Poems of Arthur O’Shaughnessy
Selected and Edited by
WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY
Mr. Percy says in his remarkable Introduction: “The Yale University Press, thinking perhaps, with me, that even the most beautiful things perish if the opportunity for reading or seeing or hearing them is not offered the vexed and hurrying children of men, has undertaken here the pious task of making O’Shaughnessy’s finest poems accessible to readers of English poetry.... His best is unique, of a haunting beauty, a very precious heritage.... He had, as Palgrave put it, ‘The exquisite tenderness of touch, the melody and delicacy’ of his favorite composer, Chopin.... If I were passing the Siren Isles, one of the songs I know I should hear drifting across the waves would be that which Sarrazine sang to her dead lover in Chaitivel:
‘Hath any loved you well, down there,
Summer or winter through?
Down there, have you found any fair
Laid in the grave with you?
Is death’s long kiss a richer kiss
Than mine was wont to be—