KAVANAGH, Patrick. A Soul For Sale. Poems.

London: Macmillan, 1947. First edition. Demy octavo. pp. vi, 55. Green cloth, titled. A fine copy in frayed dust jacket. In this, his second collection of poems, Kavanagh takes his themes from the life about him in his native land, or from her tragic past, treating them sometimes in the mood of the mystic, sometimes with a sharp realism. His portrait of an old Irish peasant in the famous poem, ‘The Great Hunger’, shows his qualities as a writer of marked power and insight.

“Clay is the word and clay is the flesh Where the potato-gatherers like mechanised scarecrows move
Along the side-fall of the hill - Maguire and his men ... “

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