Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of William Butler Yeats', "Easter, 1916".
Al Johnson, Class Of 1964, comment:
Originally posted in April 2008 on Classmates
What part, if any, did your ethnic heritage play in your growing up?
"A Terrible Beauty Was Born" the last line from William Butler Yeats- Easter, 1916
In our last posting I mentioned that I would give my answer to the question of whether I skipped school to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day in the next posting. Part of my reasoning for not answering the question fully then was to answer the more general question above using my own background as a foil. By a natural coincidence this year Saint Patrick's Day and Easter, two 'high holy days' on the Irish cultural calendar, fall on successive weeks and therefore permit a comparative analysis. Here goes.
In the interest of full disclosure I confess here (and will provide the requisite transcripts) that I never skipped school on March 17th to go to the Saint Patrick's Day parade in Boston. I do not, moreover, recall then ever really wanting to go to the event, although plenty of people in my old neighborhood did so. That is the rub. I, along with many of you, have some degree of Irish in us (just look at the names of the members of our class on the class list). Quincy was a first steppingstone in the second Diaspora (out of Ireland, out of South Boston/Dorchester) on the way to 'lace curtain' respectability, although my own family never made it pass 'shanty'. Just as today Asian Americans, particularly the Chinese and Vietnamese, have followed that well-trodden path to Quincy. In the case of my family, however, those roots were submerged in an American vanilla assimilationism. We never got past the desperate fight against being dirt poor to think of such high subjects as ethnic identity.
I have been a partisan of a just solution to the national question in Ireland and justice for the Catholic minority (and any Protestant worker who would listen to reason) in the North almost my whole adult life. For this class member, then, today the more important question is not one of ridding Ireland of snakes but ridding it of the bloody English Army. Thus, the above-cited line commemorating Easter, 1916 is what I would skip school for, gladly. I now take a certain pride in the accomplishments of our common Irish cultural heritage. However, it has been only very recently that I found out that my long-departed maternal grandfather was an ardent, if quiet, Irish nationalist. It is in the blood, apparently. However, this new knowledge kind of puts one of the sources of my youthful indifference into perspective, doesn't it? Chocky Ar La (Our Day Will Come).
Easter, 1916-William Butler Yeats
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 rode to harriers?
This man had 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment