Day 24: Easter 1916

Yesterday’s post focused on P.H. Pearse, poet, teacher, a leader of the Easter Rising, and martyr in the quest for Irish independence. Following on that post, and with St. Patrick’s Day a week past, and Easter a week away, it seems fitting that today’s post should be W.B. Yeats’ poem Easter 1916. I’ll provide no more introduction—the poem says it all.

From The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, Richard J. Finneran (ed.), Collier Books, 1989.


EASTER 1916

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 road to harriers?
This man kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
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.
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 with 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 is 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.

Day 23: P.H. Pearse and Irish Independence

Yesterday's post was the poem, "The Pine," by Saunders Lewis, poet, educator, and co-founder of Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party.  Today takes us back to Ireland, and a poem by another nationalist, Patrick Henry Pearse.  A schoolteacher, poet, and barrister, Pearse also was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which organized the Easter Rising in  April 1916.  Pearse led the Irish Volunteers in taking control of key government buildings in Dublin; it was Pearse who proclaimed establishment of a republic during the Rising.  After six days of heavy fighting with English troops, Pearse ordered a surrender.  Pearse and fourteen other leaders of the Rising were executed by firing squad.  Although the Rising didn't have much support among the general population, Britain's heavy handed response and the executions of leaders helped build popular support for Irish independence, which led to armed rebellion and then establishment first of the Irish Free State, and eventually to a fully independent republic.

Pearse is one of the four individuals named in W.B. Yeats' poem, Easter 1916, which captured the impact of the Rising and England's response in the line "A terrible beauty is born."

Today's poem is Renunciation, translated from the Irish by the author; and included in the New Oxford Book of Irish Verse, Thomas Kinsella, editor.  It is as if Pearse foresaw his death in the fight for Irish independence.


RENUNCIATION

Naked I saw thee,
O beauty of beauty,
And I blinded my eyes
For fear I should fail.

I heard thy music,
O melody of melody,
And I closed my ears
For fear I should falter.

I tasted thy mouth,
O sweetness of sweetness,
And I hardened my heart
For fear of my slaying.

I turned my back
On the vision I had shaped,
And to this road before me
I turned my face.

I have turned my face
To this road before me,
To the deed that I see
And the death I shall die.

Day 21: The Flight of the Earls

The early 17th century witnessed increased rise in English hegemony over Ireland and the defeat of the Gaelic nobility, culminating in the “Flight of the Earls,” in which leading members among the Irish nobility left Ireland to settle in Spain and France. The period also witnessed the decline of the professional bard as a household poet. A number of poems from this era lament the flight of the Gaelic nobility, the decline of the poet’s role in society, and the decline of the poetic tradition and profession.

Today’s poem is by Mathghamhain O Hifearnain. From the New Oxford Book of Irish Verse, Thomas Kinsella, editor and translator.


I ask, who will buy a poem?
It holds right thoughts of scholars.
Who needs it? Will anyone take it?
A fine poem to make him immortal.

A poem of close-knit skill,
I have walked all Munster with it
from market cross to cross
for a year, and I’m no better off.

Not a man or a woman would give me
down-payment, no tiniest groat.
And no one would tell me why
—ignored by Gael and stranger.

What use is a craft like this,
a shame though it has to die?
Making combs would earn more honour.
Why would anyone take to verse.

Corc of Cashel is dead, and Cian,
who horded no cattle or cash,
men happy to pay their poets.
So goodbye to the seed of Éibhear.

They kept the palm for giving
until Cobhthach was lost, and Tál.
Many I leave unmentioned
that I might have made poems for still.

I’m a ship with a ruined cargo
now the famous Fitzgeralds are gone.
No answer. A terrible case.
It is all in vain that I ask.

Day 19: A Defense of Poetry

We move from Donatus, who was both priest and poet, to Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe and his poem in defense of poetry, written to a priest claiming to bring a message from Rome condemning the Irish bards. In the poem, Giolla first demands to see written proof of the condemnation, then points out that Ireland’s two greatest saints—Patrick and Colum Cille (Columba, founder of the famed monastic community on the isle of Iona)—did not ban poetry. He then notes that without poets and poetry, knowledge of and lessons from the past would be lost, resulting in loss of respect and leading to foolish acts. It is a long poem—32 stanzas—of which I’ve included only portions here.

From the New Oxford Book of Irish Poetry, edited and translated by Thomas Kinsella

A DEFENCE OF POETRY

Messenger from Rome,
laying down instructions,
show where it is written
—the script, not just the seal…

It was never found in book
fine verse should earn us nothing.
An ugly alien teaching
would banish Ireland’s poets…

Why did devoutest Patrick
not banish all the poets
when he came from the land of Rome
to the soft-grassed isle of Ireland?

