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
Easter Rising to be hopeless, they dispersed on Saturday morning. Many went home and were arrested following the rising, while others, including Mellows, went "on the run". By the time British reinforcements arrived in the west, the rising there had already disintegrated. The Easter Rising resulted in at least 485 deaths, according to the Glasnevin Trust. Of those killed: More than 2,600 were wounded; including at least 2,200 civilians and rebels, at least 370 British soldiers and 29 policemen. All 16 police fatalities and 22 of the British soldiers killed were Irishmen. About 40 of those killed were children (i.e. under 17