IRELAND: Cast a Cold Eye

Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!

That is the epitaph that Poet William Butler Yeats wrote for himself, and, according to his careful directions ("No marble, no conventional phrase"), it is engraved on his simple tomb in the churchyard of Drumcliff, in the poet's native Sligo. But ever since his death in 1939, his admirers have refused to cast a cold eye on his memory. Last month an American economist, John J. Kelly, remarked at a Dublin dinner party that he would subscribe $1,400 towards a Yeats memorial if Ireland would put up an equal...

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