Sailing to F***ing Byzantium

As part of the BBC's exhaustive commemoration of the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, Monday-hating Bob Geldof will be presenting a 90-minute film on BBC Four called Geldof On Yeats.

In the BBC's blurb, the Boomtown Rats singer (still?) "reflects on the events of 1916 in Ireland and the f***ing impact they had on the f***ing works of WB Yeats". 

This morning's Today plugged the programme (as Today is wont to do). 

During his discussion with Bob Geldof, Nick Robinson said that a Yeats poem had been read at his own wedding, which was nice....

....especially as the poem in question was He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven:

HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. 

We've not had much poetry here recently, and that's a beautiful poem. 

If only someone would set it to music...