The Complete Poems of Francis Ledwidge (Classic Reprint): With an Introductions

Excerpt from The Complete Poems of Francis Ledwidge In this same London, two years ago, where I was wasting June, I received a letter one day from Mr. Ledwidge and a very old copy-book. The letter asked whether there was any good in the verses that filled the copy-book, the produce apparently of four or five years. It began with a play in verse that no manager would dream of, there were mistakes in gram mar, in spelling of course, and worse there were such phrases as 'thwart the rolling foam, waiting for my true love on the lea, etc., which are vulgarly considered to be the appurtenances of poetry; but out of these and many similar errors there arose continually, like a mountain sheer out of marshes, that easy ?uency of shapely lines which is now so notice able in all that he writes; that and sudden glimpses of the fields that he seems at times to bring so near to one that one exclaims, Why.