For men were born to pray and save
This claim is delivered with bitter irony, since, while the speaker does indeed observe the people around him praying and saving, he does not find this state of affairs natural or beneficial. Prayer and saving money are two activities linked, in this work, to blind obedience and cautiousness—quite the opposite of the radicalism the poem otherwise celebrates. The former places control in the hands of a God or religious authority, while the latter prioritizes prudent restraint. Meanwhile, this line's halting one-syllable diction imitates the halting attitude of those who "pray and save."
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.
This refrain is repeated three times—once at the end of each of the first three stanzas—as well as a fourth time, slightly modified, at the poem's close. It is the central thesis of the poem and a summary of the speaker's current worldview. The meaning of "Romantic Ireland" is somewhat ambiguous. It seems to refer, in one sense, to a precolonial and even legendary or mythological version of Ireland. At the same time, it seems to refer to the specific political vision of an independent, sovereign Ireland. In this way, "Romantic Ireland" is equated with, and represented by, O'Leary, the most recent in a string of pro-independence fighters. Thus, for the speaker, the sheer human toll of this struggle, exemplified by O'Leary's death, has brought about a hopeless feeling that the struggle itself is unsustainable.
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
Just as "Romantic Ireland" might refer either to a legendary era or to specific historical moments from the fight against British rule, the image of names circulating like wind invites comparisons and parallels between heroes of Irish myth and those of modern history. The imagery Yeats uses here evokes oral folklore, a medium associated with folk heroes, even while explicitly describing much more recent figures. Moreover, the image of wind specifically suggests stealth and elusiveness, hinting that these names were both forbidden and revered. The light, sibilant sounds of this passage contrast with the heavy ones of the phrase "men were born to pray and save"—these thrilling, elusive figures were, Yeats suggests, the opposite of today's brutally practical populace.
Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
In this brief passage, Yeats employs a dead metaphor and rejuvenates it, making it come alive again. In Irish history, "wild geese" is a nickname referring to Irishmen who have left the country to fight in foreign militaries—and, more specifically, referring to the Irish Jacobite army, who fled Ireland in 1691. Here, Yeats expresses disgust at Ireland's current state, arguing that the sacrifices of the "wild geese" have been in vain. By imagining and describing the wild geese as actual, embodied geese, conjuring them down to the colors of their wings, Yeats asks readers to reconsider familiar historical narratives, and brings the poem slightly out of the realm of the real into a more fantastical register.
You’d cry, ‘Some woman’s yellow hair
Has maddened every mother’s son’:
Here the speaker expresses what he sees as a major problem with modern Ireland: even if its people profess to care about the heroes of the past, they would likely react with mockery if they met such a hero themselves. Specifically, these lines suggest, they would dismiss the heroes' idealistic quest as a mere result of a youthful romantic or sexual frenzy. Yeats's language here reveals an attempt, on the part of these hypothetical people, to distance themselves from the heroes they are addressing—perhaps out of discomfort or fear. They refer to "some woman's yellow hair," anonymizing the woman, and then referring not to a woman herself, but merely to her hair. Meanwhile, they refer to the objects of their mockery with the phrase "every mother's son" rather than "every man" or "every person," and in this way, again, create an awkward rhetorical distance.
