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213 THOMAS HALLIE DELAMAYNE (1718–1742–1773) This poem is addressed to the famous Irish portrait painter Francis Bindon (c.1690–1765), asking him to paint a particular scene and suggesting, in precise detail, what the poet thinks should be included in the painting. The device enables the poet to highlight particular events and so emphasize their political or social significance while appearing to stand back from them. Though the section of the poem that follows concerns the great frost in Ireland in the winters of 1739/41, the poem as a whole was inspired by the portrait Bindon had painted of Hugh Boulter, archbishop of Armagh, for the workhouse ‘near Dublin’. The picture, which shows Boulter dispensing charity to the needy, now hangs in the Provost’s House in Trinity College Dublin. Thomas Delamayne was a good classical scholar and a prolific writer. He was educated at Trinity College and spent some years as a barrister in Dublin. He then went to London where he became known as an anti-establishment figure. His poems critical of the Westminster parliament were very popular when they appeared in the early 1770s and are, even today, highly entertaining. from: To Francis Bindon Esq. on a picture of his Grace Dr Hugh Boulter, Lord Arch-Bishop of Armagh … … O’er the froz’d North, I’d stretch a sheet of snow,1 No native green should chear, no berry blow;2 Depending3 clouds and fogs condens’d should lie O’er the white surface, and obscure the sky. No orbs of night should grace the neighbouring pole, The orb of day a ball of sulphur roll. Here the rude floods, as from their steeps they fall, Caught in their course, should stand an icey wall, And, further, on their glassy bosoms feel The waggon’s weight, and wear the tractless wheel. 10 The towns, whose situations far divide Their tongues and mariners, ’cross the dang’rous tide, The froz’d North is Ulster. Throughout this section of the poem, the poet is telling the 1 painter what he would put in the painting himself, or what he thinks the painter ‘should’ put into the ‘piece’. come to perfection, ripen. 2 low-hanging. 3 214 In vent’rous intercourse and traffic strange, Should now their necessary aids exchange.4 The wing’d-heel Scater on the surface flie, The Learner scarce the slipp’ry plain should try, The sad disasters of the Croud be shewn, The fall, the death-struck blow, and fractur’d bone. The Miller, in his garb of sully’d flour, Opposing entrance, fill his half-shut door, 20 In seeming arguments and sad descants, Wailing his own distress, and Neighbours wants: The fountain-springs now stop’d, which us’d to fill The current veins, the wheel of life stands still. The hungry Corm’rant on his faithless pond, Fetter’d in ice, be to a statue ston’d; Pinion’d by cold, Air’s jocund Chorists lie Couch’d on the ground, or reach their springs5 and die; The Stag invite the Hound;6 the tim’rous Hare Seek the smoak’d cottage and implore the spear. 30 Lost in a sleeting mist, the Trav’ler’s sense, Mock’d of his way, should stand in dead suspence; Bent to the whirlwind’s drift, the Hors’d-man fast So-journey on, life’s stage already past.7 The woolly Flock plunge in the treach’rous snow; The bellowing Ox for food his pastures blow;8 And Man, athirst, scarce lift the ax to cleave A moist subsistence from the hardened wave, Or force with prongs of steel the marbled ground, In search of roots, and ev’n those roots unsound. 40 Hence naked Want and Famine lean should spring, And pale Disease spread wide her putrid wing, The lines mean that the inhabitants of towns normally separated from each other by stretches of water can now help each other easily (by walking over the ice). The nooses or snares set to catch small songbirds. 5 i.e. ‘the stag attracts the hound to itself’ – presumably (like the hare in the next line) 6 wanting to be killed and so escape the cold. This seems to mean that the horseman, lost in the drifts caused by the whirlwinds, travels 7 fixedly onwards, this part of life’s journey already being past for him, i.e. he will die. i.e. tries to melt the snow with his warm breath...

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