Yeats & Paul Violi – The Finest of American Poetry

<< Last night, as I listened to Paul Violi's friends and colleagues, students and admirers read his poetry, I thought of the last two lines of Yeats' The Municipal Gallery Revisited and recited them in my capacity as moderator of the memorial. Here are the culminating lines of Yeats' multi-part poem. DL

You who want to judge me, do not judge alone
This or that book, come to this holy place
Where my friends’ portraits hang and look at them;
trace Ireland’s history in their faces;
Consider where man’s glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was that I had friends like this.

William Butler Yeats >>

From the archive; First published on 12/2/2011