Donaghadee Historical Society

This poem was written by the renowned English author Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). he is reputed never to have visited the town but wrote this in response to a letter from a woman from Donaghadee.

DONAGHADEE
by Thomas Hardy

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!

.