Sam Wyper

Yet I number him in the song/He, too, has resigned his part/In the casual comedy.Yeats often explored the conflicting duality between reality and the yearned for ideal in his poetry. Discuss the extent to which this is true in Easter 1916.In your answer, explore the effects of language, imagery and verse form, and consider how this poem relates to other poems by Yeats you have studied.Easter 1916 focuses on the Easter Uprising In 20th century Ireland, but unlike other poems on the subject, Yeats work is not as clearly aligned with the martyrs. The poem seems as though it might be an elegy, but soon becomes an examination of the Uprisings effects on the Ireland and the martyrs themselves. That elegiac tone of the first stanza is created through the use of past tense, and the mundane depiction of Yeats relationship with the martyrs. The polite meaningless words that Yeats spoke to these men as he lingered suggest a slow and dull exchange, but by describing the martyrs as companion[s], Yeats demonstrates that he misses them and their company, ordinary as it might have been. Here, Yeats compares the truth (that these men died) and the imagined ideal (that they would come back). There is a difference, though, between their resurrection and their never having died, as Yeats would never have appreciated them, had they never been lost, and this difference is a metaphor for the results that the men desired (a free Ireland) and the results they achieved (a free Ireland which they cannot ever see).This difference is similar to Yeats own; he yearned for a free Ireland, but not for a free Ireland born of violence and not one that would be under a constant, pervading blanket of worry. In the third stanza, Yeats explains that England may keep faith, acknowledging the reality of Irelands freedom, while also suggesting through negative capability, that England have no certainty, only faith, and that the nature of Irelands independence is likely to lead to more violence.In the same stanza, Yeats also suggests that the living and the dead are different, even when comparing the life and death of a single person. Yeats begins to write about a sleep but soon turns and rovokes this euphemism; no, no, not night, but death, which separates the two states. What Yeats means here, is that these men, even Macbride, who had done most bitter wrong to some who are near [Yeats] heart, are changed, changed utterly from average men with average faults, into faultless heroes of a cause. Even Yeats seems unable to argue with this truth, as he recalls them with the same sort of reverie as he recalled OLeary Now and in time to be, wherever green is worn.This posthumous admiration is not afforded to Constance Markiewicz. Her voice, once sweet when, young and beautiful, she rode to harriers, is now shrill from nights in argument. The reference to riding in a rabbit hunt creates an image of idyllic beauty, is not specifically a description of Constances beauty, but of the ideas she once held, which to Yeats were so attractive. Now they seem shrill, as though they now appear unpleasant from overuse. What Yeats had wanted this woman and her ideas to be, no longer is. This trouble with strict ideology that does not change with new situations or information is repeated in the third verse: Hearts with one purpose alone through summer and winter seem enchanted to stone. The heart becoming stone suggests that any passion for an idea becomes stubbornness or refusal to acknowledge other paradigms. This metaphor also suggests that this stubbornness will result in death, as one cannot survive with a stone heart. Yeats questions this though, in the next paragraph, as he implies that this is only what he wants to believe, to allow him to disapprove. In reality, he knows that a stone heart is a result of too long a sacrifice. Yeats understands that the martyrs resolve was hardened by the suffering of the Irish, and that their rigid morality is forgivable and perhaps relatable. Alternatively, this metaphor is a reference to Yeats love of Maud Gonne his heart calcified through his yearning, and, in reality, receiving no response.Yeats poetry often contains negative capability, which by its nature, often creates a duality between the yearned for and reality. As such, a poem which deals with the Yeats own public and private opinions will inevitably deal extensively with the dichotomy of truth and fantasy.