"September 1913" contains many allusions to Ireland's revolutionary martyrs, which drive the poem's social and political critique of modern Ireland. While it can be difficult to appreciate the political implications of this poem today, the historical figures whose names appear throughout the poem would have been immediately recognizable to Yeats's Irish audience at the time. Remember that this was a poem intended to be read by the general public and that it originally appeared in a newspaper. The Irish historical figures whom the speaker name-drops throughout the poem were revered in the popular imagination. The speaker uses these men's names as a shorthand for courage, sacrifice, and true commitment to the struggle for Irish independence.
The speaker specifically names three revolutionaries:
- Edward Fitzgerald, an Irish nobleman who died in prison after an unsuccessful insurrection in 1798.
- Wolfe Tone, who was also killed in 1798 after being captured by the British navy while trying to land French troops in Ireland. Tone had been sentenced to hanging but died of a (likely self-inflicted) throat wound before the sentence could be carried out.
- Robert Emmet, who was executed after leading an uprising in 1803.
The mention of "wild geese" in line 17, meanwhile, alludes to Irish-Catholic soldiers who left Ireland to fight for armies on the European continent, as well as exiled Irish revolutionaries.
By invoking these figures, the speaker calls to mind episodes, from the Irish Rebellion of 1798 through the end of the 19th century, when individuals facing terrible odds nevertheless rose up and attempted to overthrow their English overlords. In doing so, the speaker implicitly and explicitly asks readers to think about how they compare to these brave men. Are they (readers) brave enough to do what's right and support the cause of Irish Nationalism, even if the struggle is inconvenient or politically unpopular?
Not all of the speaker's allusions are so overt, however. In line 28, the speaker mentions a fair-haired woman:
You'd cry, "Some woman's yellow hair
has maddened every mother's son":
This is a veiled reference to the mythical figure Kathleen ni Houlihan. Though she often appears in art and literature as an old crone, she sometimes reveals herself as a beautiful young queen with golden hair—Romantic Ireland personified.
In a tricky twist, Yeats's speaker hypothesizes that members of the audience wouldn't recognize the genuine dedication the old Irish heroes had for the dream of Irish liberation, but counts on readers to appreciate the significance of "some woman's yellow hair." Just as Kathleen ni Houlihan takes the measure of unsuspecting Irish men and women, Yeats's speaker tests readers' familiarity with the more mythological dimensions of Irish nationalism.