Dublin Roads
WHEN you were a lad that lacked a trade,
Oh, many's the thing you'd see on the way
From Kill-o'-the-Grange to Ballybrack,
And from Cabinteely down into Bray,
When you walked these roads the whole of a day.
High walls there would be to the left and right,
With ivies growing across the top,
And a briary ditch on the other side,
And a place where a quiet goat might crop,
And a wayside bench where a man could stop.
A hen that had found a thing in her sleep,
One would think, the way she went craw-craw-cree,
You would hear as you sat on the bench was there,
And a cock that thought he crew mightily,
And all the stir of the world would be
A cart that went creaking along the road,
And another cart that kept coming a-near;
[...] Read more
poem by Padraic Colum
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Girls Spinning
FIRST GIRL
MALLO lero iss im bo nero!
Go where they're threshing and find me my lover,
Mallo lero iss im bo bairn!
SECOND GIRL
Mallo lero iss im bo nero!
Who shall I bring you? Rody the Rover?
Mallo lero iss im bo baun!
FIRST GIRL
Mallo lero iss im bo nero!
Listen and hear what he's singing over.
Mallo lero iss im bo baun!
(A man's voice sings
I went out m the evening, my sweetheart for to find;
I stood by her cottage window, as well I do mind;
I stood by her cottage window, and I thought I would get in,
But instead of pleasures for me my sorrows did begin!
[...] Read more
poem by Padraic Colum
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Verses For Alfeo Faggi's Stations Of The Cross
I
HERE Pilate's Court is:
None may clatter nor call
Where the Wolf giving suck
To the Twins glares on all
'Strip Him and scourge Him
Till flesh shows the blood,
And afterwards nail Him
On cross of wood.'
O Lord
Silence in us the condemning word!
II
Heaven witnesseth, but only in the heart
Is any aid:
'They know not what they do,' and then on Him
The Cross is laid
The Cross that's wide and long enough to bear
His flesh and bone:
A spectacle unto the crowded way,
[...] Read more
poem by Padraic Colum
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Polonius and the Ballad Singers
A gaunt built woman and her son-in-law—
A broad-faced fellow, with such flesh as shows
Nothing but easy nature—and his wife,
The woman’s daughter, who spills all her talk
Out of a wide mouth, but who has eyes as gray
As Connemara, where the mountain-ash
Shows berries red indeed: they enter now—
Our country singers!
“Sing, my good woman, sing us some romance
That has been round your chimney-nooks so long
’Tis nearly native; something blown here
And since made racy—like yon tree, I might say,
Native by influence if not by species,
Shaped by our winds. You understand, I think?”
“I’ll sing the song, sir.”
To-night you see my face—
Maybe nevermore you’ll gaze
On the one that for you left his friends and kin;
For by the hard commands
Of the lord that rules these lands
[...] Read more
poem by Padraic Colum
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Ballad Of Downal Baun
The moon-cradle's rocking and rocking,
Where a cloud and a cloud goes by:
Silently rocking and rocking,
The moon-cradle out in the sky.
The hound's in his loop by the fire,
The bond-woman spins at the door;
One rides on a horse through the court-yard:
The sword-sheath drops on the floor.
I
MY grandfather, Downal Baun,
Had the dream that comes three times:
He dreamt it first when, a servant-boy,
He lay by the nets and the lines,
In the house of Fargal More,
And by Fargal's ash-strewn fire,
When Downal had herded the kine in the waste,
And had foddered them all in the byre;
[...] Read more
poem by Padraic Colum
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Reminiscence
I
The Swallows sang
ALIEN to us are
Your fields, and your cotes, and your glebes;
Secret our nests are
Although they be built in your eaves;
Un-eaten by us are
The grains that grow in your fields.
The Weathercock on the barn answered
Not alien to ye are
The powers of un-earthbound beings:
Their curse ye would bring
On our cotes, and our glebes, and our fields,
If aught should befall
The brood that is bred in the eaves.
The Swallows answered
If aught should befall
Our brood that's not travelled the seas,
[...] Read more
poem by Padraic Colum
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!