William Allingham

Lesson 2

William Allingham

William was a English man born in 19 March 1824, Balyshannon, County. He was a Irish poet and civil servant while his father was a shipping merchant. Being the eldest of all five children, William's mother passed away when he was 9 years old.

He began his career, aged fourteen, working in a bank and quit in 1846 to join the Customs Office. Visiting London in 1847, he became acquainted with the poet Leigh Hunt and with Coventry Patmore in 1849. In 1850 his first book of poems was dedicated to Leigh Hunt. From 1850-1853 he became friends with Thomas Carlyle, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

His chief correspondents throughout his life were Rossetti and Henry Sutton, a young poet journalist in Nottingham. In 1855 Allingham's Day and Night Songs was published with nine illustrations by Rossetti, John Everett Millais and Arthur Hughes, cut by the Dalziel brothers. His poetry, which was influenced by the tradition of Border Ballads, was close to that of Rossetti and William Morris. In 1865 his Fifty Modern Poems was published, and in 1877 an anthology of his work, Songs, Ballads and Stories.

In 1870, through Carlyle's influence, Allingham became sub-editor of Fraser's Magazine, and then in 1874 he succeeded the historian J. A. Froude as editor, holding this post for five years. As well as JW, he was the friend of such prominent artists and writers as Edward Burne-Jones, Charles Dickens and the Brownings.

William married watercolourist Helen Paterson in 1874. He died on 18 November, 1889, in Eldon House.

Three poems by the poet

A Day-Dream's Reflection by William Allingham

Chequer'd with woven shadows as I lay
Among the grass, blinking the watery gleam,
I saw an Echo-Spirit in his bay
Most idly floating in the noontide beam.
Slow heaved his filmy skiff, and fell, with sway
Of ocean's giant pulsing, and the Dream,
Buoyed like the young moon on a level stream
Of greenish vapour at decline of day,
Swam airily, watching the distant flocks
Of sea-gulls, whilst a foot in careless sweep
Touched the clear-trembling cool with tiny shocks,
Faint-circling; till at last he dropt asleep,
Lull'd by the hush-song of the glittering deep,
Lap-lapping drowsily the heated rocks.

Abbey Assaroe by William Allingham

Gray, gray is Abbey Assaroe, by Belashanny town,
It has neither door nor window, the walls are broken down;
The carven-stones lie scatter'd in briar and nettle-bed!
The only feet are those that come at burial of the dead.
A little rocky rivulet runs murmuring to the tide,
Singing a song of ancient days, in sorrow, not in pride;
The boortree and the lightsome ash across the portal grow,
And heaven itself is now the roof of Abbey Assaroe.

It looks beyond the harbour-stream to Gulban mountain blue;
It hears the voice of Erna's fall - Atlantic breakers too;
High ships go sailing past it; the sturdy clank of oars
Brings in the salmon-boat to haul a net upon the shores;
And this way to his home-creek, when the summer day is done,
Slow sculls the weary fisherman across the setting sun;
While green with corn is Sheegus Hill, his cottage white below;
But gray at every season is Abbey Assaroe.

There stood one day a poor old man above its broken bridge;
He heard no running rivulet, he saw no mountain-ridge;
He turn'd his back on Sheegus Hill, and view'd with misty sight
The Abbey walls, the burial-ground with crosses ghostly white;
Under a weary weight of years he bow'd upon his staff,
Perusing in the present time the former's epitaph;
For, gray and wasted like the walls, a figure full of woe,
This man was of the blood of them who founded Assaroe.

From Derry to Bundrowas Tower, Tirconnell broad was theirs;
Spearmen and plunder, bards and wine, and holy Abbot's prayers;
With chanting always in the house which they had builded high
To God and to Saint Bernard - where at last they came to die.
At worst, no workhouse grave for him! the ruins of his race
Shall rest among the ruin'd stones of this their saintly place.
The fond old man was weeping; and tremulous and slow
Along the rough and crooked lane he crept from Assaroe.

In a Spring Grove by William Allingham

Here the white-ray'd anemone is born,
Wood-sorrel, and the varnish'd buttercup;
And primrose in its purfled green swathed up,
Pallid and sweet round every budding thorn,
Gray ash, and beech with rusty leaves outworn.
Here, too the darting linnet hath her nest
In the blue-lustred holly, never shorn,
Whose partner cheers her little brooding breast,
Piping from some near bough. O simple song!
O cistern deep of that harmonious rillet,
And these fair juicy stems that climb and throng
The vernal world, and unexhausted seas
Of flowing life, and soul that asks to fill it,
Each and all of these,--and more, and more than these!

I think that the author is a great poet as he was able lift his family's finacial problems through his talents. When he concentrates, he is always deep in thoughts and could think up and form many interesting and good poems of good vocabulary.

Sources :
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/william_allingham/poems/4157
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/william_allingham/poems/4167
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/william_allingham/poems/4182
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/william_allingham/biography

Metaphor poem- The forerunners

Lesson 1
The harbingers are come. See, see their mark;
White is their colour, and behold my head.
But must they have my brain? must they dispark
Those sparkling notions, which therein were bred?
Must dulnesse turn me to a clod?
Yet have they left me, Thou art still my God.

Good men ye be, to leave me my best room,
Ev'n all my heart, and what is lodged there:
I passe not, I, what of the rest become,
So Thou art still my God, be out of fear.
He will be pleased with that dittie;
And if I please him, I write fine and wittie.

Farewell sweet phrases, lovely metaphors.
But will ye leave me thus? when ye before
Of stews and brothels onely knew the doores,
Then did I wash you with my tears, and more,
Brought you to Church well drest and clad;
My God must have my best, ev'n all I had.

Louely enchanting language, sugar-cane,
Hony of roses, whither wilt thou flie?
Hath some fond lover tic'd thee to thy bane?
And wilt thou leave the Church, and love a stie?
Fie, thou wilt soil thy broider'd coat,
And hurt thy self, and him that sings the note.

Let foolish lovers, if they will love dung,
With canvas, not with arras clothe their shame:
Let follie speak in her own native tongue.
True beautie dwells on high: ours is a flame
But borrow'd thence to light us thither.
Beautie and beauteous words should go together.

Yet if you go, I passe not; take your way:
For, Thou art still my God, is all that ye
Perhaps with more embellishment can say,
Go birds of spring: let winter have his fee,
Let a bleak palenesse chalk the doore,
So all within be livelier then before.

In this metaphor poem, words and terms like "Must dulnesse turn me to a clod?", "With canvas, not with arras clothe their shame" , "Let follie speak in her own native tongue" , "True beautie dwells on high: ours is a flame" , "Farewell sweet phrases, lovely metaphors." , "Go birds of spring: let winter have his fee" , " Let a bleak palenesse chalk the doore, " .

All this terms are metaphor because they describes a subject to be alike as another subject.

The author probably chose to use Metaphor for this poem because Metaphor allows him to describe the the harbingers, the lovers, their spirits and the seasons.

I like this poem because it is logistic and rhymes. It clearly describes the harbingers of their personality, the season, the birds and the character himself. The poem also consists of many new vocabulary words and many metaphors which we can all use in our daily homework. The poem rhymes and is logistic as it describes things can might happen unlike poems with non-logistic contents. I also like the poem due to it being a cheerful poem as every phrase of the poem tells us of only positive things and not negative stuffs or description which usually some non-logistic poems contain.
Thank you