What does the quote "All changed, changed utterly. A terrible beauty is born" from "Easter 1916" by Yeats mean?
The poem "Easter 1916" by William Butler Yeats was written as a reaction to the Easter Rebellion of 1916, also known as the Easter Rising. We'll provide some background to the event. We'll also explain why Yeats wrote the poem and what the lines you quoted mean. Then you can compose your own thoughts on the subject.
In the Easter Rebellion, approximately 1,000 Irish Republicans started an insurrection in April of 1916. Their objective was complete secession from Great Britain and the establishment of an independent Ireland. The British crushed the rebellion within a week and executed many of the perpetrators by firing squad. The brutality gave rise to a widespread underground nationalist movement in Ireland.
In the poem, Yeats focuses on four participants who were killed in the rebellion. In the first stanza, he writes that he used to pass them in the streets before the uprising....
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In the second stanza, "that woman" refers to Constance Gore-Booth Markievicz, a politician. "This man" was Patrick Pearse, a poet. "His helper and friend" was another poet named Thomas MacDonagh. A man named John McBride was the "drunken, vainglorious lout." Yeats lists all these people by name in the final stanza of the poem. He describes them not as heroes, but as ordinary, imperfect people who died during the uprising.
Because these people who Yeats used to pass in the streets and others like them were killed by the British, they have become martyrs to the cause of rebellion. That's why Yeats says near the end that "now and in time to be, wherever green is worn" (green is symbolic of the Irish nation and people) everything has utterly changed. Yeats considers an independent Ireland to be something beautiful. However, its beauty is terrible. The birth of the Irish nationalist movement has been purchased with the price of violence, bloodshed, and death.
What does the refrain "A terrible beauty is born" suggest in "Easter 1916" by Yeats?
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, for example, the various characters who are identified as being involved in this uprising and the differing ways in which they are viewed. There is the Countess Marikiwicz, who possesses "ignorant good-will" and the upper classes who desired to express a sense of responsibility and leadership because of their status in life. There is the revolutionary schoolteacher whose fondness for Irish myths only serves to isolate him from the realities of day-to-day life. There is also MacBride who is a "drunken, vainglorious lout." Yet, in spite of the negative way in which these characters are described, the speaker also feels respect and admiration for them and for the stand they are making.
Such contradictions are highlighted through the stone imagery that is used to accompany the weighing of the wins vs. the lossess of the uprising. Note how Yerats contrasts the resolute and inexorable steadfastness of the rebels with the "living stream" of life. There is admiration as Yeats praises their fixed permanence on the changes they want to see happen, but at the same time, there is fear that such fixedness can risk transforming these characters from humans into something much worse:
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
The refrain therefore perfectly captures the ambivalence of the speaker, as he recognises the beauty in this uprising, but also sees that it is a "terrible beauty" because of the contrast between the good aspects of this uprising and the profoundly negative ones.