For the Commander of the Eliza Heaney pursues the theme of Irish suffering at the hands of the British government in Whitehall, London, painting a dark picture unrelieved by any chink of light. He describes an incident that exemplifies the poem’s epigraph and illustrates the reasons why a burning sense of injustice might continue to exist within the Irish psyche over 120 years later. The initial voice and responses are those of the commander of a British Coast-Guard vessel in the late 1840’s. Whilst the ship’s presence in the bay is routine, the presence of an Irish rowing-boat unusually far [...]