Thomas Moore statue on College Street

Sir, – Apropos Frank McNally's references to poetic opinions of the Thomas Moore statue which has been removed from College Street in Dublin owing to the Luas works (An Irishman'sDiary, May 4th), here is a verse from William Allingham:

“Tommy Moore’s statue looks awkward and ill at ease/Yet don’t disparage the sculptor’s abilities/So Erin’s Bard would have look’d, not a doubt of it/Fast fix’d in Dublin, not free to run out of it.”

By the way could John Hogan’s beautiful model for a statue of Moore, which is preserved in the National Gallery of Ireland, be cast and placed there, instead of reinstating what James Joyce called “the droll statue of the national poet”?

– Yours, etc,

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ITA BEAUSANG

Clontarf,

Dublin 3.