September 1913

What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone?
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You'd cry, 'Some woman's yellow hair
Has maddened every mother's son':
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they're dead and gone,
They're with O'Leary in the grave.

William Butler Yeats

Interesting to use the words of Ireland's most notable senator on the day that his successors manage to avoid the dole queue...

Took the advice of Raheny Eye Dublin Iris Cornea, and went to try my luck at this Open House competition lark. I got a place on one of the tours of 14 Henrietta Street. One of the first Georgian houses in Dublin, it has highlighted the changes in this area of Dublin - from the houses of Lords and MPs, to legal offices, to tenements (in the Scottish sense), to tenements (in the slum sense), to squats and finally abandoned in the hope that it would collapse and become a very valuable building site. Fortunately, the council actually managed to seize possession and have started works to stabilise the structure.

Anyway, the picture is not from there but from two doors up the road at no. 12. This house may not be in the most salubrious condition but it is lived in, and was hosting an art exhibition for the weekend. I was grabbing a couple of shots, when one of the organisers asked if she could take a look. And then asked if they could use any of the shots for publicity on their Facebook page. So it looks like I might have my first actual photo gig!

Go large... and have a look at some of the other shots.