_October 9th,_ 1917.
Writing amidst rather too much noise and squalor to do justice at all
to the delicate rustic muse of Francis Ledwidge, I do not like to delay
his book any longer, nor to fail in a promise long ago made to him to
write this introduction. He has gone down in that vast maelstrom into
which poets do well to adventure and from which their country might
perhaps be wise to withhold them, but that is our Country's affair. He
has left behind him verses of great beauty, simple rural lyrics that
may be something of an anodyne for this stricken age. If ever an age
needed beautiful little songs our age needs them; and I know few songs
more peaceful and happy, or better suited to soothe the scars on the
mind of those who have looked on certain places, of which the prophecy
in the gospels seems no more than an ominous hint when it speaks of the
abomination of desolation.
He told me once that it was on one particular occasion, when walking
at evening through the village of Slane in summer, that he heard a
blackbird sing. The notes, he said, were very beautiful, and it is
this blackbird that he tells of in three wonderful lines in his early
poem called "Behind the Closed Eye," and it is this song perhaps more
than anything else that has been the inspiration of his brief life.
Dynasties shook and the earth shook; and the war, not yet described by
any man, revelled and wallowed in destruction around him; and Francis
Ledwidge stayed true to his inspiration, as his homeward songs will
show.
I had hoped he would have seen the fame he has well deserved; but it is
hard for a poet to live to see fame even in times of peace. In these
days it is harder than ever.