LAST SONGS - INTRODUCTION - WRITING amidst rather too much noise qand squalor to do justice- at all to the delicate rustic muse of Francis Ledwidge, I do not like to delay his book any longer, nor to fail in a promise long ago made to him to write this introduction. has e gone down in that vast maelstrom into which poets , do well to adventure and from which their country might perhaps be wise to withhold . them, but that is our Countrys affair. He has left behind him verses of great beauty, simple rural lyrics that may be something of an anodyne for this stricken age. If ever ai age needed beautiful little songs our age needs them and I know few songs more peaceful and happy, or better suited to soothe the scars on the mind of those who have looked on certain places, of which the prophecy in the gospels seems no more than an ominous hint when it speaks of the abomination of desolation. He told me once that it was on one particular occasion, hen walking at even- ing through the village of Slane in summer that he heard a blackbird sing. -The notes, he said, were very beautiful, and it is this blackbird that he tells of in three wonderful lines in his early poem called Behind the closed Eye, and it is this Song perhaps more than anything else that has been the inspiration of his brief life. Dynasties shook and the earth shook and the war, not yet described by any man, revelled and and wallowed in destruction around him and Francis Ledwidge stayed true to his inspiration, as his homeward songs will show. L I had hoped he would have seen the fame he has well deserved but it is hard for a poet to live tb see fame even in times of peace. In the days it is harder . than ever. DUNSANY. October gth, I g I 7. J --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.