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Derek Mahon: To Cynthia in the Country

Poem Title

Original Publication

CP Page no

To Cynthia in the Country

Raw Material, Oldcastle: The Gallery Press, 2011

Not included in CP

Length / Form Eight-line stanzas, laid out on the page in imitation of the elegiac meter (with alternate lines indented).

Allusion to Classical figure Cynthia, Actaeon

Allusion to Classical place Shrine, temples, Clitumnus

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts The poem is a version of Propertius' Elegies II, 19.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Propertius' rural idyll is given Irish overtones when Cynthia is imagined "hitching up [her] skirts for a good céilí".

Comment The Sextus and Cynthia poems were first published in a limited edition (Oldcastle: The Gallery Press, 2009).