Award winning poet Seamus Heaney wrote Beacons at Bealtaine especially to mark the historic Day of Welcomes in Dublin.
He said May Day, known in Irish as Bealtaine, was traditionally a feast of fire.
Early Irish legend denotes that the country's first magical inhabitants arrived on May Day, and that on the same day the Druids drove flocks out to pasture between two bonfires.
He took his inspiration for the poem from the name of Phoenix Park, where all 25 heads of state gathered for a flag raising ceremony.
"It is auspicious that we are celebrating in a park named after the mythic bird that represents the possibility of ongoing renewal," he said.
"But there are those who say that the name Phoenix Park is derived from the Irish word, Fionn Uisce, meaning clear water and that's a coincidence of language gave me the idea for this poem.
"It's a poem to salute and celebrate a historic term in the age." Heaney, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for Literature in 1995, was born in Co. Derry.
Heaney read the poem during the ceremony at Áras an Uachtaráin.