Herbert Trench (1865 to 1923) was an Irish poet and theatre director. He was born in County Cork and educated at Haileybury and Keble College, Oxford. In 1891 he joined the Board of Education as an examiner and stayed there until 1909. He wrote poetry alongside that work. His early volumes, including Deirdre Wed and Other Poems, appeared around the turn of the century. The long poem Apollo and the Seamen also dates from that period, and A Charge belongs to the same years. Critics of the time praised his lyrical, mystical style and his handling of Irish and classical themes. His reputation rose sharply when New Poems (1907) was well reviewed. It includes the long visionary poem "Apollo and the Seamen" and the shorter lyric "Come, let us make love deathless." In 1909 he left the civil service to become the first director of the Haymarket Theatre in London. He staged works by Maeterlinck, Ibsen, Shaw and others, but the venture lost money and ended after a few seasons. After that he lived mostly abroad, in Italy near Florence and later in Paris. His later work includes the narrative poem Napoleon (1919) and a collected edition of his poems (1918). He died at Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, in June 1923.
19 works on Textopian