Few realise that English poetry is rather like the British constitution, surrounded by pompous precedents and reverences.

Reform and exchange in English poetry are as slow as in the British constitution itself.

Few in the Nineties would have ventured to prophesy that the remote dim singer of the Celtic Twilight would, in a new age, become the leading poet of the English-speaking world. None have disputed the claim of William Butler Yeats to that title.

You are always surrounded by wonder, whether you realise this or not.

Irish poetry has lost the ready ear and the comforts of recognition. But we must go on. We must be true to our own minds.

Yeats regarded his work as the close of an epoch, and the least of his later lyrics brings the sense of a great occasion. English critics have tried to claim him for their tradition, but, heard closely, his later music has that tremulous lyrical undertone which can be found in the Anglo-Irish eloquence of the eighteenth century.