Yeats at the races

Madam, - All the talk this week about the Galway Races led me to re-read W.B. Yeats's poem At Galway Races. Witnessing the event nearly a century ago, Yeats wrote:

We, too, had good attendance

once,

Hearers and hearteners of the

work;

Aye, horsemen for companions,

Before the merchant and

the clerk

Breathed on the world with

timid breath.

To judge from the backslapping and the large sums of money circulating in the Fianna Fáil tent at Galway this week, it seems that the breath of both the merchant and the clerk has become louder and even more powerful since Yeats penned his poem. - Yours, etc,

DAVID DOYLE, Gilford Park, Sandymount, Dublin 4.