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
History of the Labour Party (Ireland) war, Labour called off its congress in 1915. James Connolly was the only leading Labour figure to take part in the Easter Rising in 1916. His execution after the rebellion left the labour movement in some disarray. Liberty Hall, the physical symbol of the labour movement, was destroyed, and the files of the ITUCLP were seized. Many trade union leaders, in Dublin, who had not taken part in the Rising were interned, such as William O'Brien, but they were released later when the British realised that they had no direct involvement. Their absence allowed non-nationalist leaders to come to the