Sir, – As an example of further capitulation by the city authorities to the lawlessness of Dublin’s streets, the public fountain by Edward Delaney commemorating the life of Thomas Davis has not functioned for years.
Facing the Davis effigy across College Green are the figures of two former fellow Trinity students, Burke and Goldsmith, whose environments have suffered a drastic change of fortune. For decades these wonderful life-size sculptures stood on their plinths within small emerald patches that added to the appeal of Trinity’s facade as thousands of visitors passed through the gates to view the Book of Kells and the other attractions of the college.
But now the figures stand forlorn in unsightly patches of uncut grass and ugly weeds. This is no oasis of wild flowers to alleviate global warming, but a sad and depressing sight in Dublin’s most important public plaza.
The scene recalls many sentiments from Goldsmith’s greatest work:
Matt Williams: Take a deep breath and see how Sam Prendergast copes with big Fiji test
New Irish citizens: ‘I hear the racist and xenophobic slurs on the streets. Everything is blamed on immigrants’
Jack Reynor: ‘We were in two minds between eloping or going the whole hog but we got married in Wicklow with about 220 people’
‘I could have gone to California. At this rate, I probably would have raised about half a billion dollars’
“Sunk are thy bowers, in shapeless ruin all,
And the long grass o’ertops the mouldering wall.” – Yours, etc,
DERMOTT BARRETT,
Ballsbridge,
Dublin 4.