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I worked in Sligo in the 1980s and once treated an old lady from Lissadell House.  At the time I foolishly imagined that she might have been one of the “Two girls in silk kimonos, both/Beautiful, one a gazelle.”  Silly me.  I only had to read the poem's title to find out they were both already long dead.  More likely the woman I met was one their granddaughters.

The two sisters turned their backs on wealth and privilege.  Constance Markiewicz (nee Gore-Booth) joined Sinn Fein in 1908 and was sentenced to death (commuted to life imprisonment) for her part in the 1916 uprising.  Eva Gore-Booth the younger sister spent her life campaigning for women's rights in Manchester. Eva died in 1926, and Constance in July 1927.  This poem was written in October that year.

IN MEMORY OF EVA GORE-BOOTH AND CON MARKIEWICZ

The light of evening, Lissadell,

Great windows open to the south,

Two girls in silk kimonos, both

Beautiful, one a gazelle.

But a raving autumn shears

Blossom from the summer's wreath;
The older is condemned to death,
Pardoned, drags out lonely years
Conspiring among the ignorant.

I know not what the younger dreams -
Some vague Utopia - and she seems,
When withered old and skeleton-gaunt,
An image of such politics.

Many a time I think to seek

One or the other out and speak

Of that old Georgian mansion, mix
Pictures of the mind, recall

That table and the talk of youth,

Two girls in silk kimonos, both

Beautiful, one a gazelle.

Dear shadows, now you know it all,
All the folly of a fight

With a common wrong or right.
The innocent and the beautiful
Have no enemy but time;

Arise and bid me strike a match
And strike another till time catch;
Should the conflagration climb,
Run till all the sages know.

We the great gazebo built,

They convicted us of guilt;

Bid me strike a match and blow.

W B Yeats

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Last modified: September 20, 2006