In the second stanza Yeats goes on to mention:
“The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved”
Here Yeats is referring to William Martin Murphy, the leader of the Dublin 1913 lockout as a man that he hates and John Synge as the man he loved. , , writer, and a key figure in the , one of the cofounders of the . Here we see Yeats using Murphy as a symbol of the present Ireland he lives in and Synge as the Ireland of the past which he loved. This is a method used by Yeats to present his opinion of the Ireland of his time.
Towards the end of the second stanza in ‘The Fisherman’, Yeats describes what he sees as the most detestable feature of Irish Society of his time:
“The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.”
In the third stanza Yeats’ tone calms down and he starts to reflect upon reality that the ideal man he has been dreaming of as a fisherman does not exist in the Ireland of his time:
“Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face,
And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark under froth,
And the down-turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream;
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, 'Before I am old
I shall have written him one
poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.”
Yeats expresses within the last stanza that he will use poetry to make his point, his poetry is his weapon and his defence against what he was as the onslaught of the mindane world of his time. This is a great effectiveness by Yeats presenting his opionion of the Ireland of his time.
In contrast to ‘September 1913’, in the first stanza Yeats takes a direct shot at the shopkeepers and the petty of them adding the ‘halfpence to the pence’
He contrasts the Ireland of his time and the Ireland of his past within the first stanza of the poem:
“What need you being come to sense,
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:
It’s with in the grave”
Presenting his opinion to the audience that romantic Ireland of his past is ‘dead and gone’ with ‘John O’Leary in the grave’. John O’Leary introduced Yeats to nationalism and Irish Literature which gave Yeats a subject matter for some of his early poetry. A hero in Yeats eyes.
In the second stanza Yeats once again contrasts his opinion of the Ireland of his time and the Ireland of his past by explaining that the likes of Lord Edward Fitzgerald (Irish aristocrat and revolutionary) and Wolfe Tone (leading figure in United Irishmen) are people of a different kind that people living in his present day Ireland, looking back in disappointment with present Ireland:
“Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They had gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.”
Yeats uses the method of repetition to emphasise that the Romantic Ireland of his past is dead and gone compared to the Ireland of his time and the end of stanza one, two and three:
“
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.”
But at the end of stanza four this changes:
“.
But let them be they’re dead and gone,
They’re with O’Leary in the grave.”
Referring to the Ireland of his time’s societies giving as ‘weighing so lightly’ towards what the Ireland of his past gave. He finishes noting that not just Romantic Ireland is with O’Leary in the grave but also are the heroes (Fitzherald, Tone, Emmet) are too. In a way he is concluding that nothing that anybody can do in the Ireland of his time will live up to them. Another effective way in presenting his opinion of the Ireland of his time.
In conclusion, within ‘The Fisherman’ Yeats personifies an ideal Irishman to a fisherman which he goes onto describe, and contrast this idea fisherman to the Ireland of his time. In ‘September 1913’ Yeats contrasts the Ireland of his past (Fitzherald, Tone, Emmet) to the scathing Ireland of his time, at a time he felt was right for him (Dublin Lockout).
Ireland was a theme right throughout Yeats poetry and the ever so ‘changing’ Ireland of his time in such other poems such as ‘Sailing To Byzantium’, ‘The Muncipal Gallery Revisited’ and more.