Easter 1916

Easter 1916

Original Text

Yeats, William Butler. W. B. Yeats: Selected Poetry: 93-95. Ed. by A. Norman Jeffares. London: Macmillan, 1968.

1I have met them at close of day
2Coming with vivid faces
3From counter or desk among grey
4Eighteenth-century houses.
5I have passed with a nod of the head
6Or polite meaningless words,
7Or have lingered awhile and said
8Polite meaningless words,
9And thought before I had done
10Of a mocking tale or a gibe
11To please a companion
12Around the fire at the club,
13Being certain that they and I
14But lived where motley is worn:
15All changed, changed utterly:
16A terrible beauty is born.
17That woman's days were spent
18In ignorant good-will,
19Her nights in argument
20Until her voice grew shrill.
21What voice more sweet than hers
22When, young and beautiful,
23She rode to harriers?
24This man had kept a school
25And rode our wingèd horse;
26This other his helper and friend
27Was coming into his force;
28He might have won fame in the end,
29So sensitive his nature seemed,
30So daring and sweet his thought.
31This other man I had dreamed
32A drunken, vainglorious lout.
33He had done most bitter wrong
34To some who are near my heart,
35Yet I number him in the song;
36He, too, has resigned his part
37In the casual comedy;
38He, too, has been changed in his turn,
39Transformed utterly:
40A terrible beauty is born.
41Hearts with one purpose alone
42Through summer and winter seem
43Enchanted to a stone
44To trouble the living stream.
45The horse that comes from the road,
46The rider, the birds that range
47From cloud to tumbling cloud,
48Minute by minute they change;
49A shadow of cloud on the stream
50Changes minute by minute;
51A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
52And a horse plashes within it;
53The long-legged moor-hens dive,
54And hens to moor-cocks call;
55Minute by minute they live:
56The stone's in the midst of all.
57Too long a sacrifice
58Can make a stone of the heart.
59O when may it suffice?
60That is Heaven's part, our part
61To murmur name upon name,
62As a mother names her child
63When sleep at last has come
64On limbs that had run wild.
65What is it but nightfall?
66No, no, not night but death;
67Was it needless death after all?
68For England may keep faith
69For all that is done and said.
70We know their dream; enough
71To know they dreamed and are dead;
72And what if excess of love
73Bewildered them till they died?
74I write it out in a verse—
75MacDonagh and MacBride
76And Connolly and Pearse
77Now and in time to be,
78Wherever green is worn,
79Are changed, changed utterly:
80A terrible beauty is born.
   September 25, 1916
Publication Start Year
1921
Publication Notes

Michael Robartes and the Dancer, 1921.

RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire, assisted by Ana Berdinskikh
RPO Edition
2009