Lines 70-80 Summary

Lines 70-73

We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?

• Despite everything that's happened, one thing's for sure for Yeats: "We know their dream." In other words, we know what these people were willing to die for. 
• But on the other hand, we also know that "they dreamed and are dead" (71). So that's kind of harsh. It's like Yeats is saying, "Yeah, you guys dreamed of a free Ireland; and now you're all dead. That's all we really know for sure." In these lines, the brute fact of death is threatening to totally take away the value of what the people fought for. 
• But Yeats doesn't end with this pessimistic, cynical comment. He follows it up by asking whether the people did what they did because they felt too much love. Maybe all of their love for Ireland confused or "Bewildered them" until they died. 
• Now this may sound a bit nicer, but still not all that complimentary. It's like Yeats is saying these people did what they did out of love. But he's also saying that their love confused them and made them do foolish things that they wouldn't have done if they'd been thinking clearly. 
• On the other hand, Yeats phrases this bit about the fighters being bewildered by love as a question. It's up to us to decide whether it's a rhetorical question. 
• Or in other words, is Yeats genuinely curious about whether these people were confused by love, or does he assume that they were?

Lines 74-80

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.

• After all his confusion about how he should feel about the Easter Uprising, it looks like the only thing Yeats can say for sure is that he "write[s] it out in verse." But what is "it" in this line? Well "it" seems to refer to Yeats' thought process as he thinks about the Uprising and the people who participated in it. 
• Now he just writes out the names of people who fought in the struggle (lots of Irish names in there). But he concludes by saying that these people are "changed, changed utterly" both in the present and in the future, especially whenever "green is worn." Yeats is using a metonymy here, as green is the official color of Ireland (go figure). 
• So Yeats seems to be saying here that these people have been changed by their sacrifice, because now they'll be remembered whenever people wear green and think about Ireland's freedom and its history. This is something Yeats knows he isn't a part of, and he doesn't totally know how to feel about that. 
• This bit about wearing green is also significant if you remember way back to line 14, where Yeats uses the metonymy of "motley" clothing to symbolize the silliness of his daily life. 
• Well now we can contrast that metonymy with the one about wearing green, which Yeats finds much more serious and worthy of poetry. In other words, this contrast between motley and green clothing might actually reveal Yeats' secret belief that these fighters have lived a more meaningful life than he ever will. 
• The only thing he can really finish by saying is to repeat his favorite refrain, "A terrible beauty is born." The paradox of calling beauty terrible does a good job of bringing together the feelings of admiration and detachment that Yeats feels for the people who fought in the Easter Uprising. 
• He's not prepared to come out and say that it was a glorious event; but at the same time, he's not willing to say that the people died for nothing, either. He's caught between the worlds of total snobbish removal and a desire to celebrate people who gave their lives for what they believed in. 
• But yeah, he never really gets any further than uncertainty. That's 20th-century poetry for you.