In that year she completed her largest score, the rhapsody Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking for tenor solo, mixed chorus and orchestra, to a text by Walt Whitman.
[4] Coghill stopped composing in the early 1940s, concentrating on her performing career, but began writing and translating poetry (three publications between 1948 and 1958).
It has been suggested that a reason for this re-orientation may have been that in the poetry and literature-dominated perception of Irish culture it was easier to receive acknowledgements as a poet rather than as a composer.
[5] Coghill remained unmarried and spent her late years from 1982 at Westfield House, Morehampton Road, Dublin, where she died aged 96.
[8] The work is remarkable for its unconventional tenor line (resembling the irregular metre of the poetry), the use of whole-tone scales, and its overall serious expression and emotional drama.
"[14] In the introduction to her first collection (1948), Seumas O'Sullivan wrote that Coghill's expressiveness would "eventually give their author full title to a place amongst the poets of our time".