24.7: William Butler Yeats

“Easter, 1916”

By William Butler Yeats

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I have met them at close of day

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head

Or polite meaningless words,

Or have lingered awhile and said

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done

Of a mocking tale or a gibe

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,

Being certain that they and I

But lived where motley is worn:

All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers

When, young and beautiful,

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school

And rode our 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.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone

Through summer and winter seem

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road,

The rider, the birds that range

From cloud to tumbling cloud,

Minute by minute they change;

A shadow of cloud on the stream

Changes minute by minute;

A horse-hoof slides on the brim,

And a horse plashes within it;

The long-legged moor-hens dive,

And hens to moor-cocks call;

Minute by minute they live:

The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven's part, our part

To murmur name upon name,

As a mother names her child

When sleep at last has come

On limbs that had run wild.

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith

For all that is done and said.

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;

And what if excess of love

Bewildered them till they died?

I write it out in a verse—

MacDonagh and MacBride

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

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“The Second Coming”

By William Butler Yeats

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Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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Post-Reading for Yeats:

1) “Easter, 1916” represents Yeats’ complex feelings towards the The Easter Rebellion, a short lived uprising by Irish Nationalists against British rule. The revolt was violently put down and the leaders executed. Yeats, who had been mildly political to this point, wrote the poem to commemorate the fallen rebels and inspire those that came after. The poem, like Yate’s feeling towards the conflict, were complicated. What do you make of the repeated line, “A terrible beauty is born.” The line appears in numerous places throughout the poem, usually ending a stanza, and is the final line of the poem. What does Yates mean by “a terrible beauty?” Why use this contrasting image to describe a movement he supported?

2) Similar to “Easter, 1916,” “The Second Coming” is filled with ominous imagery. What lines stand out to you? What effect do you think Yates was trying to evoke in his readers? Like the “terrible beauty” from the first poem, what does the “rough beast” sloughing “towards Bethlehem” represent? And why Bethlehem?

3) “The Second Coming” was written during a violent, chaotic time, not just in Yates’ home in Ireland, but around the world. The first World War was about to begin, ushering in a new era of bloodshed the world had never seen before. Examine the first stanza and consider lines like “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” and “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” How might these lines apply to different times in history? The lead-up to World War 2? The Vietnam Conflict or wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or even today? Is this a warning? A prophecy?