The Full Text of “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz”
The Full Text of “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz”
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“In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz” Introduction
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W. B. Yeats wrote "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz" in 1927, soon after the deaths of Gore-Booth and Markievicz, two prominent sisters from an aristocratic family. Years earlier, Yeats had admired both sisters' dedication to Irish Nationalism, a movement that fought for Ireland's political and cultural autonomy from Britain. In this poem, Yeats laments the way the sisters' politics later diverged from his own (they fought for democracy, suffragism, and labor rights, while he gravitated more towards elitism and even authoritarianism). More than their clashing opinions, however, Yeats grieves "time" itself—and the way it makes fools out of everyone, whether their political causes are "wrong or right." The poem appeared in Yeats' 1933 collection The Winding Stair and Other Poems.
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“In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz” Summary
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Evening light at the Lissadell house, the big, south windows flung open, two girls dressed in Japanese robes, both of them stunning, and one of them graceful as a gazelle. Yet the frenzied autumn cuts away the blooming flowers of summer; the older sister is sentenced to death, and though she's later pardoned, she spends the rest of her lonely life scheming with people who don't know anything. I'm not sure what the younger sister hopes for—a hazy future in which all social problems have been solved—and now that she's wrinkled with age and thin as a skeleton, she seems to perfectly represent such politics. Often I think about looking them up and talking to them about that old, giant house from the Georgian era, to trade memories about the table where we sat and our youthful conversations. Two girls dressed in Japanese robes, both of them stunning, one of them graceful as a gazelle.
Dear darkness, you know everything now, all the foolishness of battles fought for correct or incorrect reasons. But the young and beautiful are really only at war with time. So stand up and tell me to light a match, and another and another until I can light time on fire; if the flame turns into an inferno, run until all the wise men have been alerted. We built the grand gazebo (our country's political structure), but they said we were wrong for doing so. So tell me to light a match and blow it out.
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“In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz” Themes
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Idealism and Disillusionment
“In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz” mourns the loss of youth, beauty, and political idealism over time. W. B. Yeats wrote the poem after the deaths of sisters Eva Gore-Booth and Constance Markievicz, both of whom were involved in the Irish Nationalist movement in the early 1900s. The speaker (presumably Yeats himself, who was once inspired by both women) contrasts the beauty and intensity of their passionate youth with his own disillusionment as they age and veer away from the politics he once shared with them. The poem thus laments the way time ravages people’s spirits and, in the speaker’s view, casts them far adrift from the ideals they once defended.
The poem implies that in their youth, both sisters were physically “beautiful” and glowing with the radiance of their political conviction. The speaker “recall[s]” the “table” where they sat, feeling nostalgia for “the talk of youth”—the fiery, hopeful conversations young people have. But the speaker feels that, by their life's end, the sisters were no longer inspiring figures; in fact, they had lapsed into "folly." He notes that “The older” sister (Markievicz) was “condemned to death,” then “Pardoned.” (Markievicz was sentenced to death for her involvement in the Easter Rising in 1916, but her sentence was later commuted, then lifted altogether.) Later, he says, she “drag[ged] out lonely years / Conspiring among the ignorant.” Yeats is complaining, here, that Markievicz’s later politics diverged from his own (Yeats opposed democracy and liberalism, while Markievicz spent the last few years of her life helping to found the Fianna Fáil, a Christian-democratic political party).
Likewise, he imagines Gore-Booth “dream[ing]” of “Some vague Utopia,” claiming that, once she grew “withered old and skeleton-gaunt,” she seemed the very “image of such politics.” In other words, her political views struck him as worn-out and feeble. Gore-Booth spent the later years of her life as a social worker and suffragist; she fought for peace and labor rights. As such, Yeats felt she no longer stood for the nationalist ideals they once shared.
The speaker thus rages against time, which alters all people and beliefs and eventually erases everything we've "built." Referring metaphorically to the accomplishments of Irish Nationalism, he boasts: "We the great gazebo built." Yet he also says that advocates of a self-governed Ireland were “convicted [...] of guilt,” suggesting that the blame they received for the violence of those years overshadowed their achievements. In the end, he doesn’t blame the sisters for straying from their youthful ideals so much as he blames time for grinding people down, eventually making everyone irrelevant.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-20
- Lines 21-32
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Time, Age, and Mortality
As well as an elegy for two friends and former allies, “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz” is a lament about mortality itself. These women’s fiery youths are far behind them; whatever they did or didn’t accomplish, their lives are over now. Although Markievicz was spared execution after being "condemned to death," the poem emphasizes that, in the end, death spares no one. The speaker is left sharing his thoughts with “shadows,” suggesting that eventually all human deeds and disagreements disappear into the darkness of oblivion.
