Lyrical Life

Legendary Irish poems examined

I know a town tormented by the sea,

And there time goes slow

That the people see it flow

And watch it drowsily,

And growing older hour by hour they say,

‘Please God, to-morrow!

Then we will work and play,’

And their tall houses crumble away.

This town is eaten through with memory

Of pride and thick red Spanish wine and gold

And a great come and go;

But the sea is cold,

And the spare, black trees

Crouch in the withering breeze

That blows from the sea,

And the land stands bare and alone,

For its warmth is turned away

And its strength held in hard cold grey-blue stone;

And the people are heard to say,

Through the raving of the jealous sea, ‘Please God, to-morrow!

Then we will work and play.’

This issue's featured poem is Galway by Mary Devenport O’Neill. Born in Galway, Devenport cut her teeth in the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, all while living in the Dominican Convent, on Eccles Street, in Dublin. Devenport would go on to graduate from third-level education, as part of the first wave of Irish women to do so. Acknowledged as one of the literati of the Irish Free State, Devenport was a close friend and collaborator of W.B. Yeats. Galway is a strained ode to the writer’s place of birth.