Finding work as a labourer and miner, he was also a trade union activist, and a keen patriot and nationalist, associated with Sinn Féin.

A few Ledwidge manuscripts are held in the National Library of Ireland, and the main surviving collection, including his early works, in the archives of Dunsany Castle, along with letters.

Selections of both handwritten and typed manuscripts have been shown publicly at the Anthem for Doomed Youth exhibition and at a book launch at Slane Castle in 2022, and privately to scholars and members of the Ledwidge Cottage Museum committee.

Employment included work as a farm hand, road surface mender and supervisor of roadwork, copper miner at Beaupark Mine near Slane (from which post he was sacked for organising a strike for better mining conditions, three years before the general 1913 strike,[3] having been a trade union activist since 1906) and, briefly, a shop assistant in Dublin.

[3] Strongly built, with striking brown eyes and a sensuous face, Ledwidge was a keen poet, writing where ever he could – sometimes even on gates or fence posts.

[4] Despite Ledwidge's growing association with the aristocratic Lord Dunsany, he retained a keen interest in the conditions of working men.

He familiarised himself with the writings of James Connolly and, despite the Vatican's condemnations of Marxism, Ledwidge found no contradiction between Roman Catholicism and socialism.

Nevertheless, having defended this position strongly at a local council meeting, he soon after enlisted (24 October 1914) in Lord Dunsany's regiment, joining 5th battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, part of the 10th (Irish) Division.

Some have speculated that he went to war because his sweetheart Ellie Vaughey had found a new lover, John O'Neill, whom she later married, but Ledwidge himself wrote, quite forcefully, that he could not stand aside while others sought to defend Ireland's freedom.

Having survived huge losses sustained by his company, Ledwidge became ill after a back injury gained during the Battle of Kosturino in Serbia (December 1915), a locale which inspired a number of poems.

Ledwidge continued to write when feasible throughout the war years, though he lost many works, for example, in atrocious weather in Serbia.

Survivors concur in placing the road work done by B Company that day one mile north-east of Hell Fire Corner, so called because it was very exposed to German shelling.

[13] On the 81st anniversary of his death in 1998 a simple non-militaristic monument was unveiled by the poet's nephew, Joe Ledwidge, and the writer Dermot Bolger, on the exact spot where he was killed - the location having been unearthed by Piet Chielens, the director of the In Flanders Fields Museum.

The monument consists of a portrait of Ledwidge on glass over yellow Ieper brick, with the text of his poem "Soliloquy" printed in English and in Dutch.

His family and Dunsany Castle's archives lent original materials, and he and images of these were featured on the museum's website, and in a chapter in the exhibition book of the same title.

[15] In a 2016 episode of the BBC Radio 3 series Minds at War Belfast academic Gerald Dawe contributed a commentary entitled "Francis Ledwidge's poem 'O'Connell Street'".

The official national commemoration for Ledwidge was held at the birthplace cottage at the edge of Slane on 24 June 2017, with Ireland represented by Minister for European Affairs, Helen McEntee, joined by four members of Ledwidge's family, an Irish Army Brigadier General, a Garda Assistant Commissioner, various politicians, the Belgian ambassador, the UK defence attache, and many locals.

The only work published in book form during Ledwidge's lifetime was the original volume Songs of the Fields (1915), containing fifty poems, which was very well received.

The critic Edward Marsh printed three of the poems in the Georgian Poetry series, and remained a correspondent for the remainder of Ledwidge's life.

[20] Ledwidge's submissions to the Drogheda Independent in 1913 were done with the eventual aim of publishing a book: Legends and Stories of the Boyne Side.

[22] A further edition, expanded to include some short stories, a war record, and the full text of an autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, was released in 2006: Legends of the Boyne and Selected Prose.

[citation needed] Later collections gathering more of the poetry: A study of the poet and his literary milieu, with a few previously unpublished works: Selections from the body of Ledwidge's work: Some of Ledwidge's poetry was set to music by the British composer and songwriter Michael Head, most notably in the song cycle published in 1920, "Over the rim of the moon".

On the eve of All-Ireland Poetry Day', 2 October 2013, O'Gara-Kilmurry was invited by the National Library of Ireland to deliver a lecture on "Francis Ledwidge: WWI Irish Nationalist War Poet."

Secondly, he wrote on war themes peculiar to soldiers fighting on front-lines, and finally, he belonged to a category of poets singled out by the celebrated literary sponsor of his day, Edward Howard Marsh, Private Secretary to Winston Churchill.

Central to the literal argument is our theory that Francis Ledwidge meets criteria set out for War Poets and identified by Marsh's friend and fellow academic Robert H. Ross, who in 1965 published a study attempting to explore the Georgians (Robert H. Ross, Georgian Summer (London: Faber and Faber, 1965))."

He shall not hear the bittern cryin the wild sky, where he is lain,Nor voices of the sweeter birdsAbove the wailing of the rain   Nor shall he know when the loud March blowsThro' slanting snows her fanfare shrill,Blowing to flame the golden cupOf many an upset daffodil.

But when the dark cow leaves the moorAnd pastures poor with greedy weedsPerhaps he'll hear her low at morn Lifting her horn in pleasant meads.

– Lament for Thomas MacDonagh Ledwidge was the subject of an RTÉ documentary entitled Behind the Closed Eye, first broadcast on 18 January 1973.