WHEN the famous scientist and atheist Richard Dawkins turns to poetry, he's sometimes away with the fairies.

In particular, he admits to enjoying the 'Celtic Twilight' period of the Irish poet, WB Yeats, which was heavily rooted in bizarre mythologies and yarns about 'the little people'.

In a packed Community Hall, during his appearance for the Ledbury Poetry Festival, professor Dawkins acknowledged that his taste for early Yeats might be unexpected; and referring to mythology he said he "hated all that stuff".

But he defended his taste by saying it was only well-written fiction. Yeats did not think so; he truly believed in those fairies; and Yeats once famously referred to a certain Farmer Hogan who was taken out and "thumped" by the little people, for some misdemeanor.

One can only imagine how a conversation between Yeats and Dawkins would be something worth hearing.

Professor Dawkins has gone on record to say he finds the idea of God 'improbable', which does not mean impossible. But he lives his life as if God isn't around.

His poetry choices, however, seemed to reveal a yearning for something lost, even mystical. He likes Housman, and his friend, the actress Lalla Ward, read "The Land of Lost Content" from the stage, which is effectively a lament for "the blue remembered hills".

At times, Professor Dawkins referred to a romantic phase in his youth, and there may be a few clues there. However, he certainly also made the case for the breathtaking nature of the universe, as scientists perceive it. At his behest, Lalla read the famous "Pale Blue Dot" prose passage from Carl Sagan, which was inspired by an image of the earth from space.

Sagan wrote: "Look again at that dot...On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.... every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there, on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

Sagan went on to say that the idea of the pale blue dot challenged our idea of our privileged position in the universe; but doesn't it also make human existence and achievements even more remarkable - even more inexplicable?

Lalla read a good many of Professor Dawkins' chosen poems, partly because he was recovering from laryngitis, and partly, I suspect, because is voice is not so ideal for reciting verse. It is a somewhat high, reflective voice, more suitable perhaps for the lecture hall.

However, from a slightly hesitant beginning, Professor Dawkins was well into his swing towards the end: explaining how bird song is like a drug that manipulates other birds when they hear it; and perhaps it even manipulated the poet John Keats, when he was inspired to pen his famous lines about the nightingale?

Perhaps human brains and bird brains do share this capacity to be manipulated by bird song; but in making his case, wasn't Professor Dawkins side-stepping the difficult question of beauty - in particular the sheer beauty of bird song and the impact of great poetry which can, in itself, feel like a near religious experience?