Easter, 1916
I HAVE met them at close of day
ing with vivid faces
From ter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-tury 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 mog tale ibe
To please a panion
Around the fire at the club,
Beiain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All ged, ged utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That womans days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young aiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was ing into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
S 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 edy;
He, too, has been ged in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Ented to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that es from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by mihey ge;
A shadow of cloud oream
ges minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
Ao moor-cocks call;
Minute by mihey live:
The stones in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice
make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heavens part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has e
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
Fland 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 -
Maagh and MacBride
And olly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are ged, ged utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.