Wake Forest University Press

Denis Devlin

Denis Devlin (April 15, 1908 - August 21, 1959) was, along with Samuel Beckett and Brian Coffey, one of the generation of Irish modernist poets to emerge at the end of the 1920s. He was a seminarian for the Catholic priesthood, but left and later studied modern languages and literature. He spent many years in the Irish diplomatic service.

"Devlin's cosmopolitan intelligence and gracefulness assumes a readership with no mere national interest or boundary in mind." Gerald Dawe, Poetry Review

"…[I]t is still not understood that the Irish Thirties may be at least as rich as the much acclaimed Auden generation, and Devlin is part of that neglected story. … We are only starting to understand the lost generation of Irish poetry, and this splendid volume is a great help." John Montague, The Irish Times

from Lough Derg (1946)

The poor in spirit on their rosary rounds,
The jobbers with their whiskey-angered eyes,
The pink bank clerks, the tip-hat papal counts,
And drab, kind women their tonsured mockery tries,
Glad invalids on penitential feet
Walk the Lord's majesty like their village street.

With mullioned Europe shattered, this Northwest,
Rude-sainted isle would pray it whole again:
(Peasant Apollo! Troy is worn to rest.)
Europe that humanized the sacred bane
Of God's chance who yet laughed in his mind
And balanced thief and saint: were they this kind?

Low rocks, a few weasels, lake
Like a field of burnt gorse; the rooks caw;
Ours, passive, for man's gradual wisdom take
Firefly instinct dreamed out into law;
The prophets' jewelled kingdom down at heel
Fires no Augustine here. Inert, they kneel;

All is simple and symbol in their world,
The incomprehended rendered fabulous…

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Collected Poems edited by J.C.C. Mays