ENG 342RW Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Maud Gonne, Constance Markievicz, Thomas Macdonagh
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7): the phrase "the casual comedy" is laden with sarcasm, pointing to an unnecessary loss of life (a point he picks up again in a later stanza) as well as the senselessness of the killings. To anyone readin gin 1916, it was perfectly obvious who he was talking about. Third stanza: countrylike imagery, which is odd because the rising happened in dublin. He"s connecting an urban event to the country of ireland: takes us outside of the rising and makes it more abstract, the speaker elaborates on the theme of change ("minute by minute they change (48) The stone disturbs or "trouble[s]" "the living stream" (44), a metaphor for how the steadfastness of the revolutionaries" purpose contrasts sharply with the shifting transience of popular moods. Fourth stanza: has four rhetorical questions, o when may it suffice, what is it but nightfall, was it needless death after all, and what if excess of love bewildered them till they died, delusional.
