AustLit

Author's note: 'During the war in France in the beginning of this century, the French prisoners of war were confined in Dartmoor Prison, Devonshire. During my sojourn there a tombstone was erected to their memory, their bones having been collected and placed in one grave. The following lines were written in my cell there,in August 1867.'

The date '1st January 1868' appears at the foot of the poem. It may be that the poem was intended for inclusion in the convict ship journal The Wild Goose: A Collection of Ocean Waifs, but no January 1868 issues were produced. The last issue of the journal is dated 21 December 1867. (The ship on which O'Reilly was transported, theHougoumont, docked at Fremantle, Western Australia on 9 January 1868.)