3/13 - Yeats Poem

In regards to "Easter, 1916," I thought this poem was good, though it required a few readings to really get my feelings about it to solidify.

The first stanza, I thought, was very interesting, even if you crop it out of the poem and leave it by itself to stand alone. Just reading the first few lines reminded me of the banality of life - you see dozends/hundreds/thousands of people every day, and even though you may not know the majority of them, social norms have placed a requirement in you to say something nice to at least a handful of people who you lock gazes with. Of course, Yeats sums up the sentiment of these salutations when he describes them as "Polite meaningless words," because most of the time you really do not mean what you say to these seemingly unknown "vivid faces" you meet in the course of this "casual comedy." (of course, this standalone verse paragraph would be suspect to inquiry when the last two lines are read/spoken aloud)

The second stanza was filled with mixed messages and contradictory sentiments. For instance, even in the second line. the phrase "ignorant good-will" is an oxymoron which, by definition, is a phrase which has words that are in opposition of themselves. Also, Yeats describes a man who was "so sensitive" and "so daring and sweet [in] his thought" - someone who he seems to admire - but then goes on to call him a "drunken, vanglorious lout." He seems to have a certain admiration for someone who apparently has a severe drinking problem and isn't quite up there on the intelligence ladder. Melding together what I know about the subject matter from the poem, Yeats here is saying that even though this man did not get along with the poet in his personal life, what he did for the good of the country outweighs that and he deserves to be honored.

The third stanza I'm not really sure about. I mean, I know that it's obviously a part of this poem, but I wonder why Yeats shifts his worldview from something so bleak to something so wholly naturalistic in its simplicity. Not only does this stanza shift in content, it is the only stanza which does not end with the phrase "a terrible beauty is born," and instead ends with "The stone's in the midst of it all."

The fourth and final stanza is an unfortunate culmination and melancholy which pains the heart to read. Through all the turmoil that went on this first stanzas, for the revolution to fail at its most dire point is a sad thing to think about. All those who died, and the four Yeats names specifically, deserve to be remembered in the history of Ireland because they died for what they believed was the right thing to do. Thinking about these brave Irishmen gets me thinking about our own revolution some 233 years ago - those noble men who died in service of what wasn't even a country yet. They stood up for what they believed was right - to free our nation from the stranglehold of the British - and many of them died, not necessarily swiftly either, for it. Even the soldiers who are in Iraq now are noble and should be honored for what they're doing - we wanted to free a country from its tyrant of a leader and what do we get in return? Car bombs, IEDs, video-recorded decapitations. I could go on but I don't think I should go further because this post would probably get less and less coherent as I go.

Anyways, the point is that men (and women) who stand up for what they believe is right sometimes pay the ultimate price and give of themselves the most noble sacrifice, whether they necessarily want to or not - it is our duty to remember them in the annals of time and think of them not as who they were, but who they want to be known as - revolutionaries.