become like "stone," utterly fixed and unchanging. Other rhymes make the contrast between two words and ideas even more striking. For example, lines 37 and 39 rhyme "comedy" and "utterly." "Utterly" describes the rebel's total transformation away from his past role in life's "casual comedy." Pairing these two words highlights the sudden, drastic shift from one identity to the other.
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“Easter, 1916” Speaker
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The speaker is a witness to the Easter Rising who wants to find the appropriate response to this profound historical event. He is a citizen of Dublin who appears to have only a distant acquaintance with the rebels at first, but he later reveals details of their lives as if he knew some more intimately. Because these details link the speaker so closely with the poem’s author, W.B. Yeats, this guide assumes that the speaker is also a man and so uses male pronouns throughout.
Over the course of the poem, which is told from the first-person point of view, the speaker reveals how his judgment of the rebels has changed thanks to the Rising. The first two stanzas show how dismissive the speaker is towards them, lamenting the lives they gave up rather than supporting their political goals. The third stanza is torn between admiring them for their dedication and criticizing them for blind zeal. The fourth stanza shows how the speaker ultimately shifts to acknowledging the rebels' “dream” and honoring them for their heroic, fatal commitment to that dream.
The speaker is not identical to Yeats, but there are important parallels between them. The speaker is distant towards the rebels in the poem’s first stanza. Yeats, however, had respectful friendships with a number of them, including Pearse and MacDonagh. For years, Yeats loved a fiery Irish nationalist, Maud Gonne, who married John MacBride—the “other man” mentioned in line 31. MacBride abused Gonne and her daughter, and so when the speaker says this man has “done most bitter wrong / To some who are near my heart,” he is essentially expressing the poet’s own thoughts.
In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Yeats was, like Gonne, enthusiastic about Irish nationalism and independence. But in the decade leading up the Rising, he lost some of that enthusiasm, in part because he disagreed with the rebels about the use of violence. In a letter at the end of April 1916, Yeats wrote, “I know most of the Sinn Fein leaders & the whole thing bewilders me for Connolly is an able man & Thomas MacDonough [sic] both able & cultivated. Pearse I have long looked upon as a man made dangerous by the Vertigo of Self Sacrifice.” In May 1916, Yeats wrote, “I had no idea that any public event could so deeply move me.” The letters, which use some of the same words that appear in the poem, show how the speaker’s strong, conflicted feelings mirror Yeats’s own response to the Rising and its leaders.
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“Easter, 1916” Setting
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To the extent that the poem has a specific setting, it takes place in Dublin, the capital city of Ireland. The most significant events of the Rising took place in Dublin, and much of the city's architecture dates to the 18th century, so the description of "grey / Eighteenth-century houses" likely refers to the stone buildings constructed during that period.
The poem also suggests Ireland more generally as its setting, in that it assumes its readers are Irish citizens. The references to "[t]hat woman," "[t]his man," etc. in stanza two would most easily be understood by people who lived near the rebels and knew them personally. When the speaker talks of "our part" and says "[w]e know," he seems to imagine a group composed of Irish citizens who would be honoring the rebels who fought for Irish independence. It is Irish citizens who would wear green, as the speaker imagines in line 78, and read this poem on future occasions to continue honoring their memory.
Stanza three markedly leaves the urban setting behind to enter a pastoral scene set in nature, among streams, clouds, and animals. This stanza is strongly metaphorical, however, and does not refer to any specific natural spot in the way that the opening lines refer to Dublin.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Easter, 1916”
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Literary Context
As a poem that mourns the dead, Yeats’s “Easter, 1916” is a kind of elegy. But it differs from some of the most famous elegies in English—such as John Milton’s “Lycidas,” Percy Shelley’s “Adonais,” and Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam A. H. H.”—in that it is focused not on a single individual but rather on a historical and political event. In this sense, important literary precedents include other political poems, like the English poet Andrew Marvell’s “An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland.” Marvell's poem was written during the English Civil War, when Oliver Cromwell led the Parliamentary army to victory against the royal army. Marvell tries to arrive at the right response to Cromwell and his followers, as Yeats does here for the Irish who rebelled against the established English power. Both poems reveal, through their conflicted responses, how difficult it can be to interpret history and judge political conflicts.
Yeats’s own poems are also important precedents for this one. He used the trimeter form of “Easter, 1916” in a poem called “The Fisherman.” Like “Easter, 1916,” this poem registers frustration with Irish politics and envisions a more ideal hero who could serve as an appropriate symbol for the country at its best.
