I'm glad Robert mentioned this thread elsewhere and brought me here---through this discussion, the poem opens out for me into others--the bare ruined choirs of sonnet 73, and Yeats' soul singing louder for every tatter in its mortal dress!

It's nourishing, I think whether or not one is a poet, to feel that poets are all part of a shared larger enterprise--it reminds us that as humans we are also part of a larger shared enterprise.