September 1913
William Butler Yeats

What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the ha’pence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You 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 kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For 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 spread
The 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 were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You’d cry ‘Some woman’s yellow hair
Has 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.

Inspired by Dublin Corporation’s refusal to provide financial assistance to Sir Hugh Lane for the building of a modern art gallery in the city, Yeats’ poem was published in The Irish Times 100 years ago today. The picture above shows one of the designs prepared by Edwin Lutyens for the projected gallery, not that of a bridge spanning the river Liffey but more conventionally sitting within the western railings of St Stephen’s Green.
You can discover more about the events behind the writing of September 1913 by watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62C1sbgKVk4