Jim D'Arcy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do but jest.

Yeats was a romantic and he imagined a new Ireland. He was a bit disillusioned in September 1913 when he wrote, "Romantic Ireland is dead and gone", but 1916 changed all that. When he wrote, "A terrible beauty is born", the vision he had for Ireland is as valid now as it was then. He saw it as a return to an imagined Celtic twilight. When I was in school, he was referred to as an Anglo-Irish poet. He was an Irish poet. He was one of our own - Irish.

Senator Ó Clochartaigh said he would be principally remembered for his contribution to the arts. I would say he was probably the most political poet I know.He made a great contribution to political thought and life. In a Seanad debate on 17 October 1924 relating to the Boundary Commission, he stated, "I have no hope of seeing Ireland united in my time, or of seeing Ulster won in my time; but I believe it will be won in the end, and not because we fight it, but because we govern this country well". He said that "we can do that, if I may be permitted as an artist and a writer to say so, by creating a system of culture which will represent the whole of this country and which will draw the imagination of the young towards it".

My favourite Yeats poem is "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven", which reads:

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Sir Walter Raleigh, eat your heart out. Yeats spread his dreams under our feet. His words are as valid today as they were then, which is the mark of great words. Ar dheis dé go raibh a anam dílis.