"Easter, 1916"

Hear curator James Pethica read W.B. Yeats’s poem “Easter, 1916”

Go to the exhibition label to learn more

Run time three minutes

I have met them at close of day  

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey  

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head  

Or polite meaningless words,  

Or have lingered awhile and said  

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done  

Of a mocking tale or a gibe  

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,  

Being certain that they and I  

But lived where motley is worn:  

All changed, changed utterly:  

A terrible beauty is born.

 

That woman's days were spent  

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers  

When, young and beautiful,  

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school  

And rode our wingèd horse;  

This other his helper and friend  

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end,  

So sensitive his nature seemed,  

So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,  

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,  

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

 

Hearts with one purpose alone  

Through summer and winter seem  

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road,  

The rider, the birds that range  

From cloud to tumbling cloud,  

Minute by minute they change;  

A shadow of cloud on the stream  

Changes minute by minute;  

A horse-hoof slides on the brim,  

And a horse plashes within it;  

The long-legged moor-hens dive,  

And hens to moor-cocks call;  

Minute by minute they live:  

The stone's in the midst of all.

 

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.  

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven's part, our part  

To murmur name upon name,  

As a mother names her child  

When sleep at last has come  

On limbs that had run wild.  

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;  

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith  

For all that is done and said.  

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;  

And what if excess of love  

Bewildered them till they died?  

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.