In Memory Of Eva Gore-Booth And Con Markiewicz

The light of evening,

Lissadell,

Great windows open to the south,

Two girls in silk kimonos,

Beautiful, one a gazelle.

But a raving autumn

Blossom from the summer's wreath;

The older is condemned to death,

Pardoned, drags out lonely

Conspiring among the ignorant.

I know not what the younger dreams -Some vague Utopia - and she seems,

When withered old and skeleton-gaunt,

An image of such politics.

Many a time I think to

One or the other out and

Of that old Georgian mansion,

Pictures of the mind,

That table and the talk of youth,

Two girls in silk kimonos,

Beautiful, one a gazelle.

Dear shadows, now you know it all,

All the folly of a

With a common wrong or right.

The innocent and the beautiful.

Have no enemy but time;

Arise and bid me strike a

And strike another till time catch;

Should the conflagration climb,

Run till all the sages know.

We the great gazebo built,

They convicted us of guilt;

Bid me strike a match and blow.

Eva Gore-Booth and Constance Markiewicz were sisters who lived at Lissadell House and who knew and encouraged the young Yeats. They both became involved in Irish Nationalist politics. Constance was sentenced to death for her part in the Easter Rising of 1916, but the sentence was commuted.