William Butler Yeats' poem "Easter 1916" was written in response to the failed uprising of Irish Nationalists against the British Empire on Easter Monday (24 April, 1916) and describes the poet's torn emotions regarding the events. Irish Republican Brotherhood members attempted to take a number of government buildings in Dublin, trying to start a revolution against a weakened, wartime Britain that would conclude in the foundation of an Irish Free State. The British army defeated the rebels who had barricaded the General Post Office buildings on Sackville St (now O'Connell St). The leaders were executed in May 1916. Hundreds were killed during the uprising, and sixteen men were executed after the rebellion, including the four named in the poem. The text was written between May and September 1916, but first published in 1921.
Though a committed nationalist, Yeats rejected violence as a means to secure Irish independence, and as a result had strained relations with some of the figures who eventually led the rising. The deaths of these revolutionary figures at the hands of the British, however, were a shock to Yeats as to ordinary Irish people at the time, who did not expect the events to take a worse turn so soon. Yeats was working through his feelings about the revolutionary movement in the poem, and the refrain that "a terrible beauty is born" turned out to be prescient, as the execution of the leaders of the Easter Rising had the opposite effect to that intended.
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Poème dit par comédien; read by actor; Gedicht gesprochen von Schauspieler; interpretata da attore
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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

Li ho incontrati al cadere del giorno
Mentre ritornavano animati in viso
Da banchi di negozi o scrittoi tra grigie
Case del diciottesimo secolo.
O cortesi parole senza senso,
O mi sono soffermato un momento e ho detto
Cortesi parole senza senso,
Und dachte, bevor ich es tat,
An einen Spottvers oder Witz,
Wie ihn ein Duzfreund gerne hat,
Wenn man im Club am Feuer sitzt,
Überzeugt, daß sie und mich
Nichts als die Narrentracht verband.
Alles änderte sich vollständig.
Furchtbare Schönheit entstand.
Tutti mutati, interamente mutati. / Una bellezza terribile è nata. [ويليام بتلر ييتس الفصح 1916] Eine schreckliche Schönheit is geboren.

Self-recorded Thur 20 Jun 2013
1st upload same day. Re-uploaded on Sat. 22 Jun. У Б Йейтс - Пасха 1916

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