The Birth of a Terrible Beauty

Easter 1916
by William Butler Yeats

I've often wondered whether the sense of "we have it all mastered" was the only contributing factor to the violent age of the turn of the century.  Nationalism, Manifest Destiny, the White Man's Burden, racial superiority, contraception and abortion, WASPish Masonry, and materialism - wasn't this toxic brew bound to produce a clash of Europeans eventually?  I mean the Great War didn't ignite between the clans of Africa (subdued by colonialism from Europe a la Josef Conrad) nor did it erupt in the Chinese clans; or even in the Americas (imagine a WW1 btwn USA and Mexico and Canada). But it did between the Dieu avec nous of the French, the Gott mit uns of the Germans, and God with us of the English.  Were Stravinsky and Ludendorff both channeling an "energy"?  

Certainly, WB Yeats seemed well aware of something tremendous happening – a tectonic shift in the culture itself.  Writing here about the Irish Revolution of 1916 (in the midst of the Great War) he describes it as “a terrible beauty” being born; that everything is “changed, changed utterly”.  In another poem, “The Second Coming”, Yeats describes this “terrible beauty” being born as a “rough beast it’s hour come round at last” and states that “things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”  For Yeats the “Second Coming” didn’t altogether seem like a joyful reappearance of Jesus Christ but something far more demonic and terrifying; some “blood dimmed tide”.  

In an era where phrenology, racial superiority, class unrest, and all the misery of the Industrial Revolution seemed to clash with Biblical criticism, National pride, and smug self-confidence in the progress of science it is no wonder that the Western world seemed teetering on the brink of collapse.  As Thomas Hardy illustrated in "The Convergence of the Twain", The Titanic of Europe seemed fatedly bound with the iceberg of destruction.  

Where was that “gilded age” of the “Belle Epoque”?  Where were the promises about the betterment of humanity made during the era of Mary Shelley and Nathaniel Hawthorne? They seem to have been fleeing westward even before the Tommies and the Poitous clashed with the fine troops of the Kaiser.  And it seems the vacancy and tumult thereof have lasted well into our own era of mutually assured destruction, terrorist paranoia, financial collapse, and electronic mayhem.  All was changed, changed utterly; a terrible beauty is born.

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 wingèd 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.