Summary
William Butler Yeats’s “Easter, 1916” describes events known as the Easter Rising (or Easter Rebellion) that occurred in Dublin when a thousand Irish Republicans staged an insurrection on Easter Sunday. They wanted Ireland to secede from Great Britain and become an independent country. After six days of fighting, the British army arrested the remaining rebels. Most of them were hanged. The execution of these nationalist fighters caused many in Ireland to sympathize with them and helped raise support for the cause of an independent Ireland.
The first stanza describes Dublin before the Easter Rising. The speaker has met Irish nationalists in passing. They crossed paths while leaving work or walking around the city. They engaged in small talk or “polite meaningless words.” Yet the speaker was dismissive of these people behind their backs, mocking them in front of other friends. He thought that both they and himself were not serious people, wearing “motley” colors like a court jester. However, the Easter Rising changes all of this: “All changed, changed utterly:/A terrible beauty is born.” These lines, ending the first stanza and repeated throughout the poem, show how the uprising brought something new into the world.
In the second stanza, the speaker (who is closely associated with Yeats himself) describes four of the Irish nationalists mentioned indirectly in the previous stanza. There is “that woman,” who is both well-intentioned and ignorant. Frequently engaging in arguments has made her voice “shrill.” Yet before this, she was “young and beautiful.” Another person, named here as only “this man,” is an educator and a poet. He also had a “helper and friend” who was “daring and sweet.” A third man is described as an overly proud drunkard. Even though he has done bad things in his life, the speaker includes him in the poem. What these four people share is their involvement in events bigger and more important than their individual lives. Even the drunkard has “been changed” by participation in the Easter Rising. The stanza ends with the refrain “A terrible beauty is born.” This shows how the events have transformed seemingly unremarkable people into something larger than life.
The third stanza turns to nature imagery. It describes “hearts with one purpose alone.” These are the hearts of the rebels, which are compared to “stone.” A stone is solid and seemingly unchanging. Similarly, the hearts of these revolutionaries are dedicated to a single purpose and do not change. This makes them different than the natural world in its regular course. The stanza describes streams, horses, birds, clouds, and chickens. While these animals and natural phenomena all live “minute by minute” in a state of constant flux, the stone heart of the revolutionary remains the same no matter what.
The fourth and final stanza adds more complexity to the metaphor of the revolutionary’s stone-like heart. The speaker says that “too long a sacrifice” can turn the heart into a stone. This means that it is harsh and unfeeling. The speaker then asks when this sacrifice will be enough to create change. He admits that this is up to “Heaven.” All that people can do at this point is to remember the names of the four dead nationalists, the same way a mother says her child’s name while rocking it to sleep. The speaker then asks whether the death of these fighters was “needless.” Perhaps England would have kept its promise to grant Home Rule to Ireland even if the Easter Rising had never happened. Perhaps what caused them to act prematurely and rashly was “excess of love” for the dream of freedom. This love may have led them astray, but they are still worthy of praise. Here the speaker finally names the four rebels: Thomas MacDonagh, John MacBride, James Connolly, and Padraic Pearse. They were all executed by the British government in 1916 for their involvement in the Easter Rising. The poet ends by saying that these men will be remembered “wherever green is worn,” green being a symbol of Irish Republicanism. The final lines repeat the words “changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born.”
Analysis
“Easter, 1916” praises the uprising but it does this in a complex and often ambiguous manner. In the repeated line “A terrible beauty is born,” for example, there is both praise and criticism. As Irish historian Fearghal McGarry writes, when people read this line "they tend to focus more on the 'beauty' than the 'terrible' and it becomes a kind of euphemism.” However, a “terrible beauty” is not just a great beauty but one that causes terror. For the speaker of Yeats’s poem, the Easter Rising is a complex event—neither completely good nor completely bad. As the poem explores the event and some of its primary actors, it does not resolve this ambiguity on one side or the other. Instead, it shows that the meaning of the event cannot be solved for certain. The only sure thing is that the world has been changed permanently and a new period has begun. For this reason, it is worth remembering the names of the people who fought in this conflict and who died for the dream of an independent Ireland.
