Easter, 1916 of the poem resumes the first person narrative of the first and second stanzas. The stanza returns to the image of the stony heart: "Too long a sacrifice/ Can make a stone of the heart" (57–8), Yeats wrote, putting the determined struggle of Irish republicans in the Easter Rising in the context of the long, turbulent history of British colonialism in Ireland, as well as alluding to the immense psychological costs of the long struggle for independence. Indeed, the narrator cries, "O when may it suffice?", and answering his own question with the line, "That is heaven's part" (making an
Centenary of the Easter Rising Dublin Society and met relatives of the dead, 4,000 of whom attended. President Higgins later attended a 1916 commemoration concert at Liberty Hall Theatre. On the same day, Acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Acting Arts Minister Heather Humphreys opened a permanent visitor centre at the General Post Office, scene of rebel occupation in 1916. Also attending was former Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave, whose father W. T. Cosgrave reopened the building in 1929 after it was put back together. A commemorative service was held at the Unitarian Church on St Stephen's Green, with the names of all Dublin fatalities read aloud. The