dedicates his life to the revivification of Ireland.^13 Yeatsís poem
rehearses the connections between nationality and popular myth,
nationality and blood sacrifice, and nationality and a feminine Ireland,
which were used by the poet and nationalist political leader Patrick
Pearse.
Pearse himself became a mythologized figure whose death was
bound up with the notions of blood sacrifice and the redemption of
Ireland. He was aware of the power of Gaelic myth and, in particular,
the story of Cuchulainn, to create national heroes. Lloyd argues that
ënationalism can be said to require an aesthetic politics quite as much
as a national aesthetics.í^14 In this way, popular myth or literature and
politics merge. Pearse features once more in ëEaster 1916í from
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921) as one of the dead who are
commemorated in literature, rather than as an active political voice as
in ëThe Rose Treeí. The poem itself shifts between writing a
nationalist politics and questioning the ability to represent a national
identity in literature. Stanza one imagines how nationalist myth can
transform the dull reality of a ëgreyí and mediocre Dublin where
ëmotleyí is worn rather than the nationalist green of a romantic
Ireland. The rebelsí heroism, death and violence forge a ëterrible
beautyí, and problematize the myth of blood sacrifice which was
lauded by Pearse. The poem, like the rebelsí act, also provides
potential for transformation whereby ë[a]llís changed, changed
utterlyí; as they are remembered, the rebels become transformed in the
ësongí of the poem.
Yet the poem offers no single definitive response to this
sacrifice; it is plagued with questions. Perhaps ë[t]oo long a sacrifice/
Can make a stone of the heart.í Moreover, ë[h]earts with one purpose
aloneí might be narrow-minded or fanatical; ë[e]nchanted to a stoneí
which is fixed, unchanging and devoid of compassionate vision. In
turn, the poem risks becoming a metaphorical gravestone on which is
inscribed the memory of the rebels, creating a static representation of
Irish nationalism. This reinscription has the potential to become yet
13 David Cairns and Shaun Richards, Writing Ireland: Colonialism, Nationalism
and Literature (Manchester: University Press, 1988), p.104. Cf. Desmond
Ryan, The 1916 Poets, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1963), p.201.
14 Lloyd, p.89.