The Tin-Whistle Player
'Tis long since, long since, since I heard
A tin-whistle played,
And heard the tunes, the ha'penny tunes
That nobody made!
The tunes that were before Cendfind
And Cir went Ireland's rounds
That were before the surety
That strings have given sounds!
And now is standing in the mist,
And jigging backward there,
Shrilling with fingers and with breath,
A tin-whistle player!
He has hare's eyes, a long face rimmed
Around with badger-grey;
Aimless, like cries of mountain birds
The tunes he has to play
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poem by Padraic Colum
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Dermott Donn MacMorna
ONE day you'll come to my husband's door,
Dermoit Donn MacMorna,
One day you'll come to Hugh's dark door,
And the pain at my heart will be no more,
Dermott Donn MacMorna!
From his bed, from his fire I'll rise,
Dermott Donn MacMorna,
From the bed of Hugh, from his fire I'll rise,
With my laugh for the pious, the quiet, the wise,
Dermott Donn MacMorna!
Lonesome, lonesome, the house of Hugh,
Dermott Donn MacMorna,
No cradle rocks in the house of Hugh;
The list'ning fire has thought of you,
Dermott Donn MacMorna!
Out of this loneliness we'll go,
Dermott Donn MacMorna,
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poem by Padraic Colum
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Tulips
An age being mathematical, these flowers
Of linear stalks and spheroid blooms were prized
By men with wakened, speculative minds,
And when with mathematics they explored
The Macrocosm, and came at last to
The Vital Spirit of the World, and named it
Invisible Pure Fire, or, say, the Light,
The Tulips were the Light's receptacles.
The gold, the bronze, the red, the bright-swart Tulips!
No emblems they for us who no more dream
Of mathematics burgeoning to light
With Newton's prism and Spinoza's lens,
Or berkeley's ultimate, Invisible Pure Fire.
In colored state and carven brilliancy
We see them now, or, more illumined,
In sudden fieriness, as flowers fit
To go with vestments red on Pentecost.
poem by Padraic Colum
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Song Of Starlings
WE'VE watched the starlings flocking past the statues
That we have often seen in other cities
Hope, Justice, Commerce and have heard them sing
Unvarying songs that are their memories-
Memories of winds that they've been blown by,
And rivers bordered with their beds of sedges,
And level lands on which are empty folds.
Daylight dims, and we
May not return to where a lamp
Beams, making a room familiar, and a wife
Tells of the children's doings: we hear the starlings
As we have heard them often in other cities,
Around other cupolas, along other cornices,
In sunless parks bunched on the tops of trees,
And see around us bleak, monotonous fields
Our hearts must ever hold theirs are these songs
These are the songs that most touch us exiles!
poem by Padraic Colum
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Dedication: To M. C. M. C.
THE well-
They come to it and take
Their cupful or their palmful out of it.
The well-
Stones are around it, and an elder bush
Is there; a high rowan tree; and so
The well is marked.
Who knows
Whence come the waters? Through what passages
Beneath? From what high tors
Where forests are? Forests dripping rain!
Branches pouring to the ground; trunks, barks, roots,
Letting the streamlets down: through the dark earth
The water flows, and in that secret flood
That's called a spring, that finds this little hollow.
Who knows
Whence come the waters that fill cup and palm?
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poem by Padraic Colum
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Fuchsia Hedges In Connacht
I THINK some saint of Eirinn wandering far
Found you and brought you here Demoiselles!
For so I greet you in this alien air!
And like those maidens who were only known
In their own land as daughters of the King,
Children of Charlemagne
You have, by following that pilgrim-saint,
Become high vot’resses
You have made your palace beauty dedicate,
And your pomp serviceable:
You stand beside our folds!
I think you came from some old Roman land
Most alien, but most Catholic are you:
Your purple is the purple that enfolds,
In Passion Week, the Shrine,
Your scarlet is the scarlet of the wounds:
You bring before our walls, before our doors
Lamps of the Sanctuary;
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poem by Padraic Colum
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Interior
THE little moths are creeping
Across the cottage pane;
On the floor the chickens gather,
And they make talk and complain.
And she sits by the fire
Who has reared so many men;
Her voice is low like the chickens'
With the things she says again:
'The sons that come back do be restless,
They search for the thing to say;
Then they take thought like the swallows,
And the morrow brings them away.
In the old, old days upon Innish,
The fields were lucky and bright,
And if you lay down you'd be covered
By the grass of one soft night.
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poem by Padraic Colum
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I shall not Die for thee
O woman, shapely as the swan,
On your account I shall not die:
The men you've slain -- a trivial clan --
Were less than I.
I ask me shall I die for these --
For blossom teeth and scarlet lips --
And shall that delicate swan-shape
Bring me eclipse?
Well-shaped the breasts and smooth the skin,
The cheeks are fair, the tresses free --
And yet I shall not suffer death,
God over me!
Those even brows, that hair like gold,
Those languorous tones, that virgin way,
The flowing limbs, the rounded heel
Slight men betray!
Thy spirit keen through radiant mien,
Thy shining throat and smiling eye,
Thy little palm, thy side like foam --
I cannot die!
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poem by Padraic Colum
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Monkeys
Two little creatures
with faces the size of
a pair of pennies
are clasping each other
"Ah do not leave me"
One says to the other
in the high monkey -
cage in the beast shop
there are no people
to gape at them now
for people are loth
peer in the dimness
have they not builded
streets and playhouses
sky sign and bars
to lose the lonlieness
shaking the hearts
of the two little monkeys
Yes,but who watches
the penny small faces
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poem by Padraic Colum
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Roger Casement
THEY have hanged Roger Casement to the tolling
of a bell,
Ochone, och, ochone, ochone!
And their Smiths, and their Murrays, and their Cecils say it's well,
Ochone, och, ochone, ochone!
But there are outcast peoples to lift that
spirit high,
Flayed men and breastless women who laboured
fearfully,
And they will lift him, lift him, for the eyes
of God to see,
And it's well, after all, Roger Casement!
They've ta'en his strangled body from the gallows to the pit,
Ochone, och, ochone, ochone!
And the flame that eats into it, the quicklime, brought to it,
Ochone, och, ochone, ochone!
To waste that noble stature, the grave and brightening face,
In which courtesy and kindliness had eminence of place,
But they they'll die to dust which the wind will take a-pace,
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poem by Padraic Colum
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