Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (24 July 1878 – 25 October 1957) was an Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work, mostly in fantasy, published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes many hundreds of published short stories, as well as successful plays, novels and essays.
Born to the second-oldest title (created 1439) in the Irish peerage, Dunsany lived much of his life at perhaps Ireland's longest-inhabited home, Dunsany Castle near Tara, worked with W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, was chess and pistol-shooting champion of Ireland, and travelled and hunted extensively. He died in Dublin after an attack of appendicitis.
The ebb came
And I saw the dead eyes of the houses
And the jealousy of other forgotten things
That storm had not carried thence.
...
Night falls on the lone
Sahara, and spark by spark
Arabs I have not known
Light fires in the dark.
...
I.
There is no wrath in the stars,
They do not rage in the sky;
I look from the evil wood
And find myself wondering why.
...
I watch the doctors walking with the nurses to and fro
And i hear them softly talking in the garden where they go,
But i envy not their learning, nor their right of walking free,
For the emperor of Tartary has died for love of me.
...
Not in the stone you smashed dwelt memory,
And not in stone are the Canadian dead
Immortal, but in hearts where they were bred
And in the country that they fought to free.
...