Autumn, 1922 Thomas MacGreevy Text Encoding by Susan Schreibman Jarom McDonald Susan Schreibman
The Thomas MacGreevy Archive http://macgreevy.org

Thomas MacGreevy's poetry is reprinted here with the kind permission of Margaret Farrington and the late Elizabeth Ryan.

This poem is being made available for demonstration purposes only. It may not be reproduced without explicit permission from the copyright holder. For copyright information, please contact Susan Schreibman at susan.schreibman[AT]gmail.com

 There are four TS versions of this poem entitled 'Ireland Autumn, 1922', 'Civil War', and 'A Short History of Our Own Time'. The poem was most probably written between 1924 and 1926. To the editor's knowledge, it has not been reprinted Additions appear in a green, fixed-width font.

Diplomatic editions of MacGreevy's poetry were created from Collected Poems of Thomas MacGreevy: An Annotated Edition, edited by Susan Schreibman (Anna Livia Press and The Catholic University of America Press, 1991). Images of MacGreevy's published poems were taken from MacGreevy's own copy of Poems (Heinemann, 1934). Manuscript copies are from MacGreevy's papers at Trinity College, Dublin (individual manuscript numbers appear in the witness list below).

This is a demonstration document for the Versioning Machine of parallel segmentation encoding utilising TEIP5.

Proofing and Additional Encoding by Lara Vetter and Susan Schreibman 2002. change>Re-encoded text for TEIP5Susan SchreibmanJuly 2008
'A Short History of Our Own Time' (TCD MS 7989/1/10) 'Civil War', which was deleted and replaced with 'Ireland, Autumn 1922' (TCD MS 7989/1/8) 'Ireland Autumn, 1922' (TCD MS 7989/1/7) 'Ireland, Autumn, 1922 (TCD MS 7989/1/9) published in Poems under the title 'Autumn, 1922'
A Short History of Our Own Times. CIVIL WAR Ireland, Autumn 1922 IRELAND, AUTUMN, 1922 IRELAND AUTUMN, 1922

The alternative titles MacGreevy experimented with provide the key to this very short poem. By the autumn of 1922 over six years had passed since Patrick Pearse had proclaimed the Irish Republic in Dublin's General Post Office. The country had seen the heart of its capital destroyed by the fires of Easter 1916, and this was followed after the Seinn Fein victory in the 1918 election by an extended campaign of guerilla warfare against the British with its reprisals and counter-reprisals.

In the end, nationalist Ireland was divided into bitterly opposing camps, and engaged in civil war over the terms of the agreement reached in London in December 1921. The new national institutions that emerged did so more through the passage of time than as the expression of any national ideal or vision. MacGreevy's poem captures the despair and weariness of a nation torn apart by war and bitter political divisions.

 The sun burns out, The world withers, The world withers, The world withers Poets sing no more, And time grows afraid of the triumph of time.

The fifth of six allegorical triumphs in Petrarch's Trionfi is the Triumph of Time. Petrarch's Triumphs, often depicted as Father Time in his chariot surrounded by symbolic devices such as the scythe and hourglass, were frequently represented by Baroque and Renaissance artists.

MacGreevy, however, may be thinking of one or more of the paintings that he saw during his visit to the Prado in Madrid in 1924. One is Goya's Saturn [Time] Devouring His Son, and the other is Pieter Brueghel the Elder's The Triumph of Death, which depicts a whole society visited by death riding a pale horse (using imagery from the Apocalypse) against a background of barren landscape and a darkened sky.

 And time grows afraid Of the triumph of time. The fifth of six allegorical triumphs in Petrarch's Trionfi is the Triumph of Time. Petrarch's Triumphs, often depicted as Father Time in his chariot surrounded by symbolic devices such as the scythe and hourglass, were frequently represented by Baroque and Renaissance artists. MacGreevy, however, may be thinking of one or more of the paintings that he saw during his visit to the Prado in Madrid in 1924. One is Goya's Saturn [Time] Devouring His Son, and the other is Pieter Brueghel the Elder's The Triumph of Death, which depicts a whole society visited by death riding a pale horse (using imagery from the Apocalypse) against a background of barren landscape and a darkened sky. Thomas Mc Greevy,
19 Lincoln Chambers, Lincoln Place, DUBLIN.
L. St. Senan MacGreevy published several poems and reviews under the pseudonym L. St. Senan in the early-mid 1920s. Saint Senan (d.560) founded several monasteries in MacGreevy's native Ireland. Senan's last settlement was on Scattery Island in the estuary of the Shannon, near MacGreevy's birthplace. (L. St. Senan) Thomas McGreevy,
15 Cheyne Gardens, London, S.W.3