Summary
The speaker now casts the poem back into history, asking whether a list of Irish nationalists and exiles suffered simply for the current status quo to come about. He first recalls the exile of "wild geese." His language is evocative of nature, but these geese are metaphorical: "wild geese" refers, in the context of Irish history, to Irish soldiers fighting abroad, or, in some instances, to Irish armies sent into exile. He then recalls three men—Edward Fitzgerald, Robert Emmet, and Wolfe Tone—who died after participating in a 1798 insurrection. With a repetition of the refrain, the speaker again reminds us of the downfall of another Irish national hero, John O'Leary. In the final stanza, the speaker imagines what might occur if his contemporaries—the Irish people of 1913—could address the heroes of the past. Undoubtedly, the speaker imagines, they would accuse these heroes of being driven mad by a woman's beautiful hair, rather than take them seriously. The poem ends with a mildly modified repetition of the now-familiar refrain: rather than say that "Romantic Ireland" is "dead and gone," the speaker urges listeners to let these now-dead heroes rest, since they are, like O'Leary, dead and gone.
Analysis
The first two stanzas of this poem established two opposite poles: a present in which hope for Ireland has been lost, and a recent past in which that hope remained potent. In the third stanza, Yeats reaches into a more distant Irish past, and connects the more distant past to the present. He describes several specific moments in Irish history in which fighters for independence were killed, punished, or sent into exile. Already, of course, Yeats has mentioned John O'Leary—a contemporary—several times, in the poem's repeated refrain. Now, he connects O'Leary to a lineage of other fighters. These include the three men killed in the aftermath of the 1798 uprising against the British, and the "wild geese," which refers broadly to soldiers who have left Ireland—and most famously to the armies who fled Ireland after the signing of the Treaty of Limerick in 1691.
By linking O'Leary to these men, Yeats suggests that this more recent nationalist is deserving of the same accolades as those who have long been canonized. However, he also links this lineage of heroism to the present, arguing that complacency in twentieth-century Ireland is a betrayal of these men and represents a waste of their sacrifices. He poses this argument as a question, asking his addressee whether these historical fights were truly aimed at producing such an unpatriotic and unremarkable present. The use of the rhetorical question as a device serves a dual purpose. In a sense, it is less forceful than a statement would be, revealing the speaker's own uncertainty and desperation. At the same time, by urging the listener to answer (though, of course, the reader cannot actually answer), the speaker creates a combative atmosphere. Indeed, his desperation and his combativeness appear linked, as if they reinforce one another.
In the final stanza, Yeats takes the links between past and present that he has already established, making them highly literal. He launches into the realm of the hypothetical here, imagining a scenario in which the people of the present could literally converse with the heroes of the past. By imagining the dismissive attitudes of present-day Irishmen, Yeats suggests that, were these widely-revered figures currently alive and fighting for Irish independence, their countrymen would respond derisively. In other words, he suggests, reverence for these historical figures comes from a blend of hypocrisy and nostalgia, rather than from a real investment in Ireland. The specific form of mockery Yeats imagines is a telling one: in this hypothetical, modern Ireland imagines acts of patriotic resistance as a mere byproduct of sexual interest—a result of being driven mad by a woman's hair. This (hypothetical) rhetoric positions resistance as a showy, childish activity, rather than one driven by lofty political principles. Through the imagined scenario of modern Ireland mocking the heroes of Ireland's past, Yeats reimagines these figures as vulnerable—exiles who are enduring "loneliness and pain." In this way, he positions the political indifference of the Irish people, not as simply misguided, but as a highly personal and mean-spirited betrayal. In the last refrain, the concept of "Romantic Ireland" disappears, replaced by these specific dead historical heroes. The betrayal of an ideal, in other words, is replaced by the betrayal of specific individuals.