Or what caused Colum Cille,
who uttered only truth,
each Thursday, rapt toward Heaven,
to leave out pay for a poem?

The poets of grassy Fódla
were driven out once before.
It was Colum, and at once,
who brought about their restoration…

To praise man is to praise
the One who created him,
and man’s earthly possessions
add to God’s mighty praise.

All metre and mystery
touch on the Lord at last.
The tide thunders ashore
in praise of the High King...

If poetry went, my people,
with its lore and ancient lays
man’s knowledge would reach back
no further than his father…

Noble people would not have
access to their past, or rights.
Let them have these put in a poem
or farewell to the ancient things!...

If the men of Ireland suffer
their poetry to be banished
the Gael will lose respect
and freemen turn to clowns.

Day 18: A Land Flowing With Milk and Honey

Today’s poem is by Donatus (the Latin version of Donat or Donagh), a 9th century Irish teacher, poet, and cleric. Donatus was born into a noble Irish family and educated at the well-known monastery on Inis Cealtra. He eventually became bishop of Fiesole in Italy. The title of the poem references a Roman name for Ireland and reminds us that the people known as the Scoti (or Scotii) originally came from Ireland.

From the New Oxford Book of Irish Verse, translated from the Latin by Thomas Kinsella.


THE LAND CALLED SCOTIA

It is said that that western land is of Earth the best,
that land called by name ‘Scotia’ in the ancient books:
an island rich in goods, jewels, cloth, and gold,
benign to the body, mellow in soil and air.
The plains of lovely Ireland flow with honey and milk.
There are clothes and fruit and arms and art in plenty;
no bears in ferocity there, nor any lions,
for the land of Ireland never bore their seed.
No poisons pain, no snakes slide in the grass,
nor does the chattering frog groan on the the lake.

And a people dwell in that land who deserve their home,
a people renowned in war and peace and faith.

Day 17: St. Patrick's Day and the Wearin' o' the Green

Happy St. Patrick's Day.  Erin go bragh!

A simple ballad for today (from the New Oxford Book of Irish Verse), and some Luck of the Irish (from John Lennon and Yoko Ono)

THE WEARIN’ O’ THE GREEN

Oh, Paddy dear! and did ye hear the news that’s goin’ round?
The shamrock is forbid by law to grow on Irish ground!
No more St Patrick’s day we’ll keep; his colour can’t be seen,
For there’s a cruel law ag’in the Wearin’ o’ the Green!

I met with Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand,
And he said, ‘How’s poor ould Ireland, and how does she stand?’
‘She’s the most distressful country that ever yet was seen,
For they’re hanging men and women for the Wearin’ o’ the Green.’

An’ if the colour we must wear is England’s cruel red,
Let it remind us of the blood that Ireland has shed;
Then pull the shamrock from your hat, and throw it on the sod,
An’ never fear, ’twill take root there, though under foot ’tis trod.

When law can stop the blades of grass from growin’ as they grow,
An’ when the leaves in summer time their colour dare not show,
Then I will change the colour, too, I wear in my caubeen;
But till that day, plaise God, I’ll stick to the Wearin’ o’ the Green.

Day 16: Here Come Ol' Adzed Head, he come chanting religion

We're halfway through our month of featuring Welsh and Irish poetry.  With St. Patrick's Day just around the corner, it's time to turn to the Irish.  Today's poem takes us back again to the 4th and 5th centuries, to the early days of Christianity in Ireland, when Catholic missionaries were making their way to the island.  This is the era of the Celtic Saints when men and women (St. Brigid, for example) were spreading the Christian religion and establishing religious communities along the coasts of Western Europe, including Ireland-- when, as the Welsh geographer, E.G. Bowen, noted, the western seaways were the primary route for the movement of people, goods, and ideas between the Continent and the British Isles. 

Today's poem reminds us that there was a time when Christianity was new to Ireland and was the strange religion, an interloper into the traditional, Druid-led religious world of the Irish Celts.  That story had already played out amongst the Celts of Britain and Gaul during the preceding centuries under Roman rule. The Welsh poems featured at the beginning of March from this same general era viewed the Britons as Christian protectors of a Romano-British society against the pagan Saxons.  Because of the animosity felt by the Britons toward the Saxons, conversion of the latter to Christianity would largely be left to the Irish, at least in the North of England (Augustine and other missionaries from the Continent worked in the south).

Today's poem is from the The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse, Thomas Kinsella editor; the original, of course, would have been in Gaelic.  The term "Adzed-Head" refers to the style of tonsure of the missionary, with the hair cut straight across the head as if shaped by an adze.


He is coming, Adzed-Head,
on the wild-headed sea
with cloak hollow-headed
and curve-headed staff.

He will chant false religion
at a bench facing East
and his people will answer
'Amen, amen.'