Philosophy

A response to the ruthless mercenary employers who locked out their workers in the General Strike in 1913: the poem is also a comment on the refusal of commercial interests to support Yeats' appeal for money to build an Art Gallery to house the Lane collection. The poem is a scathing criticism of the mercenary materialism he felt was rampant in the Ireland of 1913. The Scrooge image first introduced in "fumble in a greasy till" is a devastating swipe at the captains of industry and commerce. The wooden till has become shiny (greasy) with over-use: the word "fumble" suggests the idea of the body being withered in the relentless pursuit of money for its own sake. Yet these people can justify or excuse their materialism through religion. That materialism and life of the spirit cannot be reconciled is tellingly conveyed in "pray and save". Prayer, love of God, something which is surely full of warmth and passion, is here described as "shivering". The barren, shivering hypocrisy of these people is bitterly and sarcastically hammered home. Then comes the refrain - "Romantic Ireland's dead and gone. It's with O'Leary in the grave." John O'Leary, an old Fenian, emerges as the antithesis of the greedy, sordid, grasping Dublin merchants. O'Leary is a symbol of integrity, idealism and vision. John O'Leary reached that independence and freedom was something spiritual, freedom of spirit and the opportunity to turn dreams into reality. The spirit of Romance is gone from the year 1913. No idealism now: just cynicism and greed. The verse is pregnant with sarcasm, a tone of utter revolution, but the tone begins to soften with the mention of O'Leary. There is a dramatic change of rhythm as Yeats reverentially surveys the Ireland that is "dead and gone". Contempt evaporates as an elevated rhythm develops as he almost whispers in awe and wonder about the idealistic romantic heroes of Irish History who sacrificed all the material things life has to offer, to pursue an ideal, a vision, a dream. Even the target of his attack - the business community - once stood in awe of these heroes, that is, before materialism infected their minds. The idealists of Irish history paid for their visions with their lives, or those lucky to escape were misled and pursued their dream in the armies of France and Austria. In Stanza 3 the rhythm changes again - the staccato use of monosyllabic words - as Yeats hammers home his thesis of the extinction of idealism in Ireland. Fitzgerald, Emmet and Tone were three particular Romantic Irishmen. In Stanza 4, Yeats turns the sarcastic and cynical remark of the materialistic new Irishmen back on themselves with the scintillating use of "weighted" in line 30. Remember that to weigh refers to materialistic things - the shopkeeper weighing out the flour, tea, sugar, nails, cement, etc. - and "weigh" in the sense of a deep balancing of things in the mind. This is the coup de grace. The reader cannot fail to see that the noble madness (delirium) of the brave is so much superior to the cynicism of "Some woman's yellow hair has maddened every mother's son". Yeats is comparing the braveness of the patriots with the selfishness of the merchants. The word "delirium" conveys many thingsÐ'... madness, for example, but also fever and idealism - and in this use it contains good and bad aspects, it is well suited to expressing Yeats' attitude to the heroes. We can see, however, that this attitude falls more on the edge of praise and criticism, since he ends the description by calling them "the brave". In general, Yeats wants to maintain a balance in the phraseÐ'... a recognition of both the sacrifices and the extremism of the heroes.

Or

2nd Set of Notes

The poem is an attack by Yeats on the employers and merchants of Dublin. It was provoked by the lockout of September 1913 in which all members of the ITGWU were locked out by their employers, giving rise to a winter of poverty and confrontation in the city of Dublin and resulting in victory for the employers. Yeats was particularly annoyed with the man who led the employers, William Martin Murphy, owner of Independent Newspapers and the Dublin Tram Company. As he had refused to organise the necessary money to purchase an art gallery overlooking the Liffey, to house the Hugh Lane collection of paintings in 1911. The lockout was the third major disappointment for Yeats in the artistic appreciation of Dubliners. The first being the riots in 1907 which