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Irish Politics in the Poetry of Yeats

Unfortunately their rebellion resulted in an intense military conflict with the British army ("The Easter Rising"). In the end the IRB members were defeated and the leaders were executed and many volunteers lost their lives in the rising ("The Blood Sacrifice").
             Some important historic figures related to the above events are put into the two poems. Yeats makes good use of pronouns to represent the people. In "September 1913", the "you" in the first line "What need you, being come to sense" refers to the Catholic middle class (Jeffares 120). The Roman Catholic Church did not allow the children of the strikers to be looked after by the British trade union members with an excuse that they would be influenced by the Protestants (wiki). The middle class such as Murphy and his companions did not give in to the strike which Yeats saw as an act of change. They are portrayed as villains in the poem: the Catholic middle-class merchants are stuck in the conservation due to religion and the obsession with money ("Analysis of W.B."). They are said to "fumble in a greasy till" which can be a cash register (Brookshire), the symbol of their greediness. They "were born to pray and save" also, which further implies that they only stuck to religious tradition and wealth accumulation. As Murphy was a nationalist, Yeats is in an attempt to criticize the nationalists who cares about their own interests rather than the progress of the nation (Unterecker 118).
             Other people were portrayed as heroic figures by Yeats. The most important one is John O'Leary who was one of the activists in the Fenian Movement fighting for the independence of Ireland (Jeffares 129). O'Leary was a friend of Yeats' father's and had a great influence on Yeats and through this Yeats turned to stronger nationalism (Jeffares 129). .
             Edward Fitzgerald, Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone were older leaders of rebellions for Irish independence in the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century (Jeffares 130-31).


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  • Word Count: 1908
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