Bartholomew Dowling

Bartholomew Dowling (1823–1863) was an Irish poet, born in Limerick, where he worked as a clerk to the treasurer of the Corporation; he lived for a time in the United States. He is remembered for his lyric “Our Brigade at Fontenoy” and for “The Revel”, a drinking-song that was for a time wrongly attributed to Alfred Domett.

The poem here is taken from Edmund Clarence Stedman (ed.), A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1895). Spelling is that of the anthology.