Can someone identify this Yeats poem please ?

[gamboller]

The line "and add the halfpence to the pence" comes from the poem but I cannot remember the title ? Thought it was "Easter 1916" but apparently not.

[Logos]

" "September 1913", one of the most famous of Yeats' poems, was written to express the poet's support of the workers in this struggle-The Dublin Lockout of 1913 was the most severe industrial dispute in the history of Ireland, a general lockout of workers in Dublin meant to contain the expansion of trade unions."*



W.B. Yeats (1865–1939). Responsibilities and Other Poems. 1916.

September 1913


WHAT need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone; 5
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind
The names that stilled your childish play, 10
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, 15
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died, 20
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave;
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again, 25
And call those exiles as they were,
In all their loneliness and pain
You’d cry ‘Some woman’s yellow hair
Has maddened every mother’s son’:
They weighed so lightly what they gave, 30
But let them be, they’re dead and gone,
They’re with O’Leary in the grave.
http://www.bartelby.com/147/5.html


*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Lockout

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[gamboller]

Thank you, Logos. May use it in an article I'm writing. Brings back memories of my school days long ago !