Davis, Thomas Osborne

(1814-1845)

   Irish lawyer, poet and politician, born at Mallow, County Cork, whose father, a surgeon in the royal artillery, died in 1814 on his way to join Wellington's forces on the Continent. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1836, and in 1837 published an anonymous pamphlet on the Reform of the Lords, By a Graduate of Dublin University. He became a supporter of the nationalists. In 1842 he helped found the immensely popular Nation newspaper, to which he contributed stirring nationalistic poems. He died of fever and was buried at Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin, where a marble statue by Hogan was erected over his grave. Though a Protestant and brought up as a Tory, one of his chief objects was to break down the fierce antagonism between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants of his country. Some of his poems: "A Ballad of Freedom," "A Rally for Ireland," "Lament for the Death of Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill," "Song of the Volunteers of 1782," "The Exile," "The Girl I Left Behind Me," "The Irish Hurrah," "This Native Land," "Tipperary," "We Must Not Fail."

   Sources: An Anthology of Revolutionary Poetry. Marcus Graham, ed. The Active Press, 1929. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Poems of Thomas Davis. D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1866.