Today Idania has her Ceserean and Fergus and she have a little girl, Niamh. Niamh was the lover of Oisin, the Gaelic poet/warrior whose wanderings form the title of Yeats’s first book of poetry. Niamh ( pronounced Neve) means radiant, golden haired although with a beautiful Mexican mother, this Niamh may be radiant but she is unlikely to be golden haired. I am pleased as punch to be a grandfather. And I spend a few sentimental moments remembering Fergus’s birth and the happiness it gave me.
To mu students I send, from Act 4 of The Tempest, Prospero’s speech that brings the masque to an end:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
