In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth Summary & Analysis
by William Butler Yeats

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W. B. Yeats wrote "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz" in 1927, soon after the deaths of Gore-Booth and Markievicz, two prominent sisters from an aristocratic family. Years earlier, Yeats had admired both sisters' dedication to Irish Nationalism, a movement that fought for Ireland's political and cultural autonomy from Britain. In this poem, Yeats laments the way the sisters' politics later diverged from his own (they fought for democracy, suffragism, and labor rights, while he gravitated more towards elitism and even authoritarianism). More than their clashing opinions, however, Yeats grieves "time" itself—and the way it makes fools out of everyone, whether their political causes are "wrong or right." The poem appeared in Yeats' 1933 collection The Winding Stair and Other Poems.

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