“When the master was at his lunch I crept quietly into the school and…” — Francis Ledwidge

“When the master was at his lunch I crept quietly into the school and wrote on a slate a verse to remind him, leaving it on his desk where he must see it.”

A childhood example of poetry being used as gentle persuasion · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

About Francis Ledwidge

19 August 1887–31 July 1917

In the annals of Irish literature, few figures embody the tragic intersection of artistic promise and historical circumstance as poignantly as Francis Edward Ledwidge. Born into rural poverty in County Meath in 1887 and killed on a Belgian battlefield in 1917, Ledwidge's thirty years encompassed a meteoric rise from…

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