Lines 53-69 Summary

Lines 53-56

The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

• Okay, Yeats. We get the point that nature is nice and you're very good at describing it. It's great that the moor-hens love to dive into the water and call out to their boyfriends, the moor-cocks. Yes, they live minute-by-minute. They don't really think about the past and the future because they're animals. They live totally in the here and now and they just take change as it comes. 
• But not the people who died in the Easter Uprising. No, these folks are like a stone that continues to exist "in the midst of all" the change that's going on. 
• Here, Yeats almost sounds as if he feels some sort of survivor guilt over what has happened to his friends. It's like he's questioning his own bravery because he totally backed away from all the fighting and wanted no part in it. 
• He probably wonders here whether there's anything inside of him that's as constant and pure as the devotion that his friends had to their political cause. Maybe Yeats is starting to wonder what his life is for if there's nothing he's willing to die for.

Lines 57-64

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.

• Now Yeats is talking about how "too long a sacrifice" can make a stone of the heart. But what exactly does he mean by that?
• So far, he's been talking about the unchanging, stone-like quality of the people who fought in the Easter Uprising. But now he seems to be wondering when all of this sacrifice will be enough. How many people have to die before things can get back to normal? In other words, "when may it suffice?"
• Well according to Yeats, "That is Heaven's part," which probably means that it's not up to us to know when there'll be enough bloodshed to stop the fighting and killing. Instead, our role is to "murmur name upon name," which are probably the names of the dead. In other words, we might not be able to put an end to the bloody cycle of history. All we really have the power to do is mourn the people who've died.
• Yeats uses simile to compare our mourning to mothers who have to mourn for children who "sleep at last" (i.e. die) after a life of running wild. It can be easy to get lost in some of these lines, because here more than anywhere else in the poem, Yeats is actually starting to layer his images, symbols, and similes one on top of another. So let's just recap here.
• Yeats has been talking about people's hearts (i.e. people themselves) being like unchanging stones because they have a goal (Irish freedom) that is unchanging. But now, Yeats is changing the meaning of "stone" and saying that people's hearts (i.e. people themselves) can become stone-like—as in cold and unemotional—if they have to live through too much tragedy or sacrifice. 
• On top of that, Yeats says that the rest of us (i.e. people who live on) have to spend our lives mourning the people who have died before their time, just like mothers who have to mourn their children. 
• Phew. Did everyone get all of that?

Lines 65-69

What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.

• So now Yeats wants to talk about nightfall. But wait a second; no he doesn't. He doesn't want to talk about night, but death. It was a metaphor, you see. Sneaky, that Yeats.
• At this point, it honestly sounds like Yeats is getting sick of all the imagery and metaphors he's been layering over the past stanza. So here, he just takes the literal route and says, "Okay, I'm not actually talking about night here. It's a metaphor for death. I'm talking about death. Got it?"
• Next, he goes back to wondering whether the death that happened in the Easter Uprising as "needless death after all."
• Remember that England was still promising to give Ireland its independence once World War I was over. All the Irish had to do was wait another two years and they might have gotten their independence either way—at least, that's how Yeats sees it. 
• Yeats backs this up by saying that "England may keep faith / For all that is done and said." In other words, he's saying that even though all this violent stuff has gone down, England might still keep its promise and give Ireland its freedom. In this case, the Uprising doesn't look all that glorious.