William Butler Yeats

To Yeats, his ideas of the Irish politics of his time were never far from his modernist poems. He makes the political world seem a betoken of passion and contradictions, like art, requiring of us not to construe history in moral terms, such as good and bad but, rather, in seemingly emotionally artistic terms, like pity or terror. For example, in the poem, Easter 1916, Yeats fixes on the horror and captivation of the substantially devastating event of the Irish uprising.In the beginning stanza, the line Being certain that they and I/ plainly lived were motley is worn, signifies and emphasizes Yeats strong idea of Irish-ness. It is as if these work force and women that he speaks of, such as Pearse and MacBride, share essentially nothing with him, nothing with each other really, take out for their Irishness the motley that they wore and their passion for Irish Independence their paddy wagon with one purpose alone.He recognizes and glorifies their hu universe body in the song, their part in the war and this brings in a technique in which Yeats quite often used which was that of encompassing upright allusions within his poetry. For example, the line, This man had kept a school/and rode our winged horse invites the image of Pearse, the man, riding Pegasus, a fabulous skirt chaser or, it transforms Pearse into an ancient Irish hero, Cuchulain. By using classical allusion, Yeats is effectively ascending his characters into an intimately intangible and iconic state.They are more than human and thus glorified, which is thus ultimately sculpting Irish politics into an almost mythical state. In addition, the paradoxical line, a terrible truelove is born, returns in the poem like an impersonal chorus, suggesting an almost strangely impersonal event. The line, All changed, changed utterly/ a terrible beauty is born is a lyrically artistic buildup of stress that becomes almost chime- like in the poem, calling and announcing the coming of the birth of a unte sted and terrible age.