Irish Poetry

1. Irish Poetry Ashley Eschert, Nina Mallery, & Emily Brinn

2. 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

3. Influences • Nature • Religion - Catholicism • England and Protestantism • Clan and Country

4. 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

5. A Satirical Elegy 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. On the Death of a Late FAMOUS GENERAL


 His 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 old
 As 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,


7. 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)

8. Yeats’ style • Myth and folklore • Later poetry • Metaphysics and abstract thoughts • Rhythmic • Spiritualism • Modernist

9. Turning and turning in the widening gyre The 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 everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles 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 it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I knowThat twenty centuries of stony sleep Were 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 Coming

10. Turning and turning in the widening gyre The 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 everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles 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 it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I knowThat twenty centuries of stony sleep Were 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 Coming

11. 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

12. Glanmore Sonnets For Ann Saddlemyer, our heartiest welcomer I 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.

13. Glanmore Sonnets For Ann Saddlemyer, our heartiest welcomer I 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 Inspiring poetry Shift Resurrection

14. A Description of the MorningJonathan Swift Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach Appearing, 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 door Had 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 trace The 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.

15. A Description of the Morning Lower class- hardworking Higher class- lazy Verb tense changes from past to present Juxtaposes favorable vs. unfavorable characters No common structure, made up of couplets Faintly satirical Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach a Appearing, show'd the ruddy morn's approach. a Now Betty from her master's bed had flown, b And softly stole to discompose her own. b The slip-shod 'prentice from his master's door c Had par'd the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor. c Now Moll had whirl'd her mop with dext'rous airs, d Prepar'd to scrub the entry and the stairs. d The youth with broomy stumps began to trace e The kennel-edge, where wheels had worn the place. e The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep; f Till drown'd in shriller notes of "chimney-sweep." f Duns at his lordship's gate began to meet; g And brickdust Moll had scream'd through half a street. g The turnkey now his flock returning sees, h Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees. h The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands; i And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands. i