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341 WILLIAM DRENNAN (1754–1802–1820) William Drennan – the most outspoken Irish poetic voice of his age – was born in Belfast, the son of a dissenting minister. He was educated at the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh and settled in Dublin where he practised as a doctor. He was one of the founders of the United Irishmen and was tried for sedition in 1794, though acquitted. He later moved to Belfast and founded The Belfast Magazine. Drennan’s most famous poem is the harrowing account of the execution of William Orr, hanged for administering an illegal oath. He is also known for ‘Glendalloch’, a long poem that, while celebrating the natural beauty of the glens of County Wicklow, derides the druids and monks who, over the centuries, spread ‘illusive fancy’ and superstition from their hideout in Glendalough. The poem moves on to cast vitriolic scorn on those who, in the recent past, have sold Ireland’s legislative independence for gold by accepting the 1801 Act of Union. The poem below, ‘To Ireland’, is equally outspoken, pouring invective on the ‘abortive men’ who have become the ‘soft contented’ slaves of Britain, turning the once noble land of Ireland into the ‘base posterior of the world’. The poem ends by comparing the land of these ‘sterile’ Irishmen to that of Arabs whose bravery makes their country – a mere desert of sand and stone – free, happy and ‘blest’. To Ireland My Country! Shall I mourn or bless, Thy tame and wretched happiness? ’Tis true! The the vast Atlantic tide Has scoop’d thy harbours deep, and wide, Bold to protect, and prompt to save, From fury of the Western wave: And Shannon points to Europe’s trade, For THAT, his chain of lakes was made; For THAT, he scorns to waste his store, In channel of a subject shore, 10 But courts the Southern wind to bring A world, upon its tepid wing. True! thy resplendent rivers run, And safe beneath a temp’rate sun Springs the young verdure of thy plain, Nor dreads a torrid Eastern reign. True! thou art blest, in Nature’s plan, Nothing seems wanting here, but—MAN; 342 Man—to subdue, not serve the soil, To win, and wear its golden spoil; 20 Man—conscious of an earth his own, No savage biped, torpid, prone; Living, to dog his brother brute, And hung’ring for a lazy root, Food for a soft, contented slave; Not for the hardy and the brave. Had Nature been her enemy, IERNE might be fierce and free. To the stout heart, and iron hand, Temp’rate each sky, and tame each land; 30 A climate and a soil less kind, Had form’d a map of richer mind. Now, a mere sterile swamp of soul, Thro’ meadows spread, and rivers roll; A nation of abortive men, That dart—the tongue; and point—the pen. And, at the back of Europe, hurl’d— A base POSTERIOR of the world. In lap of Araby the blest, Man lies with luxury opprest; 40 While spicy odours, blown around, Enrich the air, and gems—the ground. But thro’ the pathless, burning waste, Man marches with his patient beast, Braves the hot sun, and heaving sand, And calls it free and happy land. Enough to make a desert known, ‘Arms, and the man,’ and sand, and stone! ...

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