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Happy Saint Pat’s

by Carl Ballard — Wednesday, 3/17/10, 8:17 pm

Easter, 1916
by William Butler Yeats

I

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.

II

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 winged 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 terribly beauty is born.

III

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 plashed 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.

IV

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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Comments

  1. 1

    Roger Rabbit spews:

    Wednesday, 3/17/10 at 8:45 pm

    Is this what Yeats wrote about in this poem?

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/t....._paths.jpg

  2. 2

    Carl spews:

    Wednesday, 3/17/10 at 8:54 pm

    No, the Easter Rising.

  3. 3

    Noemie spews:

    Wednesday, 3/17/10 at 9:22 pm

    Wow, thanks. Perfect.

  4. 4

    David Aquarius spews:

    Thursday, 3/18/10 at 2:52 am

    Thanks for the Yeats, Carl. There’s an Irish pub in Renton called the Terrible Beauty and I’ve been wracking my brain which poem it came from.

    Yes, I could have used Google but that’s cheating.

  5. 5

    words 4 the wind spews:

    Thursday, 3/18/10 at 12:49 pm

    Many thanks. Waiting patiently for Yeats’ Vision, the 2-thousand-year gyre, to come slouching around at last. Particularly with reruns of Michael Collins or Ryan’s Daughter.

    Of modern writers, only Seattle’s Theodore Roethke (Beginner/ perpetual beginner/ the soul knows not what to believe …) seemed to hear the echos of Yeats’ Easter Rising rising again.

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