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What are the lines in "Easter 1916" which express Yeats' disapproval of the action of the Irish rebels?
What are the other lines that indicate that Yeats has not been converted to the nationalist cause?
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W.B.Yeats, the fiery young Irish Nationalist who supported the Irish Nationalist cause became a senator in 1922 in the Irish Free State. His writings reflect the political upheavals and cross-currents of Irish Nationalist politics. However, from his Noble Lecture on 15th December 1923, it is very clear that he was against Literature being used as a vehicle for political propaganda: "the danger to art and literature comes today from the tyranny and persuasions of revolutionary societies and forms of political and religious propaganda."
Yeats' disapproval is evident in the following lines:"Hearts with one pupose alone.....Can make a stone of the heart." In those 20 lines Yeats remarks that the most important feature of the physical universe is change, and because everything in the physical universe changes it also lives, "minute by minute they change... minute by minute they live." But the Irish revolutionaries have violated this important principle by being constantly devoted only to the cause of Irish Freedom which led to the armed uprising which resulted in the unnecessary deaths of his close friends and others: "Too long a sacrifice/can make a stone of the heart," which "troubles the living stream" of life.
Yeats felt that the Irish Revolutionaries could have trusted England and remained patient instead of resorting to an armed rebellion "For England may keep faith" and give Ireland its freedom.
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