Another Song Of A Fool
This great purple butterfly, In the prison of my hands, Has a learning in his eye Not a poor fool understands. Once he lived a schoolmaster With a stark, denying look; A string of
Father And Child
She hears me strike the board and say That she is under ban Of all good men and women, Being mentioned with a man That has the worst of all bad names; And thereupon
The Cap And Bells
The jester walked in the garden: The garden had fallen still; He bade his soul rise upward And stand on her window-sill. It rose in a straight blue garment, When owls began to call:
Beautiful Lofty Things
Beautiful lofty things: O’Leary’s noble head; My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd: ‘This Land of Saints,’ and then as the applause died out, ‘Of plaster Saints’; his beautiful mischievous
The Two Kings
King Eochaid came at sundown to a wood Westward of Tara. Hurrying to his queen He had outridden his war-wasted men That with empounded cattle trod the mire, And where beech-trees had mixed a
Parting
He. Dear, I must be gone While night Shuts the eyes Of the household spies; That song announces dawn. She. No, night’s bird and love’s Bids all true lovers rest, While his loud song
A Prayer For Old Age
God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone; He that sings a lasting song Thinks in a marrow-bone; From all that makes a wise old man That can be praised
The Ballad Of Father Gilligan
The old priest Peter Gilligan Was weary night and day; For half his flock were in their beds, Or under green sods lay. Once, while he nodded on a chair, At the moth-hour of
The Shadowy Waters: The Harp of Aengus
Edain came out of Midhir’s hill, and lay Beside young Aengus in his tower of glass, Where time is drowned in odour-laden winds And Druid moons, and murmuring of boughs, And sleepy boughs, and
The Fool By The Roadside
(version of The Hero, The Girl And The Fool) When all works that have From cradle run to grave From grave to cradle run instead; When thoughts that a fool Has wound upon a
Two Songs From A Play
I I saw a staring virgin stand Where holy Dionysus died, And tear the heart out of his side. And lay the heart upon her hand And bear that beating heart away; Of Magnus
The Three Monuments
They hold their public meetings where Our most renowned patriots stand, One among the birds of the air, A stumpier on either hand; And all the popular statesmen say That purity built up the
The Seven Sages
The First. My great-grandfather spoke to Edmund Burke In Grattan’s house. The Second. My great-grandfather shared A pot-house bench with Oliver Goldsmith once. The Third. My great-grandfather’s father talked of music, Drank tar-water with
The Wheel
Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when abounding hedges ring Declare that winter’s best of all; And after that there s nothing good Because the spring-time
In Memory Of Alfred Pollexfen
Five-and-twenty years have gone Since old William pollexfen Laid his strong bones down in death By his wife Elizabeth In the grey stone tomb he made. And after twenty years they laid In that