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
First Day of the Easter Rising First Day of the Easter Rising The first day of the Easter Rising, Monday, April 24, 1916, saw some 1,200 volunteer soldiers of the Irish Volunteers take over positions in the centre of Dublin, launching the week-long revolution known as the Easter Rising. The Volunteers' Dublin division was organized into four battalions. As a result of Eoin MacNeill's countermanding order all of them saw a far smaller turnout than originally planned. The 1st battalion under Commandant Ned Daly mustered at Blackhall Street, numbering about 250 men. They were to occupy the Four Courts and areas to the northwest to guard