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Life
1865-1923 [usu. Herbert Trench]; b. Avonmore, Co. Cork; ed Haileybury and Keble College, Oxford; Board of Education, 1891-1909; Haymarket Th. Artistic Director, 1909-11; moved to Florence in 1911; wrote Deirdre Wed and other Poems (1901); New Poems, containing “Apollo and the Seaman” (1907); published Ode from Italy in time of War (1915); also a four-act play, Napoleon (1919), which was produced by the Stage Society; Collected Works (1924); d. Boulogne-sur-Mer. ODNB PI JMC NCBE DIB OCIL
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Commentary
Sean Lucy, ‘The Poetry of Austin Clarke’, in The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 9, 1 (June 1983), pp.5-21: ‘The voice of Herbert Trench, whose Deirdre Wed had a profound influence on the early Clarke, and on this his first poem [The Vengeance of Fionn]. It seems to me that Trench’s poem is better than that of Clarke, but leaving that aside, if one reads Trench’s landscape and weather passages it is abundantly clear who it was who taught Clarke to make such verse as this [quotes “With the evening time / they saw a tide of sunlight, rising, surge / Through gloomy loughs ...”]’ (p.6.)
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References
D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1912) , lists Deirdre Wed and other Poems (Lon. 1900), New Poems (1907), Lyrics and Narratives (1911); represented in Brooke and Rolleston’s Treasury of Irish Poetry (1900).
Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: University of America 1904): listed has Herbert Trench (1865- ); b. Avonmore, Middleton, Co. Cork; Irish on mother’s side (Allings, Sealys and Corrs), as well as father’s family; open fellowship, All Souls, Oxford, 1899; examiner Education Office, Whitehall; Deirdre Wed & Other Poems in 1900 [sic]; gives selection from Part III of Deirdre Wed (Naois speaks): ‘O to see once more / Thee dance alone in this divine resort / Of wings and quietness; where noe but rains / Visit the leaf-pelted lattice - noe o’er peers / And none the self-delightful measure hear / That thy soul moces to, quit of mortal ears [.. ..] For what need of strings / To waft her blood who is herself the Tune, / herself the heart of her own melody / Art come from the Land of Ever Young?’; also ‘Schiehallion’, and ‘Maurya’s Song’, from DW & Other Poems (NY: John Lane).
John Cooke, ed., Dublin Book of Irish Verse 1728-1909 (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis 1909), lists as Herbert Trench; no bio-dates; selects “from Deirdre Wedded” [‘And Deirdre the exquisite virgin pale as the coat of swans / Took the flame of love in her heart at the time of dew / And clad her in ragged wool from a coffer of bronze / And walked in the chill of the night, for her soul was new.’); “Maurya’s Song” (‘Rushes that grow by the black water / When will I see you more?’).
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, listing as Herbert Trench; bio-dates 1865-1923; selects, ‘But when Night is on the hills, and the great Voices / Roll in from Sea / By starlight and by candlelight and dreamlight / She comes to me.’; also ‘Come let us make love deathless, thou and I’; and ‘O dreamy gloomy, friendly Trees’ (from various poems).
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