![]() ![]() “In reading over your brother’s poem while I crossed the Atlantic, I became more and more impressed with its great beauty and dramatic effect-so much so that I determined to test its effect in public, and have done so here, on my first appearance, with the greatest success.” In a letter to Le Fanu’s brother William, Lover wrote: In fact, it was commonly attributed to Samuel Lover (1797-1868) who popularised the ballad in America in 1846. One of Le Fanu’s earliest successes as a poet was “The Ballad of Shamus O’Brien”, though curiously his authorship was, even at the height of the poem’s popularity, not known. “Your frown or your smile make me Savage or Gay / In action, as well as in song / And if ’tis decreed I at length become Gray, / Express but the word, and I’m Young.” But as Graves indicates in his introduction, Le Fanu had been a lifelong poet, and was writing “brilliant doggrel” as a young man, the only surviving example being a valentine to “a very pretty” Miss K-: Le Fanu (London: Downey, 1896) were collected under the editorship of family friend Alfred Percival Graves. It wasn’t until over twenty years after the author’s death that the Poems of J.S. If Le Fanu is one of Ireland’s overlooked authors (when remembered it is mainly for his ghost stories and sensation novels), then as a poet he is certainly almost entirely forgotten. As today is Poetry Day here in Ireland, I thought I’d share a poem by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873). ![]()
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