DEAR FRIENDS, YOU HAVE SEEN AND HEARD IT ALL BEFORE! IRISH POETS LEARN YOUR TRADE, DOWN BY RIVERSIDE AND SEA,WHERE THERE IS FRESH AND HEAVENLY WATER!

Dear friends, I am not feeling very well this morning; not drink, I am a teetotaller, but I have been listening on RTE (on different radio and TV channels) to THE GREAT IRISH EDUCATION DEBATE! One date keeps ringing in my ears, 13th September 2020, so here by way of a reminder is William Butler Yeats' "September 1913", written exactly 100 years ago. Irish poets learn your trade, sing whatever is well made! I will have much more to say later, but due to Corona Virus restrictions I must go out and grab a bite of lunch now, before that "vicious voracious virus" grabs and eats it all! Cheers, I'm out the door, must be off now! Whatever else, lunch can't wait! But I just heard Mary O'Rourke, on the Radio Now, Brian and Conor's Aunt and a Great Irish MINISTER FOR EDUCATION. Thanks so much Mary, you really cheered me up, bye, for now, Maurice James (Caesar, or MJ to my friends).

September 1913

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

What need you, being come to sense,

But fumble in a greasy till

And add the halfpence to the pence

And prayer to shivering prayer, until

You have dried the marrow from the bone;

For men were born to pray and save:

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind,

The names that stilled your childish play,

They have gone about the world like wind,

But little time had they to pray

For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,

And what, God help us, could they save?

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread

The grey wing upon every tide;

For this that all that blood was shed,

For this Edward Fitzgerald died,

And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,

All that delirium of the brave?

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,

And call those exiles as they were

In all their loneliness and pain,

You’d cry, ‘Some woman’s yellow hair

Has maddened every mother’s son’:

They weighed so lightly what they gave.

But let them be, they’re dead and gone,

They’re with O’Leary in the grave.

THANK GOD, MUCH BETTER WAS TO COME!

Maurice James, Barrister at Law, United Nations (1973) Counter-Terrorism Counsel