Irish Poetry

Ashley Eschert, Nina Mallery, & Emily Brinn

Irish Poetry Languages

English Irish Gaelic

Chronicles or satires Early forms

Short to be remembered easily Elements of the supernatural/folklore

Commonly Used Lit Terms Assonance Half rhyme Alliteration

Influences

• Nature• Religion - Catholicism

– England and Protestantism • Clan and Country

Jonathan Swift• 1667 - 1745• Dublin, Ireland• Satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer for Whigs and then

later Tories• Other Works

– Gulliver’s Travels– A Satirical Elegy– The Place of the Damned

• Literature in the Family– John Dryden– Francis Godwin– William Shakespeare

A Satirical ElegyOn the Death of a Late FAMOUS GENERALHis Grace! impossible! what dead!Of old age, too, and in his bed!And could that Mighty

Warrior fall?And so inglorious, after all!Well, since he's gone, no matter how,The last loud trump

must wake him now:And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger,He'd wish to sleep a little longer.And could he be indeed so oldAs by the news-papers we're told?Threescore, I think, is pretty high;'Twas time in conscience he should die.This world he cumber'd long enough;He burnt his candle to the snuff;And that's the reason, some folks think,He left behind so great a stink.Behold his funeral appears,Nor widow's sighs, nor orphan's tears,Wont at such times each heart to pierce,Attend the progress of his hearse.But what of that, his friends may say,

He had those honours in his day.True to his profit and his pride,He made them weep before he dy'd.Come hither, all ye empty things,Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings;Who float upon the tide of state,Come hither, and behold your fate.Let pride be taught by this rebuke,How very mean a thing's a Duke;From all his ill-got honours flung,Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.

W.B. Yeats(13 June 1865 - 28 January 1939)

• Born in Dublin• Legends and occult -> physical and realistic• Nobel Prize in Lit. (first Irishman honored)• Maud Gonne

– Marriage to Georgia• Abbey Theatre• Senator (2 terms)

Yeats’ style

• Myth and folklore– Later poetry– Metaphysics and abstract thoughts

• Rhythmic• Spiritualism• Modernist

The Second ComingTurning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;Surely the Second Coming is at hand.The Second Coming! Hardly are those words outWhen a vast image out of Spiritus MundiTroubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,Is moving its slow thighs, while all about itReel shadows of the indignant desert birds.The darkness drops again; but now I knowThat twenty centuries of stony sleepWere vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Second ComingTurning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;Surely the Second Coming is at hand.The Second Coming! Hardly are those words outWhen a vast image out of Spiritus MundiTroubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

(A shape with lion body and the head of a man,A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,Is moving its slow thighs,) while all about itReel shadows of the indignant desert birds.The darkness drops again; but now I knowThat twenty centuries of stony sleepWere vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Seamus HeaneyApril 13, 1939

• Born in Northern Ireland

• Won a scholarship to St. Columb’s College

• First poems in the 1960s

• Wrote about local surroundings

• Dark mood for his 1970s poems

• Nobel Peace Prize in Literature in 1995

Glanmore SonnetsFor Ann Saddlemyer, our heartiest welcomerI Vowels ploughed into other: opened ground. The mildest February for twenty years Is mist bands over furrows, a deep no sound Vulnerable to distant gargling tractors. Our road is steaming, the turned-up acres breathe. Now the good life could be to cross a field And art a paradigm of earth new from the lathe Of ploughs. My lea is deeply tilled. Old ploughsocks gorge the subsoil of each sense And I am quickened with a redolence Of farmland as a dark unblown rose. Wait then...Breasting the mist, in sowers’ aprons, My ghosts come striding into their spring stations. The dream grain whirls like freakish Easter snows.

Glanmore SonnetsFor Ann Saddlemyer, our heartiest welcomerI Vowels ploughed into other: opened ground. The mildest February for twenty years Is mist bands over furrows, a deep no sound Vulnerable to distant gargling tractors. Our road is steaming, the turned-up acres breathe. Now the good life could be to cross a field And art a paradigm of earth new from the lathe Of ploughs. My lea is deeply tilled. Old ploughsocks gorge the subsoil of each sense And I am quickened with a redolence Of farmland as a dark unblown rose. Wait then...Breasting the mist, in sowers’ aprons, My ghosts come striding into their spring stations. The dream grain whirls like freakish Easter snows.

New beginning/growth

Influence of nature

Grassland/meadow

Shift

Inspiring poetry

Resurrection

A Description of the MorningJonathan Swift

Now hardly here and there a hackney-coachAppearing, show'd the ruddy morn's approach.Now Betty from her master's bed had flown,And softly stole to discompose her own.The slip-shod 'prentice from his master's doorHad par'd the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor.Now Moll had whirl'd her mop with dext'rous airs,Prepar'd to scrub the entry and the stairs.The youth with broomy stumps began to traceThe kennel-edge, where wheels had worn the place.The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep;Till drown'd in shriller notes of "chimney-sweep.”Duns at his lordship's gate began to meet;And brickdust Moll had scream'd through half a street.The turnkey now his flock returning sees,Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees.The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands;And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.

A Description of the MorningNow hardly here and there a hackney-coach aAppearing, show'd the ruddy morn's approach. aNow Betty from her master's bed had flown, bAnd softly stole to discompose her own. bThe slip-shod 'prentice from his master's door cHad par'd the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor. cNow Moll had whirl'd her mop with dext'rous airs, dPrepar'd to scrub the entry and the stairs. dThe youth with broomy stumps began to trace eThe kennel-edge, where wheels had worn the place. eThe small-coal man was heard with cadence deep; fTill drown'd in shriller notes of "chimney-sweep." fDuns at his lordship's gate began to meet; gAnd brickdust Moll had scream'd through half a street. gThe turnkey now his flock returning sees, hDuly let out a-nights to steal for fees. hThe watchful bailiffs take their silent stands; iAnd schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands. i

Lower class- hardworkingHigher class- lazy

Verb tense changes from past to present

Juxtaposes favorable vs. unfavorable characters

No common structure, made up of couplets

Faintly satirical