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Easter, 1916
A collection of 15 of Yeats' most famous poems, including ""Easter, 1916" and "The Second Coming." "Easter, 1916" chronicles Yeats' complicated feelings on the execution of Irish patriots of the Easter Rebellion in Dublin.
"The Second Coming" is viewed as a prophetic poem that envisions the close of the Christian epoch and the violent birth of a new age. The poem's title makes reference to the Biblical reappearance of Christ, prophesied in Matthew 24 and the Revelations of St. John, which according to Christianity, will accompany the Apocalypse and divine Last Judgment. Other symbols in the poem are drawn from mythology, the occult, and Yeats's view of history as defined in his cryptic prose volume A Vision. The principal figure of the work is a sphinx-like creature with a lion's body and man's head, a "rough beast" awakened in the desert that makes its way to Christ's birthplace, Bethlehem.
"The Second Coming" is viewed as a prophetic poem that envisions the close of the Christian epoch and the violent birth of a new age. The poem's title makes reference to the Biblical reappearance of Christ, prophesied in Matthew 24 and the Revelations of St. John, which according to Christianity, will accompany the Apocalypse and divine Last Judgment. Other symbols in the poem are drawn from mythology, the occult, and Yeats's view of history as defined in his cryptic prose volume A Vision. The principal figure of the work is a sphinx-like creature with a lion's body and man's head, a "rough beast" awakened in the desert that makes its way to Christ's birthplace, Bethlehem.
20 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 29, 2010
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About the author
W.B. Yeats
2,039 books2,571 followersWilliam Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).
Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slow paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life.
--from Wikipedia
Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slow paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life.
--from Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 26, 2016
"a terrible beauty is born"
August 22, 2016
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
A terrible beauty is born.
September 17, 2016
"A terrible beauty is born" <3
May 7, 2020
The Easter of 1916 came with a lot of bloodshed and destruction.
All changed,changed utterly
A terrible beauty is born.
The poet recalls some people who have been killed in the WW1 and whom he had known.
MacDonagh,MacBride,Conolly,Pearse are some people hr had named in his verses to pay a tribute to them.
All changed,changed utterly
A terrible beauty is born.
The poet recalls some people who have been killed in the WW1 and whom he had known.
MacDonagh,MacBride,Conolly,Pearse are some people hr had named in his verses to pay a tribute to them.
September 9, 2017
"To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?"
A touching celebration of those who died on the first Bloody Sunday.
Beautiful, touching, heart-wrecking
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?"
A touching celebration of those who died on the first Bloody Sunday.
Beautiful, touching, heart-wrecking
January 20, 2023
Penned five months after the catastrophic tragedy of 1916, in which a group of revolutionaries lost their lives, the poem gave their deaths their meaning. The extraordinary thing about this ‘meaning’ was that it is not a meaning in terms of misinformation but in terms of human life and human history.
The movement of the poem is from the temporal to the timeless.
**The first three sections of the poem look backward to a 'comic' world that has been left behind.
**The fourth section points forward to a world of heartbreaking permanance achieved by those killed in the rising.
The opening lines of the poem present the 'comic' Dublin scene before the Easter Rising ---
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses….
The second section of the poem sketches the personalities of some of the nationalists before their obliteration in the Easter Rising. Maud Gonne was one of them: gorgeous when young, had spoiled her beauty in the fervour of political confrontation, another was a poet and school teacher; a third had show-sensitivity and intellectual daring, a fourth had seemed only a drunken vain glorious hoodlum.
The beauty which is born out of these deaths is a dreadful beauty in that it is the beauty bought only at the expense of life.
The third section is a general representation of the world, subject to time and death and the fourth section talks of the stasis achieved by this sacrifice.
Our part, Yeats says is only that of ‘a chorus’. At whatever human expense a new pictogram of heroism has been created, for good or ill, all the people who sacrified themselves are changed absolutely
The personalities of the major actors and chorus -- of all those whose interaction created the interplay --- are immaterial to the effect.
The world is, in the movement in which the event is contemplated, "transformed utterly". What is born out of this total alteration is a kind of 'terrible beauty'. And in the midst of all this is the stone or stillness of the grave.
This stands as one of the finest of Yeats's public poems.
The movement of the poem is from the temporal to the timeless.
**The first three sections of the poem look backward to a 'comic' world that has been left behind.
**The fourth section points forward to a world of heartbreaking permanance achieved by those killed in the rising.
The opening lines of the poem present the 'comic' Dublin scene before the Easter Rising ---
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses….
The second section of the poem sketches the personalities of some of the nationalists before their obliteration in the Easter Rising. Maud Gonne was one of them: gorgeous when young, had spoiled her beauty in the fervour of political confrontation, another was a poet and school teacher; a third had show-sensitivity and intellectual daring, a fourth had seemed only a drunken vain glorious hoodlum.
The beauty which is born out of these deaths is a dreadful beauty in that it is the beauty bought only at the expense of life.
The third section is a general representation of the world, subject to time and death and the fourth section talks of the stasis achieved by this sacrifice.
Our part, Yeats says is only that of ‘a chorus’. At whatever human expense a new pictogram of heroism has been created, for good or ill, all the people who sacrified themselves are changed absolutely
The personalities of the major actors and chorus -- of all those whose interaction created the interplay --- are immaterial to the effect.
The world is, in the movement in which the event is contemplated, "transformed utterly". What is born out of this total alteration is a kind of 'terrible beauty'. And in the midst of all this is the stone or stillness of the grave.
This stands as one of the finest of Yeats's public poems.
February 3, 2019
I just read the poem Easter 1916. Read up on the history of this historical tragedy. Yeats beautifully articulates the feelings of many people after this event. The name drops of the four martyrs was brave.
August 30, 2021
Easter 1916 – (4/5) I love “Hearts with one purpose alone / Through summer and winter seem / Enchanted to a stone / To trouble the living stream.”
The Second Coming – (3/5) About ancient Egypt? With Christological overtones?
The Second Coming – (3/5) About ancient Egypt? With Christological overtones?
October 7, 2017
me @ me, cheating at my reading challenge: wyd
me @ uni: not bad, this may actually work
me @ uni: not bad, this may actually work
January 30, 2021
''A terrible beauty is born.''
''We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?''
''We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?''
December 25, 2022
As an oxymoron lover, "a terrible beauty is born" won my heart. Hard af to decipher the poem bc I lacked knowledge of the famous people mentioned.
December 3, 2015
Read as part of The Complete Poems of W.B. Yeats
April 9, 2017
For all of you Santeen lovers, this is the poetry collection. Yeats presents the terrible beauty. The spoils and sacrifice of war. Born enemies bearing the scars. More hype than it deserves, but pretty decent. A pair of eyes on the scene for future generations. Decent for school anyway.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews