What we share need never diminish us and can help us now to reshape our present relationship.
WITH such words the President, Mrs Robinson, last night honoured the past while celebrating the "new realities" of a deepening Anglo Irish relationship for which the language still "hangs well behind".
Mrs Robinson told a glittering array of the great and the good at London's Guildhall that she had no wish "to refer directly to the political processes" currently in train. But in almost every sentence the President delivered her own consistent, uncompromising message of change and confidence, of inclusively, of friendship and new beginnings.
In a style uniquely her own, the President reached out the familiar hand towards "Ulster" while reminding her audience that this year and next Ireland commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Great Famine.
Some of the finest lines ever written in honour of London were composed by the 16th century British poet, Edmund Spenser, she said. Living in Ireland, he had produced evocative descriptions of Irish weather, of its "secret shadows" and "watery clouds". And in his "view of the present state of Ireland" he told us that "Ulster" was "a most beautiful and sweet country as any is under heaven".
Mrs Robinson was conscious that she represented the vitality of modern Ireland, "its young population, its outward looking arts and vibrant industrial sector". But the past helped shape that modern consciousness.
Of the Famine, Mrs Robinson said. "We will look back with a very real awareness of who we are as a people now, and how deep our sources of identity remain in the vulnerable and desperate people we were then. I think it is quite right that we should honour our past. I also know that we can do so without bitterness, because it is helping to shape our modern consciousness in two important senses.
"Children of the Irish heritage are learning to negotiate the past images of the Famine the eviction, the workhouse, the coffin ship into the facts of present day hunger in developing countries. And so they are encouraged to identify in a personal way with issues of sustainable development in our modern world."
So, too, the sad pattern of emigration had given rise to an Irish diaspora, numbering 70 million worldwide, "who cherish their roots and are increasingly interested in deepening the bond with Ireland".
Mrs Robinson said that the present was, in Irish terms, an exciting and expanding prospect. "We are a country with a strikingly young population who are constantly in the process of revising and strengthening our identity. That identity, I like to think, is somewhat like the strength of Irish music at this moment always able to draw on the past and always open to the energies and influences of the present."
She went on. "If you come to Dublin ... you will hear music on every side the traditional music and songs of the past, the chamber music of Britain and Europe, and the rock music and country music of the United States of America. And all of them effortlessly absorbed into a confident national music which is never narrow."
And so the presidential music played on. For the wordsmith, it was a dream a resolutely non political speech laced, at every turn, with the symbols and language of political change and challenge.
Not everything, of course, was changed. The territorial dispute over Northern Ireland attended the preparatory discussions which determined that, on this occasion, she would be introduced simply as "Her Excellency, President Mary Robinson".
But, even on this night of celebration and goodwill, there was opportunity for a gentle reminder, lest anyone had forgotten. Referring to her home in Dublin, Mrs Robinson told her audience that Aras an Uachtarain was "the official residence of the President of Ireland".
Some of the politicos must have noticed. But nobody was minded to take offence.