Search Results for 'Thomas Hardy'

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the colour of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlours, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed.

In September 2004 Seamus Heaney opened the Autumn Gathering in Gort, and he read the above poem (which I will conclude in a moment), and told the audience that he was happy to be once again in south Galway. “ To drive across Ireland, east to west, towards Padraic Fallon’s native Galway, is to experience a double sensation of refreshment and déja-vu. The refreshment comes from the big lift of the sky beyond the River Shannon, the déja-vu from entering a landscape which has been familiar for a century as an image of the dream Ireland invented by the Irish Literary Revival.’

ALMOST SIX months have passed since the death of the much-loved poet Seamus Heaney and Galway will commemorate his life and work in a gala event at NUI Galway’s Bailey Allen Hall on Wednesday February 26.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?