His best known poems include "Dark Rosaleen", "Siberia", "Nameless One", "A Vision of Connaught in the Thirteenth Century", "The Funerals", "To the Ruins of Donegal Castle", "Pleasant Prospects for the Land-eaters" and "Woman of Three Cows". He wrote a brief autobiography, on the advice of his friend Charles Patrick Meehan, which ends mid-sentence. This must have been written in the last months of his life, since he mentions his narrative poem of the Italian Gasparo Bandollo, which was published in the "Dublin University Magazine" in May 1849.