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| A WEE SHAMROCK
March 17, 1998The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript |
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In celebration of St. Patrick's Day, U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky recites a W.S. Landor poem about Ireland.
A RealAudio version of this segment is available.
NEWSHOUR LINKS:
March 17, 1998
An interview with Prime Minister Bertie Ahern on the latest efforts to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
Online Forum
Is peace possible in Northern Ireland?
Other poems read by Robert Pinsky.
Browse the NewsHour's coverage of the Europe.
OUTSIDE LINKS
The Irish Times.
JIM LEHRER: And on this St. Patrick's Day, a small shamrock now from the Poet Laureate of the United States, Robert Pinsky.
ROBERT PINSKY: There's an extravagance of imagination and a comedy that many people associate with Ireland, along with all of the sad and disturbing violence that has been associated with that country. The 19th century poet, Walter Savage Landor, I think, catches some of the self-irony and comedy associated with that extravagance and in his poem about Ireland manages to kid the idea of imagination in Ireland in a way that winds up as a kind of tribute. Here's Landor's little poem about Ireland:
From Last Fruit off an old tree
Ireland never was contented...
Say you so? you are demented.
Ireland was contented when
All could use the sword and pen.
And when Tara rose so high
That her turrets split the sky,And about her courts were seen
Liv'ried Angels robed in green,
Wearing, by St. Patrick's bounty,
Emeralds big as half a county.
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