Eva Gore-Booth and Constance (Con) Markiewicz (nee Gore-Booth) were sisters, Eva was younger. The girls grew up in Lissadell House, where Yeats had spent much time as a young man. Raised in an aristocratic family, however, both abandoned that lifestyle for different and fervent lifestyles. Eva was a committed suffragette and fell in love and entered into a committed relationship with Esther Roper. William Yeats had already thought about proposing to Eva before she fell in love with Esther. Con was an Irish national revolutionary and the first woman to be elected to the British House of Commons; as a member of Sinn Féin he would not have given up his seat. She was sentenced to death after the 1916 Easter Rising, but the sentence was later commuted to prison because she was a woman. The sisters both died within a year of each other; Eva in 1926 and Constance in 1927. The first four lines make up the poem, as they create an allusion to Eva and Con because Yeats doesn't actually mention them by name but we know he is talking about them. This is because the two girls grew up in Lissadell and he thought they were both very beautiful. He compares Eve to a gazelle because she was tall and he thought she was graceful and elegant, like a gazelle. We can assume that when Yeats says “The evening light, Lissadell” he is referring to that time in their lives that was over for the girls and that the end of the day was coming. We know that the two girls were raised in an aristocratic family but gave up everything to live different and fervent lifestyles, this could be the 'evening light' or the end of their life as aristocrats. This poem is an elongated sonnet in which still looks and sounds like a sonnet but...... middle of paper ......same for the fall of the sisters because he did not see them nor did she try to stop them. The repetition of the word 'strike' and 'match' (as in a match) in the last stanza give this sense of regret. As if he is saying to keep the match lit until it lights, he could be referring to the fact that he left them to go and face their own consequences, what they did was their choice and he wasn't obligated to get involved. However the final line repeats "order me to light a match" but adds a strike at the end. He tried to leave it up to the reader to ask whether he regrets not helping them or “turning the game off.” Although a match is temporary, because sooner or later it burns or goes out, in the meantime it can lead to bigger things as when you say "should the fire rise", you are talking about a destructive fire ready to ruin the sisters.