Easter Morn' Gets Personal

A little suprise this Easter morning when I woke before sunrise with Easter thoughts, not of bunnies or chocolate or resurrection, but of "revolution."

Must be the Freyne genes, eh?

Thank you, Uncle Peter. I won't forget you. Even though I never met you, you've always been there when I needed the courage to do what had to be done. Know what I mean?

And thank you, William Butler Yeats, for the following:

Easter 1916

I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:

All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.

We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;

And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?

I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Comments

[montpelier28]

Do you have that - Is it a prayer card? - beautiful - sad but so cool too.

[Lisa Crean]

Amazing what our ancestors went through. I cherish the tenacity, determination and defiance that's encoded in our Irish DNA.

I'm assuming you're named for your Uncle Peter. Did your father share other stories with you of his life? Of course we're all glad he escaped the British noose so that you're around to fight the good fight, 21st century style: with a rapier-like keyboard!

I'll send a special thought Uncle Peter's way on Wednesday, the 86th anniversary of his sacrifice for all of us children of Ireland.