On A Political Prisoner - A poem by William Butler Yeats

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.

Poet: William Butler Yeats
Poem: On A Political Prisoner
Volume: Michael Robartes and the Dancer
Year: Published/Written in 1921

Comment 1 of 1, added on August 24th, 2010 at 1:16 PM.
On a Political Prisoner
The political prisoner is Countess Con Markievicz who was condemned to death by the British Government for her part in the Irish rebellion of 1916. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment but she was later released. She was elected as a Member of the British Parliament in 1918 but refused to take the seat because it would have involved an oath of allegiance to the English crown. Following Irish independence in 1922, she was appointed Minister for Labour in te Irish Governement, the first woman Minister to be appointed anywhere in Europe. She died in 1927. She was born in Lisadell, Co. Sligo and was a sister of Eve Goore-Booth (1870-1926). Yeats met both sisters in in Lisadell in 1924 and later wrote a poem about them entitled "In memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz, which opens:
"The light of evening, Lisadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonas, both
Beautiful, one like a gazelle."

P J Madden from Ireland

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