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William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939) was an Irish poet known for being a representative figure of the Irish literary Renaissance as well as one of the most important authors of the 20th Century. Even though he wrote several works for theatre, he was notable mainly for his work in poetry. Yeats was successful in freeing the Irish poetry of the schemes established by the British poetry, thus breaking down the tradition of the Victorian poetry.

This work is going to focus on his best known poem, Easter 1916, which reflects the events of Easter Rising, the battle in which the Irish people tried to gain their independence from England. Easter 1916 involves a symbolism in its numerical structure. First of all, the second and the fourth stanza have 24 verses, which refer to the day in which the rebellion began. Moreover, the poem has four stanzas, alluding to the fourth month of de year, April, the moment in which the rising happened. Finally, the first and the third stanza are composed by 16 verses, showing the year of the battle, 1916.

The first stanza serves as an introduction of the poem. Here, Yeats talks in first person about the daily life in the city, like if nothing had happened. However, this routine and calm tone changes dramatically in the last verse “A terrible beauty is born” (16), which is repeated at the end of the second and the fourth stanza. Furthermore, with this “terrible beauty”, the author wants to express the rebellion’s duality: on the one hand, the terrible number of deaths that it has caused; and on the other hand, the beauty of allowing the creation of a free Ireland.

The second stanza of the poem is a tribute to the participants of the revolution who died during the Easter Rising. Indeed, Yeats appoints several...

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...d have spoken about the stanzas independently because it would have helped to a better understanding of the poem, since each one transmits important things. Finally, with regard to the above, Dyson does not analyze the structure of the poem, what is more, even when speaking of the rhyme, he doesn’t say even if it is assonant or consonant, but he focuses on the meaning that it carries: “There is a simple but insistent rhyme scheme (a / b / a / b) Which supports our sense of the poem as an artifact [...] This has much to Do With Yeats's approach to war” (p. 30).

As a conclusion, after all the issues discussed, I can say that Easter 1916 is a poem which pays tribute to people who fought in the “Easter Rising”, as well as their ideals which, as Yeats repeats at the end of the stanzas, were the beginning of the “Terrible Beauty” (16, 40, 80): The Ireland’s independence.