The speaker declares that people should treat "time" as their only true "enemy"—the one that renders all other political divisions irrelevant. The speaker laments that “a raving autumn shears / Blossom from the summer’s wreath”: a metaphorical way of saying time destroys the beauty and fervor of youth. The sisters go from being “Beautiful” in “silk kimonos,” one of them being as graceful and elegant as “a gazelle,” to being “withered old and skeleton-gaunt.” This harsh description suggests the horror the speaker feels at watching these women grow older and die. In his mind, they are still the young and passionate women he once knew. Yet in reality, people’s lives are short and over far too soon.
And while Yeats disagrees with the sisters’ later politics (he opposed democracy and political liberalism, towards which both women gravitated in their final years), now that they're gone, he looks back on the time they shared with nostalgia. He longs to “seek / One or the other out and speak” to them, and to reminisce with them about “Lissadell” (the house where the sisters grew up, and where Yeats sometimes vacationed). In the end, their different politics don’t stop him from missing them and yearning to see them again. Death is the true enemy here, not their differing beliefs about how to make the world a better place.
In the end, Yeats seems less concerned with who is “wrong or right” than with the fact that everyone dies. In fact, he judges that all fighting is "folly" in the grand scheme of things, because “The innocent and the beautiful / Have no enemy but time.” No one, in the end, is "Pardoned" from death. For this reason, he longs to “strike a match” and light time itself on fire. This image evokes the helpless fury of living while knowing that everyone and everything must die. If only he could destroy death itself, people’s lives and differing beliefs might feel more meaningful, their political efforts less futile.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 21-32
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz”
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Lines 1-4
The light of ...
... one a gazelle.W. B. Yeats wrote "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz" after the deaths of two former friends and fellow revolutionaries. Eva and her older sister Constance were, like Yeats, leading figures in the fight for Irish independence from British colonial rule—and for an Ireland that had its own cultural and literary traditions, distinct from those imposed on it by Britain.
Gore-Booth died of cancer in 1926, and Markievicz in 1927 from complications that arose during an appendicitis operation. Grieving these losses, Yeats alludes to their youth at "Lissadell," the Gore-Booth estate where the women were raised, and where he sometimes vacationed. He recalls "The light of evening" streaming through the "Great windows open to the south," and he pictures "Two girls in silk kimonos, both / Beautiful," one of whom he compares to "a gazelle." This metaphor suggests a beauty, elegance, and wildness that he clearly found enchanting. The poem's soft, romantic opening evokes Yeats's nostalgia for the girls these women once were, and for the time they shared together as idealistic, impassioned young people.
Yeats sets the elegiac tone of this opening in part through alliteration and consonance, especially an abundance of lilting /l/ sounds:
The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.These fluid /l/s help evoke the beauty and grace of the young women, conveying the idyllic way Yeats still thinks of them all these years later. Strong /b/ alliteration ("both / Beautiful") and /g/ alliteration ("Great," "girls," "gazelle") also add to the musicality of the passage.
The poem as a whole contains 32 lines, which are arranged in two stanzas of different lengths. It uses accentual meter, meaning its lines contain a set number of stressed syllables (four, in this case), but those stressed syllables can occur in any order. Purely accentual meter is more flexible than regular (accentual-syllabic) meter; it allows the speaker greater freedom while still resulting in highly musical verse. Here's how it sounds in the first two lines:
The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,The poem also follows an ABBA CDDC EFFE (and so on) rhyme scheme, which sounds subtle and natural in part due to Yeats's frequent use of slant rhymes ("south"/"both," "wreath"/"death," etc.). While many of his contemporaries were abandoning meter and rhyme altogether, Yeats continued to honor old conventions—but kept them fresh by not adhering too rigidly to his own rules.
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Lines 5-9
But a raving ...
... among the ignorant. -
Lines 10-15
I know not ...
... the other out -
Lines 15-20
and speak ...
... one a gazelle. -
Lines 21-25
Dear shadows, now ...
... enemy but time; -
Lines 26-29
Arise and bid ...
... the sages know. -
Lines 30-32
We the great ...
... match and blow.
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“In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz” Symbols
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The Gazebo
The "gazebo" in this poem is a metaphor for, or symbol of, the achievements of Irish Nationalism. The speaker declares that "We the great gazebo built," suggesting that he, the sisters he's writing about, and others who fought for a free Ireland (and a distinct Irish culture) built something beautiful and lasting.
Since a gazebo is a roofed, open structure built in a park, garden, or other public space, Yeats may be indicating that these achievements are for the betterment of the public, and should have been celebrated as such. Instead, he says, "They convicted us of guilt." In other words, not everyone agreed with the movement for an autonomous Ireland, especially after the violence of the 1916 Easter Rising. Con Markievicz was also literally convicted by the British government for her part in the Rising, and was condemned to death, although her sentence was later commuted. Thus, Yeats speaks with both pride and disillusionment about the cultural legacy and political structures he and the sisters helped create.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 30: “We the great gazebo built”
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“In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
The poem alludes to the lives of sisters Eva Gore-Booth and Constance Markievicz, who grew up at Lissadell House, an Irish estate built during the Georgian era. Yeats sometimes vacationed there, and he admired both the beauty and courage of the sisters, whom he recalls wearing "silk kimonos" and looking "Beautiful." Gore-Booth, Markievicz, and Yeats shared a desire for a free, self-governed Ireland as well as an Irish culture (and literature) separate from Britain, which had colonized Ireland in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Indeed, as the first stanza recounts, "The older" sister, Markievicz, was "condemned to death" for her part in the Easter Rising of 1916, an armed insurrection by the Irish against British rule in Ireland. She was later "Pardoned," and went on to help establish a democratic political party in a newly independent Ireland. Yeats' remark that she spent the latter "lonely years" of her life "Conspiring among the ignorant" says more about his own disdain for democracy than it does Markievicz, who is largely remembered for her part in helping to establish an Irish Republic as well as her work as a suffragist and labor rights activist.
Yeats also disparages Gore-Booth's trajectory from the beautiful, inspiring young woman he remembers to someone "withered old and skeleton-gaunt" chasing after "Some vague Utopia." Gore-Booth was also associated with the Irish Nationalist cause, but she, too, sought a more democratic approach to freedom and fought for women's right to vote and work. She was also an animal rights activist, a member of the Women's Peace Crusade, and a poet.
While Yeats clearly disagreed with the sisters' politics—outside of their shared passion for an autonomous and culturally distinct Ireland—he admits that their differences in opinion feel silly now that the sisters have died. Regardless of who was "wrong or right" about what, he believes that together they "built" a "great gazebo": a metaphor for the independent Ireland they fought so hard to bring about.
Where allusion appears in the poem:- Line 1: “Lissadell”
- Lines 3-4: “Two girls in silk kimonos, both / Beautiful, one a gazelle.”
- Lines 7-9: “The older is condemned to death, / Pardoned, drags out lonely years / Conspiring among the ignorant.”
- Lines 10-13: “I know not what the younger dreams— / Some vague Utopia—and she seems, / When withered old and skeleton-gaunt, / An image of such politics.”
- Line 16: “that old Georgian mansion”
- Lines 19-20: “Two girls in silk kimonos, both / Beautiful, one a gazelle.”
- Lines 22-23: “All the folly of a fight / With a common wrong or right.”
- Lines 30-31: “We the great gazebo built, / They convicted us of guilt;”
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Metaphor
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Repetition
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Alliteration
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Apostrophe
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"In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz" 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.
- Con Markievicz
- Eva Gore-Booth
- Lissadell
- Kimonos
- Gazelle
- Pardoned
- Conspiring
- Utopia
- Vague
- Skeleton-gaunt
- That old Georgian mansion
- Folly
- Bid
- Conflagration
- Sages
- Gazebo
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(Location in poem: )
Born Constance Gore-Booth, Markievicz was Eva Gore-Booth's older sister, who also took part in the Irish Nationalist movement of the early 1900s.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz”
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Form
"In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz" consists of 32 lines broken into two stanzas of unequal length. The first, longer stanza reflects on the speaker's memories of the sisters and how they've changed over time. This stanza begins and ends with images of Lissadell House (where the sisters grew up) and of the sisters as "[Beautiful] girls in silk kimonos." In other words, it emphasizes their long-lost youth, as well as the speaker's. The second, shorter stanza focuses on the speaker's frustration with "time" itself: how it ravages the "innocent and beautiful" and eventually makes fools of everyone, regardless of what they believed in or fought for.
