Jeremy Irons and Sinead Cusack were with Bono at the National Library of Ireland in Dublin last night, celebrating the poetry of WB Yeats. (Listen in here)


Bono read 'The Host Of The Air', 'When You Are Old' and 'He Wishes For The Clothes For Heaven'. The event was aired on RTE's arts show The Eleventh Hour and you can listen again here (Select 'Listen To The Latest Show', it starts about three minutes in)

Yeats was born in Dublin on June 13, 1865 and last night's tribute, hosted by novelist Josephine Hart, was part of the library's Summer's Wreath programme, a month-long series of events celebrating the legacy of the poet.

'Language changes shape all the time - in the playground, on the street corner, in hip-hop, in pop songs and in rock songs,' Bono told UK Radio Four's Today programme this morning. 'But Josephine's passion is to hear it reverberate.'

Listen in on the Radio 4 interview here (Select the 8.30-9am segment and scroll through to 08.50). As for why the Irish so revere Yeats: 'He is the thing we are not - succinct!"

(Incidentally, the title for this story is also from Yeats: 'Tread softly for you tread on my dreams'.)