What Then Poem Summary?

Answer 1

Poem Summary

Lines 1-8

These lines describe the narrator having crossed paths with some of the Dubliners who would become leaders of the Easter Rising. Their vitality is set against a contrasting background of the deadening places where they work - "counter or desk" - that are old and perhaps dirty, indicated by "grey / Eighteenth-century houses." The vital souls Yeats meets occasionally will be those ushering in the modemera of Ireland. But with them, the narrator engages in only small talk.

Lines 9-14

In describing these future revolutionaries, the speaker emphasizes their commonness, their status as ordinary "good old boys." Or, on the other hand, their commonness might be negative, serving as grounds for mocking in the company of more cultured men at the club. But whether these would-be revolutionaries are merely common or dreadfully common, the backdrop of a drab Ireland sets off the farcical character of its idealistic people and the cynical character of its realists.

Lines 15-16

These two lines jolt, employing a shock cut from a depiction of a mundane and shallow Ireland to one of dead solemnity. If the reader has no knowledge of the Rising, he or she is immediately locked in: What could this "terrible beauty" be, one that completely changed everything? On the other hand, if the reader is in the know, he or she is likely to be intrigued or impressed with the description, which consists of an oxymoron - an especially provocative one at that.

Lines 17-23

This stanza marks a change from the general to the more specific. The first person discussed is Constance, or "Con," Gore-Booth who, upon marrying a count, became Countess Markiewicz. For her role as an assistant commander in the Rising, she was imprisoned, although later released (see Yeats's "On a Political Prisoner"). Yeats had met Markiewicz and her sister Eva at their mansion, Lissadell, while she was doing charity work that the poet refers to as "ignorant good will". Apparently, she could imitate the cries of hares with her young and beautiful voice as she hunted them with her dogs (harriers). It was this voice that became shrill by politics.

Lines 24-26

"This man" was Patrick Pearse, the founder of a boy's school in Dublin and the Commandant-General and President of the provisional government during the Rising. He was a member of the Irish bar and was also a poet. The winged horse is Pegasus, a symbol for poetry or the poet's inspiration. Pearse was a poet and one of the leaders executed.

Lines 27-31

"This other," Thomas MacDonagh, taught English Literature at University College, Dublin, and was a poet, playwright, and critic. Yeats had met him and felt that "within [MacDonagh's] own mind this mechanical thought is crushing as with an iron roller all that is organic." MacDonagh was also executed for his leadership in the Rising.

Lines 32-37

"This other man" refers to Major John MacBride, the man who had married and divorced Maud Gonne, Yeats's longtime passion who refused his requests to marry several times. The "some who are near my heart" are likely Maud and her daughter, Iseult, who Yeats had, also unsuccessfully, asked to marry. While Yeats did not like MacBride, he felt he owed him tribute for his part in the Rising. Like MacDonagh and Pearse, MacBride "resigned his part" (was executed) and no longer had to act in the "casual comedy" of Ireland described in the first stanza. Thus, political events are compared to theatrical events.

Lines 38-40

Because of MacBride's martyrdom, he was changed from a lout to a hero. This is part of the meaning of "terrible beauty": that even a fool could become transformed into a thing of beauty.

Lines 41-56

This stanza is another rapid edit away from specific heroes, even if unnamed, to abstract observations by way of images known as metaphors. Briefly put, this stanza says that those willing to sacrifice themselves and others to principle, ideology, or by another reading, the stone that refers to Ireland herself, are those "enchanted to a stone." They become stony because they are committed, while those around them ("the living stream") react and change with differing circumstances. Or as Yeats puts it, while stones do not change, most everything else does: moving horses suddenly veer off course; riders react to their horses (as poets react to Pegasus's inspiration); birds dive, careen, and call; and clouds and their reflections shift and mutate. The softer beings of animals, clouds, and water change; that hard thing - stone - does not.

Lines 57-64

The transition into the last stanza, unlike the previous changes between stanzas, is gradual. From the description of stones as obdurate and perhaps unsympathetic things, Yeats moves on to explain the reason people become like stone: through self-sacrifice. Yeats's explanation makes it easier for readers to sympathize with the insurrectionists. In line 59, Yeats himself turns to sympathy. As if pleading to heaven, the poet asks how long people must sacrifice themselves, must make a stone of their heart, in order to gain what is just. Because the question is unanswerable, Yeats says that all we can do is remember the dead ("To murmur name upon name") as when a mother utters the name of her sleeping child to make sure he awakens and remains with her.

Lines 65-69

Almost as soon as Yeats enters into his analogy between recalling the martyrs and "naming" the sleeping child, he exits with the words "not night but death," because, after all, the revolutionaries are not sleeping but dead. The poet wonders whether their deaths were needless since Britain had promised Ireland a great measure of independence as soon as World War I was over. In the meantime, Ireland felt forced to furnish the British with men and food, something that angered Irish dissidents and helped drive them to revolt.

Lines 70-73

The revolutionaries dreamed of an independent Ireland, but the reality is that they are dead. Now the question is what to make of them. From the revolutionaries characterized as overly hard in stanza three, to those at the beginning of stanza four who sacrificed themselves to make a stone of their heart, the revolutionaries now become, in lines 72 and 73, those who loved too much and were confused by an "excess of love." Is this a contradiction, or can it be said that the revolutionaries turned to stone because of love?

Lines 74-80

The new name in these lines is James Connolly. Under Pearse, Connolly was second in command of the Republican forces and Commandant at the General Post Office, the principal location of the Republican forces. Connolly was perhaps left to the end of the poem because Yeats did not know him well, even though they had been in demonstrations together in the 1890s. Due to their revolutionary action, the four men mentioned in the poem, and presumably the others executed who were not mentioned, will be transformed from the more or less average people they were into heroes - especially "Wherever green is worn," that is, in the Emerald Isle, Ireland. By the end of the poem, even if ignorant of the Rising, readers can venture a pretty sound guess as to what "terrible beauty" at least partially refers: martyrdom