This is one of Kavanaghs many poems about unrequited love, the object of the poets interests here seem to be the young and beautiful Hilda Moriarty(later O'Malley) from Dingle.One Christmas the story goes, Kavanagh managed to persuade the editor of the Irish Independent to send him to Dingle to write about the festive season from a rural perspective. Of course his real intent was to pursue Hilda during her vacation home,her father the local GP however did not consider an impoverished poet a suitable suitor for his very eligible daughter! One of Kavanaghs most popular works, Raglan Road also concerns this doomed affair..."Oh I loved too much, and by such and such - Is happiness thrown away..."
The bluebells are withered now ...
And I am there - the ghost of myself - alone
Trying to remember a truth I once had known
Poking among the weeds on bare knees
Praying, praying poetic incantation
To call back life to that once-green plantation.
A score of grey ungrowthy stumps stand up
Like an old graveyard in my mind: Dingle, Cooleen
A shadowed corner of Saint Stephen's Green
A noisy corner of the Country Shop
All chilly thoughts that bring no exaltation
No green leaf love to the beautiful plantation.
I dreamt it in my heart, it was not real
I should have known that love is but a season
Like spring. The flowers fade. Reason
Knows it cannot find its old ideal
And yet her breath still blows some undulation
Of leaf and flower to charm my dream plantation.
-Patrick Kavanagh
1 comment:
A brave poem by one who obviously believed that love was not folly, though not easily won.
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