Easter, 1916 Analysis

For the most part, Yeatsy likes to stick to iambic tetrameter with an ABAB rhyme scheme, which is pretty much as straightforward as it gets for meter and rhyme. But every now and then he'll slip in...

Teachers will often tell you that it's a mistake to confuse the speaker of a poem with the author. But in this case, you're fine with saying, "This speaker is totally Yeats." And if he isn't, he's...

The poem is set in Ireland (probably the city of Dublin) sometime after the Easter Uprising of 1916. For those of us who don't know what the Uprising was, here's a quick rundown. At the beginning o...

Yeats has one of the most recognizable sounds of any modernist poet, and you can almost catch it right away with his loose tetrameter and ABAB rhyme scheme. But even though he has these strict form...

When you first look at the title of this poem, you might be all like, "Great, a poem about Easter." But you won't get very far before you discover that there are no bunnies or colored eggs to be fo...

Ambivalent removal, eh? Now what in the world does that mean? Well, the word ambivalent means that you really aren't sure how you feel about something, and the word "removal" in this sense means th...

It's not like Yeats' language in this poem is all that tough. But what is tough is the kind of thinking that Yeats is trying to capture. Basically, he wants to commemorate people who died in the Ir...

Unlike many famous poets, Yeats did a lot of his best writing between the ages of 50 and 75. Late bloomer, we guess. (Source.)For much of his life, Yeats was obsessed with a woman named Maud Gonne....

No sex at all in this one. If you want sex from Yeats, check out "Leda and the Swan."

Easter Uprising of 1916 (15-16,79-80)Countess Constance Markievicz (17-23)Padraic Pearse (24-25)Thomas MacDonagh (26-30)Major John MacBride (31-38)James Connolly (76)