The Everlasting Voices
O sweet everlasting Voices, be still; Go to the guards of the heavenly fold And bid them wander obeying your will, Flame under flame, till Time be no more; Have you not heard that
The Wanderings of Oisin: Book I
S. Patrick. You who are bent, and bald, and blind, With a heavy heart and a wandering mind, Have known three centuries, poets sing, Of dalliance with a demon thing. Oisin. Sad to remember,
Cuchulan's Fight With The Sea
A man came slowly from the setting sun, To Emer, raddling raiment in her dun, And said, ‘I am that swineherd whom you bid Go watch the road between the wood and tide, But
The Hawk
‘Call down the hawk from the air; Let him be hooded or caged Till the yellow eye has grown mild, For larder and spit are bare, The old cook enraged, The scullion gone wild.’
Red Hanrahan's Song About Ireland
The old brown thorn-trees break in two high over Cummen Strand, Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand; Our courage breaks like an old tree in a black wind and
The Ballad Of The Foxhunter
‘Lay me in a cushioned chair; Carry me, ye four, With cushions here and cushions there, To see the world once more. ‘To stable and to kennel go; Bring what is there to bring;
The Lover Pleads With His Friend For Old Friends
Though you are in your shining days, Voices among the crowd And new friends busy with your praise, Be not unkind or proud, But think about old friends the most: Time’s bitter flood will
What Was Lost
I sing what was lost and dread what was won, I walk in a battle fought over again, My king a lost king, and lost soldiers my men; Feet to the Rising and Setting
Blood And The Moon
I Blessed be this place, More blessed still this tower; A bloody, arrogant power Rose out of the race Uttering, mastering it, Rose like these walls from these Storm-beaten cottages – In mockery I
Model For The Laureate
On thrones from China to Peru All sorts of kings have sat That men and women of all sorts Proclaimed both good and great; And what’s the odds if such as these For reason
A Man Young And Old: VII. The Friends Of His Youth
Laughter not time destroyed my voice And put that crack in it, And when the moon’s pot-bellied I get a laughing fit, For that old Madge comes down the lane, A stone upon her
The Rose Tree
‘O words are lightly spoken,’ Said Pearse to Connolly, ‘Maybe a breath of politic words Has withered our Rose Tree; Or maybe but a wind that blows Across the bitter sea.’ ‘It needs to
The Dolls
A doll in the doll-maker’s house Looks at the cradle and bawls: ‘That is an insult to us.’ But the oldest of all the dolls, Who had seen, being kept for show, Generations of
The Three Bushes
An incident from the ‘Historia mei Temporis’ Of the Abbe Michel de Bourdeille Said lady once to lover, ‘None can rely upon A love that lacks its proper food; And if your love were
Fragments
I Locke sank into a swoon; The Garden died; God took the spinning-jenny Out of his side. II Where got I that truth? Out of a medium’s mouth. Out of nothing it came, Out