 | The Complete Poems of Francis Ledwidge
The poetry of Francis Ledwidge evokes an Ireland of traditional nostalgia. But Seamus Heaney has said of Ledwidge that his fate was more complex and more modern; his moral courage alone gave him "membership in the company of the walking wounded, wherever they are to be found at any given time".
Born the son of a migrant farm labourer in 1887, Ledwidge claimed the noble heritage of the dispossessed Irish peasantry: "I am of a family who were ever soldiers and poets," he wrote. "I have heard my mother say many times that the Ledwidges were once great people in the land and she has shown with a sweep of her hand green hills and wide valleys…"
While he wrote ardently of nature and the pastoral grandeur of his native County Meath, his short life - as a local political representative, an activist of the Irish Volunteers - was a testimony to passionate conviction on human rights.
And though he is best known for his moving tribute to Thomas McDonagh, Ledwidge himself was fighting in France during the 1916 Rising. "I joined the British army," he said, "because she stood between Ireland and an enemy to our civilization, and I would not have her say that she defended us while we did nothing at home but pass resolutions."
He was killed in action in 1917, an Irish poet who richly deserves a place in the ranks of his British counterparts Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon.
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