Easter, 1916 Easter, 1916 Easter, 1916 is a poem by W. B. Yeats describing the poet's torn emotions regarding the events of the Easter Rising staged in Ireland against British rule on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916. The uprising was unsuccessful, and most of the Irish republican leaders involved were executed for treason. The poem was written between May and September 1916, but first published in 1921 in the collection "Michael Robartes and the Dancer". Even though a committed nationalist, Yeats usually rejected violence as a means to secure Irish independence, and as a result had strained relations with some of the
Fenian Rising lack of arms and planning, but also because of the British authorities' effective use of informers. Most of the Fenian leadership had been arrested before the rebellion took place. However, the rising was not without symbolic significance. The Fenians proclaimed a Provisional Republican government, stating, The proclamation preceded the Easter 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic by almost 50 years. it also sheds some light on early Fenianism: it is centred with the ideas of republican democracy; however it is embedded with ideas of class struggle. The proclamation claims that their war was "against the aristocratic locusts, whether English or