UCD Library

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Based in five locations at University College Dublin, we provide access to a large range of print and electronic resources, and services to support your studies.

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Irishman and soldier with the French Foreign Legion, Michael MacWhite, writes from the Front #OTD 1916. #WWI

"Six days in this mud and slush. Six nights on the parapet searching for the sleep that never comes. ..."

Transcription in next post.

Oct 11 – 16 Six days in this mud and slush. Six nights on the parapet searching for the sleep that never comes. With aching bones and clattering teeth we lay there in our sodden garments waiting – waiting for the message from beyond. And yet we curse the skulking moon as she laughs at us through those ragged clouds. We curse the sun and stars. We curse ourselves and God for keeping alive the ebbing embers of hope in our bosoms. And yet that hope, that longing, that faith that keeps us still when movements would bring solace is but as molten ashes in our arid brains. Death alone lives in our midst. He presides at every motion of our body. He sits in every watching post and with his thrilling chant accompanies every shell. From out of the trench wall his fleshless skull is protruding and his alienated fingers point as it were to the whistling bell like a horrid nightmare. We feel him pushing into the abyss where Satan reigns. The hand of dawn is in the eastern sky and now the shells fall thick and fast. Pandemonium is let loose and in anticipation of the day we enter our dugouts where we anchor in a metre of mud. And now the buzz of the telephone is heard. Faces brutalised by fatigue and misery light up a little while the corporal cries out that we are relieved but as I repeat the commandant’s orders on the wire there is an agony of silence. “Preparez-pour-l’assaut-á-midi-cinq” – and the artillery thunders until we can no longer hear our own voices. Death claims another hostage and yet another. The end of the trench has been blown up. The cook who sat there need[s] no gravedigger’s tools to make him a home. Who shall be the next? Who has a cigarette for after as the [] diminishes hope fan the smouldering embers in the next. (PART 2 NEXT POST)
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We congratulate poet Paul Muldoon on receiving UCD's highest honour - the UCD Ulysses Medal.🏅 Muldoon has read his poetry for the UCD Irish Poetry Reading Archive, & in 2022 was commissioned to write a poem for the Poetry as Commemoration project. Here is "The Belfast Pogrom: Some Observations".

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Many congratulations! Paul Muldoon has read his poetry for the Irish Poetry Reading Archive, as well as being part of the 2022-2023 Poetry as Commemoration Project here at UCD. We are grateful and delighted for him.✨🏅

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Join Jade Smith, UCD's Research Data Librarian, on 9th Oct for this online session taking you through a live demo of using DMPonline to create a #DataManagementPlan.

DMPonline at UCD helps you create, review, & share data management plans (DMPs) that meet institutional and funder requirements.

Photo of the James Joyce Library building in black and white.
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Do you run a digital research service in Ireland? Then EOSC.IE Project want to hear from you!

Help map the national landscape and design Ireland's national node of the European Open Science Cloud.

📋 Take the survey (docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...)

⏰ Deadline: Monday 12 October 2026 at 17:00 IST

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