Yeats "On a Political Prisoner" was published in 1920, but written in between January 10 and January 29, 1919, a volatile period in which the Irish nationalist party won a massive electoral victory and declared Irish independence from Britain. This led to the Anglo-Irish war in which much of Ireland achieved independence from England by the end of 1921. When Yeats wrote the poem, he did not know the outcome of the unrest, but its backdrop as a turbulent period in Irish history in which the Irish capitalized on the exhaustion of the British in the aftermath of World War I informs the verses.
Although Yeats, especially in the 1890s, had been a supporter of Home Rule (Irish independence from Britain) by the time he wrote this poem he had become disillusioned with the direction of Irish nationalist politics. This is reflected in the poem.
As the title suggests, it...
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is centrally about politics, though its themes are couched in universal terms. It questions the mindset of the central character, a woman who has been imprisoned for her politics. The person addressed by the speaker is often taken to be Maud Gonne, a woman he was long in love with although she eventually married someone else. The speaker questions her in tones critical to her politics, implying they have made her thinking rigid and hateful:
her mind
Became a bitter, an abstract thing
In "On a Political Prisoner" Yeats laments how one of his closest friends, Maude Gonne, has turned from being a respectable member of the Anglo-Irish gentry to a radical Irish nationalist. Yeats is supportive of the cause to which his friend has devoted her whole adult life but still regrets how her devotion to that cause has turned her mind into a "bitter...abstract thing." In other words, Maude's mind has become steeped in a rigid, inflexible ideology which Yeats finds repellent.
Yeats gives the impression that the active political life that Maude has chosen is somehow not lady-like, especially not for someone of her impeccable social pedigree. He'd much rather see her as she used to be all those years ago, riding to the hunt under Ben Bulben amidst the extraordinary natural beauty of the Sligo countryside.
But as he ruefully acknowledges, patience has never been one of Maude's virtues. From her childhood on, she's been a fearless free spirit, itching to leave the "nest" which perched upon the "lofty rock" of her safe, secure aristocratic upbringing for the turbulent world of revolutionary politics beneath.
Still, Yeats is big enough to acknowledge that such single-minded devotion to Irish nationalism has given Maude a certain inner peace and calm, and for that at least he's grateful.
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