Joe Biden misquotes W.B.Yeats poem in latest gaffe

Gets title and last line of famous poem wrong

Larger Text

Print

E-mail

49 Comments

Vice President Joe Biden

Photo by AP

Tweet

Vice President Joe Biden misquoted Irish poet William Butler Yeats during a phone call to a supporter in Iowa. He got both the name of the poem and the last line wrong.

“There’s an awful lot in transition,” he told a man who asked why the White House seemed out of touch.

“There’s a great line from the Irish poet Yeats writing about his Ireland back in 1916, its called Easter Sunday 1916.” (It is actually called Easter 1916)

“And there’s a line in that poem that better describes, in my view, where we are today in the world than the state of his Ireland in 1916. It was after the first rising, the first attempt to rise up against the British in the 20th century and he said: ‘All’s changed, changed utterly. Terrible beauty has been born.’”

(The last line is actually “A terrible beauty is born.”)

Biden has become known for his verbal slip-ups and this appears to his latest.

Read more: Paul Ryan articulates, while Joe Biden gaffes
 

Print

E-mail

Tweet