The first stanza begins with a description of Dublin before the Easter Rising. The speaker says “I have met them,” referring to some of the nationalist fighters. They have “vivid faces” but they walk down “grey” streets and work in offices or shops. The speaker says, “I have passed [them] with a nod of the head/Or polite meaningless words.” He is not close friends with these people, but they stop and chat occasionally. However, behind their backs he often ridicules them. He thinks about how he has told “a mocking tale or a gibe/To please a companion/Around the fire at the club.” The attitude towards these people here is dismissive. He even compares the residents of Dublin to court jesters, as they all “lived where motley is worn.” The last two lines of this stanza then reveal a strong shift in tone: “All changed, changed utterly:/A terrible beauty is born.” Neither the city nor its people can be the same again after the events of the Easter Rising.
Some of the principal participants of the Rising are described in the second stanza, though they are not named until the end of the poem. The woman who was once “young and beautiful” but who became “shrill” from arguing with others is Constance Gore-Booth Markievicz. She was a suffragist and nationalist politician as well as a countess. The man who “kept a school” was educator Patrick Pearse. He was an educator and poet. The speaker says that he “rode our wingèd horse,” referring to poetry. His “helper,” who was “sensitive,” “daring,” and “sweet,” is Thomas MacDonagh. Besides being a political activist, MacDonagh was a poet and playwright. The fourth person here is John MacBride. He was a major in the Irish Republican Army and was married to Maud Gonne, an Irish revolutionary, suffragette, and actress. William Butler Yeats was close with Gonne and famously in love with her. He hated MacDonagh for having abused Gonne while the two were married. That is the meaning of the line “He had done most bitter wrong/To some who are near my heart.” Yet the speaker says that he includes him in the poem anyway because “He, too, has resigned is part/In the casual comedy.” By participating in the Easter Rising, he was transformed beyond his everyday self as a “drunken, vainglorious lout.” He becomes a part of the “terrible beauty” of the events of 1916. Finally, there is the actor James Connolly, who led the Irish Citizen Army Volunteers.
The third stanza is quite different from the others in the poem. The speaker no longer narrates from the first-person perspective. Instead, there are descriptions of nature. The symbol of the stone appears here. It is a metaphor for the heart of the revolutionary. These dedicated people are singular in their purpose and refuse to change. In this, they are different than the rest of the natural world. While nature is in constant movement and changes with the seasons, the stone remains the same. The stone is contrasted with the “living stream.” While water constantly flows, the stone stays in place. In this way it “trouble[s] the living stream,” as if causing disturbance to nature’s regular way of doing things. While horses walk around or clouds fly overhead, “the stone’s in the midst of all.” It does not live “minute to minute” like them but has “one purpose alone.” Just as the Easter Rising has given birth to a “terrible beauty,” the stone heart of revolutionaries is shown both to be a thing of wonder and something that eerily breaks the laws of nature.
The fourth and final stanza begins with a clearer statement of the speaker’s doubt. He worries that extreme sacrifice, like the revolutionaries showed, “can make a stone of the heart.” He asks a series of questions. First, he wonders when all of this sacrifice will be enough. Then he describes the death of the four revolutionaries and rhetorically asks if their death is not something like sleeping. He then vigorously rejects that thought using strong repetitions: “No, no, not night but death.” To call their death sleep would be to cheapen it. Death is something permanent. Then the speaker asks, “Was it needless death after all?” He says that “England may keep faith.” This refers to a promise given by the British government to give Ireland Home Rule. This promise was lifted during World War I, which was raging when the events of the Easter Rising were happening. Here the speaker says that after the war, Irish republicans may get what they want without having to shed blood. It is here that the speaker stresses the ambiguity of the Easter Rising. He suggests that the violence might have been unnecessary. The uprising also failed and ended in bloodshed. However, the speaker does not condemn the revolutionaries but says that their “excess of love” might have “bewildered” them.
The climax of the poem comes in stanza four when the speaker names four of the revolutionaries executed in 1916: “I write it out in a verse—/MacDonagh and MacBride/And Connolly and Pearse.” This is an attempt to immortalize these men. The speaker says that all that those who survive can do is to “murmur name upon name,/As a mother names her child” when it is being rocked to sleep. These men are now “changed, changed utterly.” Their death has caused that “terrible beauty” to come into the world. This has transformed the character of the men. Some were good and some were bad, but in their death they are much more than who they were just as individuals. Similarly, the uprising itself may have been doomed or foolish, but it has transformed the world. The poet does not idealize either the event or the participants. However, he shows that it is still necessary to mourn the dead and recognize the significance of what has happened, whether it is for the better or worse.
