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 unchanged after they passed. This causes him to also feel some pity for them.

According to the eNotes Study Guide, Yeats and others thought the revolutionaries were a bit of a joke. However, their executions weighed on him as he remembered them in a different light. He sees their sacrifice as both terrible and beautiful—something worthy of being remembered. Perhaps he feels both admiration for their sense of purpose and pity for how it all turned out and the possibility that, though they gave their lives, Ireland would never be free.