I have met them at close of
Coming with vivid
From counter or desk among
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had
Of a mocking tale or a
To please a
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman's days were
In ignorant good will,
Her nights in
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than
When young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a
And rode our winged horse.
This other his helper and
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 dreamedA drunken, vain-glorious lout.
He had done most bitter
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose
Through summer and winter,
Enchanted to a
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute change.
A shadow of cloud on the
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim;
And a horse plashes within
Where long-legged moor-hens
And hens to moor-cocks call.
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.
Too long a
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is heaven's part, our
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her
When sleep at last has
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
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream;
To know they dreamed and are dead.
And what if excess of
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse
Donagh and
And Connolly and
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Written in September 1916, whilst Yeats was staying with Maud Gonne
Bride at Les Mouettes,
Calvados.
This poem records his feelings towards the Easter uprising in Dublin.
The centre of the city of Dublin was occupied 24th April 1916, by a group of around seven hundred members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood under Patrick Pearse, and members of the Citizen Army under James Connolly.
They held the city until the 29th April.
Fifteen of their leaders were sentanced by court martial, and executed between the 3rd and 12th of May.
Yeats felt the violence had threatend the freeing of Irish literature from politics, and left him very dispondant about the future.
The original lines for lines 17-25 were:-That woman at while would be
In aimless argument;
Had ignorant good will;
All that she got she spent,
Her charity had no bounds:
Sweet voiced and young and beautiful,
She hidden well to hounds.
This man had managed a
An our winged mettlesome horse.
