smokingboot

Easter 1916, quoted by President Biden. Many are talking about the way it relates to the world changing so much over the past few years. Hmm. It has a far more presently political resonance than such an interpretation indicates.

The poem refers to the Easter 1916 uprising of Irish Nationalists against the British Government. They were crushed, their leaders executed, and massacres of innocent civilians took place. One effect was a movement of Irish opinion against the British. Without thinking much, necessarily, of individual rebels, Yeats felt for their cause, as many came to do.

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.
...

Now BJ, though a lazy scholar and deplorer of detail, is not entirely ignorant when it comes to literature. He may prefer Kipling to Yeats, but he'll know what that quote means, and I don't doubt the POTUS does too whether or not the demarche really occurred.

Interesting times.