The poem is written in accentual verse, meaning that its lines contain a set number of stresses, but the pattern of stresses and the syllable count per line are flexible. (For more detail, see the Meter section of this guide.) The poem's rhyme scheme runs ABBACDDCEFFE, etc., with many slant rhymes in the mix. Together, these effects give the language a loose, yet lyrical quality: a song-like lilt that Yeats returned to often in his poetry. (For a similar example of accentual meter in a political poem, see Yeats's "Lapis Lazuli.")
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Meter
The poem is written in accentual meter, meaning that although its lines contain a consistent number of stressed syllables (in this case, four, or occasionally five), those stressed syllables don't arrive in any particular order. Look at the first four lines, for example:
The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.Accentual meter gives the poem structure and musicality without sounding overly rigid. This poem has an intimate, contemplative feel to it, and it elegizes former friends of the poet's. It makes sense, then, that the rhythm feels relaxed even as the lilting lyricism evokes nostalgia and grief.
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Rhyme Scheme
The poem's rhyme scheme is as follows: ABBACDDCEFFEGHHGIJJI for the first stanza, and ABBACDDCEFFE for the second stanza. In other words, the two stanzas can be subdivided into quatrains of "envelope rhyme" (in which one pair of rhyming lines envelops or encloses another). Notice that this envelope structure has some parallels with the larger structure of the poem. Lines 3-4, near the start of the first stanza, repeat exactly as lines 19-20 at the end of that stanza ("Two girls in silk kimonos, both / Beautiful, one a gazelle"). Line 26 in the second stanza ("Arise and bid me strike a match") repeats with variations in the final line ("Bid me strike a match and blow"). These repeated or near-repeated lines enclose other kinds of material, just as one pair of rhymes keeps enclosing another (ABBA, etc.). In terms of both sounds and ideas, it's as if the speaker keeps circling back to where he started.
The poem incorporates a number of slant rhymes, such as "south"/"both" and "wreath"/"death." This technique helps keep the rhyming flexible, subtle, and unforced, in keeping with the organic, quasi-conversational flow of the language. (The flexibility of the accentual meter helps here, too.) The speaker is addressing the "Dear shadows" of departed friends, so it's fitting that it has this organic, unforced quality.
Of course, having a rhyme scheme at all lends the language some formality. This, too, is fitting, given that the poem is an elegy. The speaker is lamenting the deaths of two people he greatly admired.
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“In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz” Speaker
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The speaker of this poem is W. B. Yeats himself, who was friends with—and an early admirer of—the women for whom he wrote this lament. As a young man, he frequently visited Lissadell, the Gore-Booth's family estate, where he would talk to sisters Eva and Constance. In the poem, then, he's recalling his own passionate "youth" and the ideals they all shared when they were younger.
As they grew older, Gore-Booth and Markievicz gravitated towards different politics than Yeats. Though they all fought for Irish self-government and an Irish culture that was distinct from Britain's, those ideals evolved in very different directions. As the sisters grew "old," according to the speaker, they began "Conspiring among the ignorant" and "dream[ing] / Some vague Utopia." This criticism reflects Yeats' disdain for democracy, which both women gravitated towards as they fought for women's suffrage and labor rights. Yeats, on the other hand, was an elitist; he thought rule by the masses was ill-advised, and he longed for Ireland's aristocratic past.
Despite his growing political differences with them, Yeats clearly still respected Gore-Booth and Markievicz, who encouraged him when he was younger and entranced him with their beauty and passion. He therefore speaks bitterly of "time['s]" passage, which has reduced these women to mere memory.
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“In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz” Setting
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The poem begins with the speaker recalling "Lissadell"—the house in County Sligo, Ireland where Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz grew up. He remembers "evening [light]" from the big, "open [windows]," and the sisters wearing "silk kimonos" (a Japanese garment that became popular in Britain in the late 1800s). Though these women subsequently aged and grew apart from him politically, he's still nostalgic for "that old Georgian mansion" and the times they spent at its "table," exchanging ideas and plans for Ireland's future.
But the speaker returns to the present in the second stanza. Here, he is alone, addressing "shadows." The sisters have died, and their accomplishments—both the ones he agreed with, and the ones he didn't—pale in comparison to the reality of death.
