Prayer and Money (Motif)
In this poem's thematic landscape, two activities are described as the opposite of revolutionary or nationalist resistance: saving money and saying prayers. Saving and praying, the speaker says, are the two primary pastimes of the Irish public. These are described, not as positive or moral activities, but as acts of desperation and deprivation. Saving money is represented as "fumbling in a greasy till," whereas praying is described as adding "prayer to shivering prayer": in both cases, Yeats suggests, the individual doing the praying and saving sees little reward. Through these paired motifs, Yeats suggests that Irish people have learned to be satisfied with very little, and have come to be afraid of asking—or working—for better.
Wild Geese (Symbol)
As he lists historical heroes of the Irish past, reminding readers of their sacrifices, Yeats includes an unexpected item: wild geese flying away over the water. These geese are symbolic, though this symbolism functions on several levels. Most explicitly, Yeats is referring to the "Flight of the Wild Geese," a seventeenth-century event in which members of Ireland's Catholic armies fled the country following military defeat. By using vivid visual imagery to depict the wild geese of the poem, however, Yeats enlivens the familiar historical narrative, as well as the metaphorical language used to describe it. More broadly, the term "wild geese" is sometimes used to describe Irish soldiers who fought for armies abroad throughout history. In the broadest possible sense, it is simply a symbol of Irishness in exile. The description of the birds spreading their wings to fly across the sea makes the concept of exile feel, not like a legal abstraction, but like a consequential, tangible punishment.
