Part of Francis Ledwidge's slender reputation rests on two biographical facts: he was an Irish peasant with little schooling, and he died fighting in World War I. The fact that he was a soldier actually had little effect on his poetry, for even the verses he wrote at the front are not about war but about the beauties of his homeland and his love for an Irish girl. Although the rudimentary nature of his formal education no doubt delayed his assimilation of the English poetic tradition, his industrious reading ensured that it did not greatly affect his mature verse. And since, as Katharine Tynan insisted, "there was nothing of him peasant.... He was born refined, " his upbringing caused him little difficulty when he began moving in wider circles. Even the fact of his nationality has only partial relevance; although Ledwidge treated themes popular in Irish literature--the natural world...