The Terrible Beauty

                      The Terrible Beauty

            “A terrible beauty is born”.

                                                           (Easter 1916: W. B. Yeats)

About the old High Places cling the louring clouds

     Whilst wild winds whip their wraps and wring tears from those shrouds.

          Ah!. Bitter drops they seem to me, bewailing loss

     Of Irish innocence at seeing her rude Cross

Of Suffering desanctified by bomb and gun

     Which, borne in passion’s awful pride, have quite undone

          That beauty which inspired brave schemes, to leave behind

     Only gross terrors whose régimes — from hatred mined —

Could soon consume the innate good of people who

     Have never fully understood that, only through

          Rejection of coercive force can they achieve

     A decent outcome for their cause. When they believe,

And trust, in genuine democracy, (but not till then),

Will Ireland’s old High Places ever be tear-free again!.