Thomas William Rolleston

Thomas William Rolleston Poems

Thomas William Rolleston Biography

Thomas William Hazen Rolleston (1857 – 1920) was an Irish writer, literary figure and translator, known as a poet but publishing over a wide range of literary and political topics. He lived at various times in Dublin, Germany, London and County Wicklow; settling finally in 1908 in Hampstead, London, where he died. He was born in Glasshouse, Shinrone, County Offaly, the son of a judge. He was educated at St Columba's College, Rathfarnham and Trinity College, Dublin. After a time in Germany he founded the Dublin University Review in 1885; he published Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland (1888), and a Life of Lessing (1889). In London in the 1890s he was one of the Rhymer's Club; he was to cross paths several times, and sometimes to clash, with W. B. Yeats. He was also involved in Douglas Hyde's Gaelic League. He also spent time as a journalist, and as a civil servant involved with agriculture. He had eight children, from two marriages.)

The Best Poem Of Thomas William Rolleston

Cois Na Teineadh

WHERE glows the Irish hearth with peat
There lives a subtle spell—
The faint blue smoke, the gentle heat,
The moorland odours tell.

Of white roads winding by the edge
Of bare, untamèd land,
Where dry stone wall or ragged hedge
Runs wide on either hand.

To cottage lights that lure you in
From rainy Western skies;
And by the friendly glow within
Of simple talk, and wise,

And tales of magic, love or arms
From days when princes met
To listen to the lay that charms
The Connacht peasant yet,

There Honour shines through passions dire,
There beauty blends with mirth—
Wild hearts, ye never did aspire
Wholly for things of earth!

Cold, cold this thousand years—yet still
On many a time-stained page
Your pride, your truth, your dauntless will,
Burn on from age to age.

And still around the fires of peat
Live on the ancient days;
There still do living lips repeat
The old and deathless lays.

And when the wavering wreaths ascend
Blue in the evening air,
The soul of Ireland seems to bend
Above her children there.

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