Thomas Hardy

Donaghadee

  Song

I’ve never gone to Donaghadee,
That vague far townlet by the sea;
In Donaghadee I shall never be:
Then why do I sing of Donaghadee,
That I know not in a faint degree? . . .
– Well, once a woman wrote to me
With a tender pen from Donaghadee.

‘Susan’, I’ve sung, ‘Pride of Kildare’,
Because I’d heard of a Susan there,
The ‘Irish Washerwoman’s’ capers
I’ve shared for hours to midnight tapers,
And ‘Kitty O’Linch’ has made me spin
Till dust rose high, and day broke in:
That other ‘Kitty, of Coleraine’,
Too, set me aching in heart and brain:
While ‘Kathleen Mavourneen’, of course, would ring
When that girl learnt to make me sing.
Then there was ‘Irish Molly O’
I tuned as ‘the fairest one I know’,
And ‘Nancy Dawson’, if I remember,
Rhymed sweet in moonlight one September.

But the damsel who once wrote so free
And tender-toned from Donaghadee,
Is a woman who has no name for me –
Moving sylph-like, mysteriously,
(For doubtless, of that sort is she)
In the pathways of her destiny;
But that is where I never shall be; –
And yet I sing of Donaghadee!