September 1913

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1914from Responsibilities32 lines

What need you, being come to sense,But fumble in a greasy tillAnd add the halfpence to the penceAnd prayer to shivering prayer, untilYou have dried the marrow from the bone;For men were born to pray and save:Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kindThe names that stilled your childish play,They have gone about the world like wind,But little time had they to prayFor whom the hangman’s rope was spun,And what, God help us, could they save:Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spreadThe grey wing upon every tide;For this that all that blood was shed,For this Edward Fitzgerald died,And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,All that delirium of the brave;Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,And call those exiles as they wereIn all their loneliness and pain,You’d cry “some woman’s yellow hairHas maddened every mother’s son”:They weighed so lightly what they gave,But let them be, they’re dead and gone,They’re with O’Leary in the grave.

Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.

In brief

Summary

A bitter attack on a money-minded Dublin that has forgotten its heroes.

Yeats turns on the pious, money-minded middle class of Dublin: people who "fumble in a greasy till", add prayer to prayer and have "dried the marrow from the bone". Against them he sets the Irish patriots of the past, who had no time to pray or save, gave everything and were hanged or exiled for it. Each stanza ends with the same refrain: "Romantic Ireland's dead and gone", buried with the old Fenian John O'Leary. In the last stanza the anger turns quieter. Even if those heroes came back, modern Ireland would sneer at them as fools maddened by love, so, he says, let them rest.

Lines to remember

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,

It's with O'Leary in the grave.

All that delirium of the brave;

Line by line

Lines 1 to 8The greasy till
The opening question is sarcastic: now that you have "come to sense", all you need is to count coins and say prayers. "Greasy till" makes money dirty, "shivering prayer" suggests a fearful, grasping religion, and "dried the marrow from the bone" means draining life of its richness. Then the refrain tolls for the first time.
Lines 9 to 16A different kind
The patriots of the past were "of a different kind": their names once silenced children at play, and their fame spread "like wind". They had "little time" to pray and nothing to save, with the hangman's rope waiting. Lines 12 and 14 take the words "pray" and "save" from line 6 and turn them against the present.
Lines 17 to 24Was it for this
The questions grow angrier. The "wild geese" were the Irish soldiers who went abroad to fight in the armies of Europe; then come the rebels Edward Fitzgerald, Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone. "All that delirium of the brave" admits their cause was half mad, and loves them for it.
Lines 25 to 32Let them be
If the dead exiles returned in all their "loneliness and pain", modern Ireland would mock them as men maddened by "some woman's yellow hair", perhaps Ireland herself, often pictured as a woman. The refrain changes to "let them be" and "They're with O'Leary", and contempt gives way to a protective grief.

Themes

Materialism

The present is summed up in shopkeeping: the "greasy till", the "halfpence" added "to the pence". Even religion becomes a kind of saving, "prayer to shivering prayer", done out of fear. Line 6, "For men were born to pray and save", states the new creed with heavy irony. The poem's charge is that caution and profit have "dried the marrow from the bone" of Irish life.

Heroism and sacrifice

The heroes are defined by what they gave up. They had "little time" to pray, nothing to "save", and faced "the hangman's rope". Yeats lists them by name (Fitzgerald, Emmet, Tone) like a roll of honour. The line "They weighed so lightly what they gave" sums up the difference: the heroes did not count the cost, while the present counts everything.

Ireland and politics

The refrain mourns an idea of Ireland, "Romantic Ireland", as well as a man. By tying it to O'Leary's grave, Yeats suggests that the idealism of the old Fenians died with them. The poem is a public, political statement, but its final change of refrain shows personal feeling too: he will not let the dead be mocked.

Context

The poem was printed in The Irish Times on 8 September 1913, during the row over a gallery for Hugh Lane's collection of modern pictures, and later took the title "September 1913". Lane, Lady Gregory's nephew, had offered the paintings to Dublin if the city built a gallery for them. The arguments against paying for it seemed to Yeats proof of a mean, shopkeeping spirit.

John O'Leary, the Fenian leader who returned from exile in 1885 and turned the young Yeats towards Irish subjects, had died in 1907. For Yeats he stood for a proud, self-sacrificing nationalism. The poem was collected in Responsibilities (Cuala Press, 1914), a book full of quarrels with Irish public life. Three years later the Easter Rising made him think again, in "Easter, 1916".

Form

Four stanzas of eight short lines, mostly four-beat iambic lines, rhyming ABABCDCD. The last two lines of each stanza are a refrain, altered only at the end of the poem. The short lines and hard, full rhymes ("save" and "grave", "gone" and "Tone") give the poem the ring of a ballad or a public speech, which suits its anger.

Studying this poem

What to focus on

How the refrain works, and how its change in the final stanza moves the poem from contempt to elegy.
The contrast between the materialism of the present and the self-sacrifice of Ireland's past patriots.
The tone of anger, sarcasm and bitterness, and how rhetorical questions and harsh diction create it.
Whether the poem romanticises violent nationalism, and how "Easter, 1916" later revises its judgement of the middle class.
Yeats as a public poet, responding to a specific controversy in Irish life.

Key quotations

But fumble in a greasy till
Contemptuous, physical diction: "fumble" and "greasy" make money-handling clumsy and dirty. This is the heart of his charge against the new middle class.
And prayer to shivering prayer
Religion is treated like money, piled up out of fear. "Shivering" suggests a timid, self-interested faith rather than generous belief.
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
The refrain tolls like a funeral bell at the end of each stanza, mourning not just a man but an ideal of Ireland that seems to have died with him.
For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
The patriots' deaths are set against the saving and praying of the present. The image of the rope being spun suggests a fate prepared for them in advance.
All that delirium of the brave;
An ambiguous phrase: "delirium" admits the heroes' cause was a kind of madness, yet "brave" honours them. Yeats admires their reckless idealism.
They weighed so lightly what they gave,
The heroes gave their lives without counting the cost, the exact opposite of the calculating present. The refrain then softens into "let them be".

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