Even now the devastation is begun
And half the business of destruction done
Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand
I see the rural
virtues leave the land
Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail
That idly waiting flaps with every gale
Downward they move, a
melancholy band
Pass from the shore and darken all the strand
from The Deserted Village, Oliver Goldsmith
His plays, poems and novels are full of a shrewd, charming humour, and were the products
of no ordinary mind. He succeeded to the first rank as essayist, dramatist, novelist and poet. His intense longing to
return to die in his beloved Irish Midlands was never realised. He died in London in April 1774, in his forty-sixth year.
Before dying he wrote what could have been his epitaph:
“And as a hare whom horns and hounds pursue
Pants to the place from whence at
first she flew,
I still had hopes, my long vexations past,
Here to return ---- and die at home at last.
Turlough O'Carolan
Turlough
O’Carolan (1670 - 1738), was one of the last of the Irish bards and great harpers, expiring in tandem with the ancient Gaelic culture
that finally succumbed in the 18th century to the Penal Laws.
Born in Baile-nusah, or Newtown, in County Westmeath, he
was struck sightless and assumed a common occupation of the blind, harpist, being apprenticed to a teacher by the benevolence of a
patron. She provided him with servant and horse and O’Carolan travelled the land as an itinerant harper, being welcomed as a
friend in the great houses.
Somewhat haughty, though possessed of a sly wit and prodigious memory, he was above playing
for hire, repaying his hosts with songs and airs dedicated to them, the titles reading like a roll call of the noble Irish families
that still survived the Penal Laws. Goldsmith said of him:
