On a Political Prisoner

]> On a Political Prisoner An electronic edition William Butler Yeats Electronic edition compiled and proof-read by Beatrix Färber Rebecca Daly School of History, University College, Cork First draft. 794 CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College, Cork

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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.

Written between 10 and 29 January 1919; first published in The Dial in November 1920 (A. Norman Jeffares, p. 231). Literature (a small selection) W. B. Yeats, The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats, consisting of Reveries over childhood and youth, The trembling of the veil, and Dramatis personae (New York 1938). Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks. Corrected edition with a new preface (Oxford 1979). [First published New York 1948; reprinted London 1961.] Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach, The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W.B. Yeats (New York: Macmillan 1957). W. B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions (New York: Macmillan 1961). W. B. Yeats, Explorations: selected by Mrs W. B. Yeats (London/New York: Macmillan 1962). Richard Ellmann, The Identity of Yeats (New York 1964). Marjorie Perloff, 'Spatial Form in the Poetry of Yeats: The Two Lissadell Poems', Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 82/5 (October 1967) 444–454. A. Norman Jeffares, A New Commentary on the Poems of W.B. Yeats (Stanford 1984). Terry Eagleton, 'Politics and Sexuality in W.B. Yeats', The Crane Bag 9/2 (1985) 138–142. Adolphe Haberer, 'Yeats and MacNeice: From Context to Intertext', Irish University Review 27/2 (Autumn/Winter 1997) 219–235. George Bornstein, 'W. B. Yeats's Poetry of Aging', The Sewanee Review 120/1 (Winter 2012) 46–61. A general 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 William Butler Yeats On a Political Prisoner Richard J. Finneran The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats Macmillan Press London 1991 186

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January 1919 The poem is in English. literary poetry Easter Rising 1916 Constance Markievicz W. B. Yeats 20c 2014-05-02 Beatrix Färber ed. TEI header created with bibliographical detail. File parsed and validated; SGML and HTML files created. 2014-05-01 Rebecca Daly ed. Structural markup applied according to CELT practice. 1996 Students at the CELT Project, UCC ed. First proofing. 1996 Donnchadh Ó Corráin data capture Text captured On a Political Prisoner She that but little patience knew, From childhood on, had now so much A grey gull lost its fear and flew Down to her cell and there alit, And there endured her fingers' touch And from her fingers ate its bit. Did she in touching that lone wing Recall the years before her mind Became a bitter, an abstract thing, Her thought some popular enmity: Blind and leader of the blind Drinking the foul ditch where they lie? When long ago I saw her ride Under Ben Bulben to the meet, The beauty of her country-side With all youth's lonely wildness stirred, She seemed to have grown clean and sweet Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird: Sea-borne, or balanced on the air When first it sprang out of the nest Upon some lofty rock to stare Upon the cloudy canopy, While under its storm-beaten breast Cried out the hollows of the sea.