Barack Obama and Joe Biden got emotional as they both quoted Irish poets in their speeches last night in Washington DC.
President Obama surprised his Vice President at a ceremony last night by awarding him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in an emotional speech about his friend, he quoted W.B. Yeats.
However, before quoting the Irish poet, he joked that he wasn’t allowed to use any quotes from Seamus Heaney, as Joe often quotes the late Northern Irish playwright in his speeches.
“As Yeats put it – because I had to quote an Irish poet, and Seamus Heaney was taken – ‘Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends’,” Obama told the crowd.
The quote was from the Yeats poem entitled The Municipal Gallery Revisited.
And, as predicted by Obama, Joe said in his speech, “And Seamus Heaney in one of his poems said – when you can find someone who says it better, use it – he said, you carried your own burden and very soon, your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared.
“You carried your own burdens, and very soon, the creepy symptoms of privilege disappeared.”
