Then in the lull of midnight, gentle arms Lifted him slowly down the slopes of death Lest he should hear again the mad alarms Of battle, dying moans, and painful breath.
And where the earth was soft for flowers we made A grave for him that he might better rest. So, Spring shall come and leave it sweet arrayed, And there the lark shall turn her dewy nest
The poet Francis Ledwidge (1887-1917), born in Slane, the son of a poor labourer, left school at the age of 14 and worked in various manual labour jobs while honing his poetic talents.
A nationalist, initially he opposed Redmond’s call to join up but did so in October 1914 on the basis that it was unreasonable to expect others to fight for the freedoms he would enjoy.
He survived harsh service in Gallipoli and Serbia, but was killed at 29 while serving in Flanders, at Boezinge, during the Third Battle of Ypres. He was buried in Passchendaele.
Writing of him Séamus Heaney, in his In Memoriam Francis Ledwidge (1980), would express the pained, puzzled and contradictory feelings of much of nationalism to those who served and to the cause they served:
In you, our dead enigma, all the strains Criss-cross in useless equilibrium And as the wind tunes through this vigilant bronze I hear again the sure confusing drum
You followed from Boyne water to the Balkans But miss the twilit note your flute should sound. You were not keyed or pitched like these true-blue ones Though all of you consort now underground.”