Metaphysical poets still young, introducing into it a string of Metaphysical conceits in the lines beginning “Most souls, ‘tis true, but peep out once an age” which in part echo a passage from Donne's “Second Anniversary”. By the time Pope wrote this, the vogue for the Metaphysical style was over and a new orthodoxy had taken its place, of which the rewriting of Donne's satires was one expression. Nevertheless, Johnson's dismissal of the ‘school’ was still in the future and at the start of the 18th century allusions to their work struck an answering chord in readers. During the course of the
Blacklion by Belcoo man, Aidan McGourty. Cathal Buí's name is also visible on local tourist signposts bearing the legend "Cathal Bui Country" with an image of a dead bird alongside. According to legend the poet, who was famously a drinking man, was walking homewards along the lakeside on a frosty winter morning when he came upon a dead bittern, which he assumed had died of thirst because it was unable to get water from the frozen lake. He wrote the famous poem, ("The Yellow Bittern"), which laments the fate of the bird and notes wryly that the bird had died for