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 Taoiseach Enda Kenny laid a wreath. Silver and gold commemorative coins to mark the centenary, designed by Michael Guilfoyle, went on sale on Monday 4 April. They were only made available to collectors, and did not go into general circulation. On Sunday 24 April, events occurred to mark the centenary date of the start of the Rising. President Higgins, Taoiseach Kenny, members of the Government, Oireachtas and judiciary attended a ceremony at Arbour Hill, where a requiem Mass was overseen by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin. The graveside of the executed leaders hosted an interfaith ceremony and