September 1913 Quotations
Quotes
“Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, / It’s with O’Leary in the grave.”
Explanation: Yeats mourns the loss of Ireland’s heroic and idealistic spirit. The Ireland of courage, poetry, and noble dreams has died with the old patriots like John O’Leary.Explanation: Yeats asks if Ireland’s patriots, called “the wild geese,” sacrificed their lives for such a selfish generation. It shows his pain and disappointment at the loss of national spirit.“Was it for this the wild geese spread / The grey wing upon every tide?”
Explanation: The poet questions whether the blood and sacrifices of Ireland’s heroes, like Edward Fitzgerald, were for the present generation’s greed and moral decay.“For this that all that blood was shed, / For this Edward Fitzgerald died?”