Decadents, Symbolists, Anti-Decadents

A facsimile reprint in the Decadents.... series, edited by R.K.R.Thornton
and Ian Small

ISBN 1 85477 163 9

200 x 127 mm 152 pages

LIONEL JOHNSON

Ireland,
with other poems
1897

The themes of the 1895 Poems are further developed in this companion volume, most notably in the title poem. Johnson’s manner is often grand, ceremonial, rhetorical: at first, he does not strike the reader as an intimate writer. But alcohol overcame him, and he was unable to accept his sexual nature; and his private struggles are perhaps the source of the tension and anguish in the writing here.

£28.50 $48

There the white soul of Davis, there the worn,
Waste soul of Mangan, there the surging soul
Of Grattan, hunger for thy promised morn:
There the great legion of thy martyr roll,
Filled with the fames of seven hundred years
Hunger to hear the voice,
Sweeter than marriage music in their ears,
That shall bid thee and all thy sons rejoice.

(from ‘Ireland’, page 3)



Home | Index of Titles

Revolution and Romanticism | Hibernia |
Poetry of the 1890s