Quotations

“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

“It was in this same class that I wrote my first poem, in order to win for the school a half holiday.”

His first remembered poetic purpose was pleasingly practical · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“I was one day punished in school for crying and that punishment ever afterwards haunted the master like an evil dream, for I was only crying over Goldsmith's Deserted Village.”

Reveals the intensity of his emotional response to literature even as a child · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“I had written, in secret, several verses which still survive.”

Recalls poetry beginning as a private childhood activity · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“I was seven years of age when my eldest brother died and though I had only been to school on occasional days I was able to read the tombstones in a neighbouring graveyard.”

Links precocious reading with an early encounter with death · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“One by one my other brothers and sisters left school for the world until there were only left myself and my youngest brother and mother.”

Evokes childhood giving way early to the economic demands of adult life · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“She never complained and even when my eldest brother advanced in strength she persisted on his regular attendance at school.”

Remembers his mother's endurance and commitment to education · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“For these my mother laboured night and day as none of us were strong enough to provide for our own wants.”

Records the relentless work his mother undertook for her family · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“She said it was because I was born in a blackbird's nest and had its blood in my veins.”

A memorable family image for his instinctive affinity with the natural world · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“She taught me to listen and appreciate the blackbird's song and when I grew to love it beyond all others she said it was because I was born in a blackbird's nest.”

Shows how his mother's imagination helped shape his lifelong attention to birdsong · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“The old songs which she sang to me, so full of romance, love and sacrifice.”

Acknowledges the emotional inheritance received through his mother's songs · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“These stories, told at my mother's doorstep in the owl's light, are the first things I remember.”

Connects his earliest memories with oral storytelling and home · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“I have heard my mother say many times that the Ledwidges were once a great people in the land.”

Recalls a family history preserved through his mother's storytelling · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“I am of a family who were ever soldiers and poets.”

Places his two defining identities within a family tradition · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“Some of the people who know me least imagine that I joined the Army because I knew men were struggling for higher ideals and great empires.”

Rejects an idealised explanation of his reasons for enlisting · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“I am on active service since the spring of 1915, having served in the Dardanelles and the First British Expeditionary Force to Serbia.”

A matter-of-fact summary of extraordinary wartime experience · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“I have to thank you for introducing my books into your University library and for the interest which you take in my poems.”

A characteristically gracious response to serious interest in his work · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“How is Navan? Remember me to the pump on the market square when next you go there, and the clock over Walshe’s.”

His affection for home extends to its most ordinary familiar landmarks · Letter to Paddy Healy, 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“Please dear Lizzie, send me a flower from the bog, plucked specially for me.”

A simple object from home becomes a tangible answer to homesickness · Letter to Lizzie Healy, 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“You will be surprised to hear from me again after a silence nearly three years long. The reason I write is because I have been dreaming about you and it has made me rather anxious.”

An intimate admission of how memory prompted him to renew an old connection · Letter to Lizzie Healy, 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“It is midnight now and the glow-worms are out. It is quiet in camp but the far night is loud with our guns bombarding the positions we must soon fight for.”

Places natural tranquillity beside the approaching violence of battle · Letter to Katharine Tynan, 20 July 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“You have no idea of how I suffer with this longing for the swish of the reeds at Slane and the voices I used to hear coming over the low hills of Currabwee.”

Homesickness is expressed through remembered sounds of the Boyne landscape · Letter to Katharine Tynan, 20 July 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“I want to see again my wonderful mother, and to walk by the Boyne to Crewbawn and up through the brown and grey rocks of Crocknaharna.”

Brings together longing for family and the remembered landscape of home · Letter to Katharine Tynan, 20 July 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“I would give £100 for two days in Ireland with nothing to do but ramble on from one delight to another.”

Measures the intensity of his homesickness in characteristically concrete terms · Letter to Katharine Tynan, 20 July 1917

Francis Ledwidge

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