Student Question

What is the meaning of these lines from "Easter, 1916"?

"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"

Quick answer:

The last few lines in William Yeats' "Easter, 1916" describe the men that rose up against British rule of Ireland in the Easter Rising. This act of Irish Nationalism has changed the history of Ireland and the men that participated in it forever. 

Expert Answers

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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 people into heroes.

Many Irish nationalists were somewhat disappointed with Yeats' poem, as they felt that it was insufficiently stirring. What they wanted was a propaganda piece, something that could be set to music, but Yeats, despite his own sympathies for Irish nationalism, wasn't writing a piece of propaganda. The chief focus of his interest was on the huge changes wrought by the Easter Rising in the souls of those who participated in it.

Even men such as John MacBride—the husband of Yeats's great love Maude Gonne—whom Yeats refers to elsewhere as a "drunken, vainglorious lout"have been utterly transformed by their martyrdom to the cause of Irish freedom. From out of their heroic deaths a "terrible beauty" has been born.

Even though the Easter Rising was a total failure from a political and military standpoint, easily crushed as it was by the British, the names of those who took up arms against their colonial overlords, the likes of MacDonagh and MacBride, Connolly and Pearse, will live on in the annals of Irish history, immortalized as they have been by their extraordinary heroism, as well as the unforgettable lines of Yeats's verse.

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