i don't think this was a particularly illuminating or insightful episode of radio 4's the poetry of history, but i listened to it because it was yeats's "easter 1916." i have never been particularly fond of the poem - but i wanted to hear it tonight because i realise vaguely that easter is coming up, and correspondingly, each year since, at this time, a memory comes floating up - of a man who was invited to address a club - i don't remember what club it was - at a dinner, and had chosen to read this poem - and i always wanted to know what he had said that night, and what his reading was like. (the reading on this program was good though - by jim norton, who also recorded joyce's ulysses for naxos.)

next week, shelley's "the mask of anarchy".