Later poets would also draw inspiration from “Easter, 1916” for their own poems about key political-historical events. For instance, the English poet W.H. Auden wrote a poem about the outbreak of World War II titled “September 1, 1939.” Auden refers to the date of the event in his title, as Yeats does with “Easter, 1916,” and uses the same trimeter form as Yeats. And, like “Easter, 1916,” “September 1, 1939,” ends with a muted message of hope about the public service the poet can perform with his art.
The Irish poet Seamus Heaney also drew on Yeats to write about the ongoing effects of the Easter Rising. The quest for Irish independence ultimately resulted in the southern Republic of Ireland becoming independent while Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom. Violent struggles broke out in the late 1960s between those who wanted Northern Ireland to join the Republic of Ireland and those who wanted it to remain part of the United Kingdom. Heaney chronicled this violence in “Casualty,” a poem that also uses the trimeter form of “Easter, 1916.” Auden and Heaney’s poems show how Yeats’s poem proved an inspiring model for later poets struggling to find direction and meaning at traumatizing moments in history.
Historical Context
“Easter, 1916,” is a commemoration of the Easter Rising, which occurred when Irish nationalists led a rebellion against British rule to try to win independence for Ireland. When W.B. Yeats was born in 1865, Ireland was a colony of the British Empire. In 1800, Ireland had been joined with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom. The Irish Parliament (the legislative branch of government, similar to the United States Congress) was abolished; the Irish were represented instead by the British Parliament.
Many Irish nationalists opposed the union with Great Britain and worked for decades to restore Home Rule (self-government for Ireland). In 1914, a Home Rule Bill was passed in the British Parliament. Its implementation was postponed, however, until the end of World War I, which had just broken out. Irish nationalists decided to lead a rebellion against British rule before the war was over, and leaders established a Military Council to plan the rising. Patrick Pearse was director of Military Organization; James Connolly and Thomas MacDonagh were members of the Military Council; John MacBride later helped lead the rebel troops.
The Rising was planned for Easter Monday, April 24, 1916. Armed rebels seized key sites in Dublin, the country’s capital city, including the General Post Office. Pearse, whom the rebels elected president of the new Irish Republic, declared Ireland an independent state. The British declared martial law and worked to suppress the rebellion by force. In the gunfire between Irish and British troops, hundreds were killed and thousands were wounded. On April 29, as the Irish were surrounded and outnumbered, Pearse ordered all troops to surrender.
The British then arrested thousands of Irish citizens. Many were released, but fourteen of the leaders were ultimately sentenced to death and executed, including Pearse, MacDonagh, MacBride, and Connolly. Before the Rising and immediately afterwards, many Irish citizens had been apathetic or hostile towards the rebels. But after the executions, the Irish public became more sympathetic towards the rebels’ cause and more hostile towards the British. The Easter Rising, then, though unsuccessful in the moment, did ultimately help promote the cause of Irish independence.
After the Rising, the pro-independence party Sinn Féin won a large majority of Irish parliamentary seats. In 1919, Sinn Féin formed its own government and declared independence for Ireland. For two years following, the Irish Republican Army fought British forces in the Irish War of Independence. In 1921, Ireland was divided and the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed. Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom, but in the south, the Irish Free State was created as a semi-independent dominion within the British Empire. In 1949, on the 33rd anniversary of the Easter Rising, the Irish Free State became the fully independent Republic of Ireland.
Yeats’s poem became part of the way Ireland remembered the Rising. On the 50th anniversary of the Rising, for instance, a Dublin newspaper distributed commemorative posters of the General Post Office under the headline “A Terrible Beauty is Born.”
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More “Easter, 1916” Resources
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External Resources
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Other Poems on the Easter Rising — A collection of 10 poems written on the occasion of the Easter Rising, all with commentary by Dr. Lucy Collins of University College Dublin.
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The Easter Rising — Resources on the Easter Rising from the BBC.
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Reading of "Easter, 1916" — A moving reading of "Easter, 1916" by Northern Irish actor Liam Neeson.
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Dublin Rising 1916-2016 — A virtual tour of Dublin, narrated by Irish actor Colin Farrell, that overlays the contemporary city with the city as it was in 1916, and provides historical background on the Rising.
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W.B. Yeats Biography — An account of W.B. Yeats's life, with a focus on his development as a poet.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by William Butler Yeats
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