[New-Poetry] The 20th Century in Poetry

[Anny Ballardini]

I found several ones with dates, I thought we had to stick to years.
All the poems I sent up to now have been taken from The Northon Anthology of Poetry, fourth edition, Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, John Stallworthy.

 

this should be it, Amen:

Easter 19161
William Butler Yeats 





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?2

This man had kept a school

And rode out winged horse, 3 

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.4  

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 will 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 si 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.

 

September 25, 1916

 

 

1 - An Irish Nationalist uprising had been planned for Easter Sunday 1916, and although the German ship that was bringing munitions had been intercepted by the British, attempts to postpone the uprising failed; it began in Dublin on Easter Monday. "Fifteen hundred men seized key points and an Irish republic was proclaimed from the General Post Office. After the initial surprise prompt British military action was taken, and when over 300 lives had been lost the insurgents were forced to surrender on April 29. . The seven signatories of the republican proclamation, including [Pàdraic] Pearse and [James] Connolly, and nine others were shot after court martial between 3 and 12 May. 75 were reprieved and over 2000 held prisoners" [From "Ireland History," by D. B. Quinn, in Chambers's Encyclopedia].

 

2 - Countess Constance Georgina Markiewicz, née Gore-Boothe, about whom Yeats wrote: "On a Political Prisoner" and a later poem, "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and ConMarkiewicz."

 

3 - Pàdraic Pearse, headmaster of St. Enda's School, and a prolific writer of poems, plays, and stories, as well as of essays on Irish politics and Gaelic literature. The winged mythological horse, Pegasus, is here used as a symbol of poetic inspiration. "This other" was Thomas MacDonough, also a schoolteacher.

 

4 - Major John MacBride who had married Maud Conne (the woman with whom Yeats had for years been hopelessly in love) in 1903 and separated from her in 1905.

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