Next month marks the centenary of the death of the poet Francis Ledwidge, killed in Flanders on 31 July 1917, just weeks before his 30th birthday.
Ledwidge left a rich legacy of nature and war poetry, and a sense of the loss of so much more that he might have achieved, had he not died in the horror of World War I.
The Lyric Feature on Friday 23 June at 7pm tells the story of the life and poetry of Francis Ledwidge in the programme When the War is Over.
Listen to The Lyric Feature: When the War is Over above.
Ledwidge is probably best known for his poem Lament for Thomas MacDonagh, written as a response to the execution of his friend and fellow nationalist for his part in the Easter Rising.
Lament for Thomas MacDonagh
He shall not hear the bittern cry
in the wild sky, where he is lain,
Nor voices of the sweeter birds
Above the wailing of the rain.
Nor shall he know when the loud March blows
Thro' slanting snows her fanfare shrill,
Blowing to flame the golden cup
Of many an upset daffodil.
But when the dark cow leaves the moor
And pastures poor with greedy weeds
Perhaps he'll hear her low at morn
Lifting her horn in pleasant meads.
Ledwidge was born in Slane, County Meath, in a cottage which today houses the Francis Ledwidge Museum. He received little formal education and, when he left school, worked as a miner and as a labourer on farms and on the roads. He started writing poetry at an early age and had work published in local newspapers.
Lord Dunsany became his mentor and helped get his first book of poems, Songs of the Fields, published in 1915. By the time the book came out, Francis Ledwidge was a soldier in the British Army and on the front lines.
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He survived Gallipoli and Serbia, and met his death in Flanders on 31 July 1917, blown to bits by a stray shell. He had written his poem Home, in which he longs for the fields of Meath, only weeks earlier.
The contributors to the programme include Rosemary Yore, Chair of the Francis Ledwidge Museum Committee; Liam O’Meara, co-founder of the Inchicore Ledwidge Society, author of Francis Ledwidge: Poet Activist Soldier and editor of The Best of Francis Ledwidge and Francis Ledwidge: The Complete Poems; Piet Chielens, Director of the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, Belgium; Gerald Dawe, poet and editor of Earth Voices Whispering: An Anthology of Irish War Poetry; Peter Fallon, poet and director of Gallery Press; Miriam O’Gara, author of Eire’s WW1 Poet: F. E. Ledwidge; and poet and soldier Michael J Whelan.
For details of some of the numerous events planned over the coming weeks and months to mark the centenary of Ledwidge’s death, go to francisledwidge.com and richmondbarracks.ie.
The Lyric Feature: When the War is Over, RTÉ lyric fm, Friday 23 June, 7pm