Easter 1916

The oxymoron that is used to comment upon the contradictions at the heart of this poem and of the rebellion that this poem comments upon is captured in the refrain you have identified. Consider,...

The passage in the poem that mentions a "casual comedy" is as follows: He, too, has resigned his part In the casual comedy; He, too, has been changed in his turn, Transformed utterly: A terrible...

An early symbol in the poem appears in the first stanza: it is "the fire at the club." This represents the comfortable middle-class world people like him live in, with their "polite meaningless...

In "Easter 1916," the speaker mentions the rebels he used to meet at the close of day, or in the evening, after they presumably were leaving their workplaces. The rebels were part of an armed...

In these, the last few lines of "Easter, 1916", Yeats is reiterating the point made throughout the poem: that the Easter Rising completely changed those who participated in it, turning ordinary...

Yeats expresses mixed feeling about the Easter Rising of 1916. In it, rebels rose up to fight against British rule in Ireland. Yeats supports their nationalism: he wants Ireland to be freed of the...

"Easter 1916" is a poem written to and for the Irish people at the time of the Easter Rising. As such, it contains many references which would have immediately made sense to the intended audience...

Yeats uses stone to symbolize the hard, flinty resolve of the Irish rebels in rising up against their British overlords. In stanza 3, he compares the rebels' hearts to an enchanted stone, with "one...

It's hard to separate the poem "Easter, 1916" from its author, William Butler Yeats. As you might already be aware, the title marks the 1916 Irish uprising against England. As you might also be...

"Easter 1916" by William Butler Yeats is a poem responding to the "Easter Rising," an event in the long struggle by the Irish for independence from England that took place in April 1916. In the...

William Butler Yeats admires the revolutionaries for standing up for their ideals, but there is a sense that the poet wonders whether their deaths were meaningful or if things would remain...

Classifying "Easter 1916" by Yeats as containing "they say/I say arguments" may be a bit strong. The poem's subjects and subtle arguments are left ambiguous, and are presented with sympathy. The...

Parataxis is the sequencing of clauses or phrases whereby there is no conjunction to connect or indicate the relationship between one clause or phrase and the other. In "Easter 1916," there are...