Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition

Background details and bibliographic information

September 1913

Author: William Butler Yeats

File Description

Electronic edition compiled and proof-read by Beatrix Färber, Juliette Maffet

Funded by School of History, University College, Cork

1. First draft.

Extent of text: 610 words

Publication

Distributed by CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland.
Text ID Number: E910001-005

Availability [RESTRICTED]

The works by W. B. Yeats are in the public domain. This electronic text is available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of private or academic research and teaching.

Sources

Bibliography
1. A bibliography is available online at the official web site of the Nobel Prize. See: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1923/yeats-bibl.html

The edition used in the digital edition
1. William Butler Yeats September 1913 in , Ed. William Butler Yeats Responsibilities and other Poems. The Macmillan Company, New York, (1916) page 32–33

Encoding

Project Description

CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts

Sampling Declaration

The whole selection.

Editorial Declaration

Correction

Text has been proof-read twice.

Normalization

The electronic text represents the edited text. Lines (or parts of them) reproduced in italics in the printed edition are tagged hi rend="ital".

Hyphenation

The editorial practice of the hard-copy editor has been retained.

Segmentation

div0 =the poem, stanzas are marked lg.

Interpretation

Names of persons (given names), and places are not tagged. Terms for cultural and social roles are not tagged.

Profile Description

Created: By William Butler Yeats (1865–1939). Date range: before 1916.

Use of language

Language: [EN] The poem is in English.

Revision History

• (2012-02-08)

  Beatrix Färber (ed.)

• File proofed (2), additions to encoding made; header completed; file parsed; SGML and HTML files created.
• (2012-02-01)

  Juliette Maffet (ed.)

• Header created.
• (2012-01-23)

  Juliette Maffet (ed.)

• First proofing.
• (2012-01-18)

  Juliette Maffet (file capture)

• Text captured by scanning.

Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition: E910001-005

September 1913: Author: William Butler Yeats

p.32

1. What need you, being come to sense,
   But fumble in a greasy till
   And add the halfpence to the pence
   And prayer to shivering prayer, until
   You have dried the marrow from the bone;
   For men were born to pray and save:
   Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
   It's with O'Leary in the grave.
   Yet they were of a different kind
   The names that stilled your childish play,
   They have gone about the world like wind,
   But little time had they to pray
   For whom the hangman's rope was spun,

   ---

   p.33

   And what, God help us, could they save:
   Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
   It's with O'Leary in the grave.
2. Was it for this the wild geese spread
   The grey wing upon every tide;
   For this that all that blood was shed,
   For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
   And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
   All that delirium of the brave;
   Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
   It's with O'Leary in the grave.
3. Yet could we turn the years again,
   And call those exiles as they were,
   In all their loneliness and pain
   You'd cry 'some woman's yellow hair
   Has maddened every mother's son':
   They weighed so lightly what they gave,
   But let them be, they're dead and gone,
   They're with O'Leary in the grave.