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Literary and Historical Context of “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz”
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Literary Context
W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) is widely considered the most influential Irish poet in modern history. He played a vital role in the Irish Literary Revival (also called the Celtic Twilight), which championed a renewed interest in Irish and Gaelic literature, language, history, and culture, all of which had been suppressed by English colonization. This revival was a key part of Ireland's push for autonomy, leading to its eventual rebellion and the achievement of an independent Irish state in 1924.
Until he published Poems in 1895, much of Yeats's early literary success actually stemmed from his work as a folklorist. Yeats published five volumes on traditional Irish storytelling between 1888 and 1891, beginning with Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, which featured stories Yeats had solicited from poor farmers in the countryside.
Yeats's abiding interest in folklore was linked to the Romantic belief that rural cultures had special wisdom that modern societies lacked. Yeats was strongly influenced by English Romantics like Wordsworth and Blake, writers who also emphasized intuitive forms of knowledge, imagination, and the mystical power of the unknown. Like the English Romantics (and, across the pond, the American Transcendentalists), Yeats felt science, rationalism, and materialism often obscured more authentic forms of experience and prevented genuine self-knowledge and self-expression.
Yeats was also convinced that centuries of colonial rule had robbed Ireland of a distinct literary tradition. British suppression of the Irish language, the Great Famine (which killed over a million people), and widespread emigration had left few native Irish speakers to carry on the oral traditions. Moreover, Yeats believed that literature was central to the development of national identity. If Ireland was to become an independent, modern state, it needed its own culture, one that was distinct from the colonial English regime. This culture is in part what he's referring to when he says, in this poem, "We the great gazebo built" (line 30). The gazebo is a metaphor for the accomplishments of Irish Nationalism, including the development of a national literature.
"In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz" was published in Yeats' 1933 collection The Winding Stair and Other Poems, which also contains such noted poems as "Byzantium" and "A Dialogue of Self and Soul."
Historical Context
Yeats wrote "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz" in 1927, shortly after the deaths of the women in the title. Gore-Booth and Markievicz were two sisters who grew up at Lissadell house in County Sligo, Ireland, where Yeats sometimes vacationed. Like Yeats, they became involved in the Irish Nationalist movement of the early 1900s. During this time, Ireland was a colony of the British Empire. In 1800, Great Britain had annexed Ireland to form the United Kingdom. The Irish Parliament (the legislative branch of government, similar to the United States Congress) was abolished; the Irish were then 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 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. In the Easter Rising of 1916, armed rebels seized key sites in Dublin, the country’s capital city. Patrick Pearse, whom the rebels elected president of the new Irish Republic, declared Ireland an independent state. In response, the British declared martial law and worked to suppress the rebellion by force.
After the rebels surrendered, the British arrested thousands of Irish citizens, including Con Markievicz, who was initially sentenced to death. Her sentence was commuted on account of her gender, then dropped altogether when the British government granted amnesty to participants in the uprising (with the exception of fourteen leaders, including Pearse, who were executed).
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. Thus, the Easter Rising, though unsuccessful in the moment, did ultimately help promote the cause of Irish independence. (Yeats famously wrote about the Rising in his poem "Easter, 1916").
After Ireland gained its independence, Gore-Booth continued to work for women's suffrage and labor rights, and she also became an animal rights activist. Yeats generally disapproved of her later causes and describes her in this poem as "dream[ing] / Some vague Utopia." Markievicz, also a suffragist, helped found the Fianna Fáil, a Christian-democratic political party. Yeats disparages her politics in this poem as well, claiming she spent her final "lonely years / Conspiring among the ignorant." As a rule, Yeats was critical of democracy; an elitist, he was fascinated by the rise of fascist governments on the European continent and had some fascist sympathies. These leanings caused consternation among some of his contemporaries, including W. H. Auden, who wrote famous responses in the form of a poem and an essay.
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More “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz” Resources
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External Resources
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A Biography of the Poet — Read about Yeats's life and career in this Poetry Foundation article.
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The Political Beliefs of W. B. Yeats — A look at what ideals Yeats stood for in a shifting political landscape.
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A Biography of Eva-Gore Booth — Read this Poetry Foundation article on Gore-Booth, who was a poet as well as an activist.
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A Biography of Constance Markievicz — Read the Encyclopedia Britannica entry for Markievicz, who dedicated her life to political activism.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz" as read by broadcaster Marian Richardson.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by William Butler Yeats
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