Odysseus: In Memory Of Arthur Griffith

You had the prose of logic and of scorn,
And words to sledge an iron argument,
And yet you could draw down the outland birds
To perch beside the ravens of your thought
The dreams whereby a people challenges
Its dooms, its bounds. You were the one who knew
What sacred resistance is in men
That are almost broken; how, from resistance used,
A strength is born, a stormy, bright-eyed strength
Like Homer's Iris, messenger of the gods,
Coming before the ships the enemy
Has flung the fire upon. Our own, our native strength
You mustered up. But I will never say this,
Walking beside you, or looking on you,
With your strong brow, and chin was like a targe,
And eyes that were so kindly of us all.

And sorrow comes as on that August day,
With our ship cleaving through the seas for home,
And that news coming sparkling through the air,

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poem by Padraic Colum
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What The Shutter Said As She Lay By The Fire

In The Farmer's House
I'M glad to lie on a sack of leaves
By a wasted fire and take my ease.
For the wind would strip me bare as a tree
The wind would blow oul’ age upon me,
And I'm dazed with the wind, the rain, and the cold!
If I had only the good red gold
To buy me the comfort of a roof,
And under the thatch the brown of the smoke!
I'd he up in my painted room
Until my hired girl would come;
And when the sun had warmed my walls
I'd rise up in my silks and shawls,
And break my fast beside the fire.
And Fd watch them that had to sweat
And shiver for shelter and what they ate
The farmer digging in the fields,
The beggars going from gate to gate,
The horses striving with their loads,
And all the sights upon the roads.

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poem by Padraic Colum
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Pigeons

ODALISQUES, odalisques,
Treading the pavement
With feet pomegranate-stained:
We bartered for, bought you
Back in the years
Ah, then we knew you,
Odalisques, odalisques,
Treading the pavement
With feet pomegranate-stained!

Queens of the air
Aithra, lole,
Eos and Auge,
Taking new beauty
From the sun's evening brightness,
Gyring in light
As nymphs play in waters
Aithra, lole,
Eos and Auge!

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poem by Padraic Colum
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The Bird of Jesus

IT was pure indeed,
The air we breathed in, the light we saw,
I and my brother, when we played that day,
Or piped to one another; then there came
Two young lads of an age with one another,
And with us two, and these two played with us,
And went away.

Each had a bearing that was like a prince's,
Yet they were simple lads and had the kindness
Of our own folk lads simple and unknowing:
Then, afterwards, we went to visit them.

Theirs was a village that was not far off,
But out of reach towards elbow, not towards hand:
And what was there were houses
Houses and some trees
And it was like a place within a fold.

We found the lads,

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poem by Padraic Colum
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Blades

SOJOURNER, set down
Your skimming wheel;
Nothing is sharp
That we have of steel:
Nothing has edge:
Oh, whirl around
Your wheel of stone
Till our blades be ground!

Harshly, quickly, under blades
Hafted with horn and wood and bone
Went the wheel:
Narrow long knives that should be one edge,
House-knives that sliced the loaf to the heel,
And scraped scales off mackerel,
And weighty knives that were shaped like a wedge-
Stone wakened keenness m their steel:
Knives with which besom-makers pare
Their heather-stalks, and hawkers' blades
Used by men of a dozen trades;

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Old Men Complaining

First Old Man
He threw his crutched stick down: there came
Into his face the anger flame,
And he spoke viciously of one
Who thwarted him—his son’s son.
He turned his head away.—“I hate
Absurdity of language, prate
From growing fellows. We’d not stay
About the house the whole of a day
When we were young,
Keeping no job and giving tongue!
“Not us in troth! We would not come
For bit or sup, but stay from home
If we gave answers, or we’d creep
Back to the house, and in we’d peep
Just like a corncrake.
“My grandson and his comrades take
A piece of coal from you, from me
A log, or sod of turf, maybe;
And in some empty place they’ll light

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The Burial of Saint Brendan

ON the third day from this (Saint Brendan said)
I will be where no wind that filled a sail
Has ever been, and it blew high or low:
For from this home-creek, from this body's close
I shall put forth: make ready, you, to go
With what remains to Cluan Hy-many,
For there my resurrection I'd have be.

But you will know how hard they'll strive to hold
This body o' me, and hold it for the place
Where I was bred, they say, and born and reared.
For they would have my resurrection here,
So that my sanctity might be matter shared
By every mother's child the tribeland polled
Who lived and died and mixed into the mould.

So you will have to use all canniness
To bring this body to its burial
When in your hands I leave what goes in clay;
The wagon that our goods are carried in

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Arab Songs

I. THE PARROT AND THE FALCON
MY Afghan poet-friend
With this made his message end,
'The scroll around my wall shows two the poets have known
The parrot and falcon they
The parrot hangs on his spray,
And silent the falcon sits with brooding and baleful eyes.

Men come to me : one says
'We have given your verses praise,
And we will keep your name abreast of the newer names;
But you must make what accords
With poems that are household words
Your own: write familiar things; to your hundred add a score.'

My friend, they would bestow
Fame for a shadow-show,
And they would pay with praise for things dead as last year's leaves.
But I look where the parrot, stilled,
Hangs a head with rumours filled,

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Asses

'I KNOW where I'd get
An ass that would do,
If I had the money
A pound or two.'

Said a ragged man
To my uncle one day;
He got the money
And went on his way.

And after that time
In market or fair
I'd look at the asses
That might be there.

And wonder what kind
Of an ass would do
For a ragged man
With a pound or two.

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Spinning Songs

A MOUNTAIN SPINNING SONG
(A Young Girl sings it)
THE Lannan Shee
Watched the young man Brian
Cross over the stile towards his father's door,
And she said, 'No help,
For now he'll see
His byre, his bawn, and his threshing-floor!
And, oh, the swallows
Forget all wonders
When walls with the nests rise up once more!'
My strand is knit.

'Out of the dream
Of me, into
The round of his labour he will grow;
To spread his fields
In the winds of spring,
And tramp the heavy glebe and sow;
And cut and clamp

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poem by Padraic Colum
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