In Memory Of John Butler Yeats
'TO-NIGHT,' you said, 'to-night, all Ireland round
The curlews call.' The dinner-talk went on,
And I knew what you heard and what you saw,
That left you for a little while withdrawn-
The lonely land, the lonely-crying birds!
Your words, your breath is gone!
O uncaught spirit, we'll remember you
By those remote and ever-flying birds
Adown the Shannon's reach, or crying through
The mist between Clew Bay and Dublin Bay!
poem by Padraic Colum
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Bat
IN broad daylight
He should not be:
Yet toward and froward,
Froward and toward
He weaves a flight.
Who will guide him back to his cave,
A little Bat astray,
Where he'll rest on the breast of night,
Away from day's bright miscreation?
The linnet throbs through the air,
The magpie coquettes with day,
The rook caws 'Time to be gone,'
And travels on;
While toward and froward,
Froward and toward,
The Bat ... a fathom
Of flight . . . weaves.
poem by Padraic Colum
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In The Carolina Woods
HERE you should lie, ye Kings of eld,
Barbarossa, Boabdil,
And Czar Lazar and Charlemagne,
Arthur, Gaelic Finn-
Here where the
muffling Spanish mosses
Forests with forests fill!
Not in a cavern where the winds
Trample with battle-call,
But in these woods where branch and branch
From tree and tree let fall
Not moss, but grey and cobweb beards,
Kings' cabalistic beards!
Here should you sleep your cycles out,
Ye Kings with hoary beards!
poem by Padraic Colum
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The Beggar's Child
MAVOURNEEN, we'll go far away
From the net of the crooked town
Where they grudge us the light of the day.
Around my neck you will lay
Two tight little arms of brown.
Mavourneen, we'll go far away
From the net of the crooked town.
And what will we hear on the way?
The stir of wings up and down
In nests where the little birds stay!
Mavourneen, we'll go far away
From the net of the crooked town
Where they grudge us the light of the day.
poem by Padraic Colum
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Old Soldier
WE wander now who marched before,
Hawking our bran from door to door,
While other men from the mill take their flour:
So it is to be an Old Soldier.
Old, bare and sore, we look on the hound
Turning upon the stiff frozen ground,
Nosing the mould, with the night around:
So it is to be an Old Soldier.
And we who once rang out like a bell,
Have nothing now to show or to sell;
Old bones to carry, old stories to tell:
So it is to be an Old Soldier.
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Young Girl: Annam
I AM a young girl;
I live here alone:
I write long letters
But there is no one
For me to send them to. My heart
Teaches me loving words to use,
But I can repeat them only
In the garden, to the tall bamboos.
Expectantly I stand beside the door. I raise
The hanging mat. I,
The letter folded, gaze out
And see shadows of the passers-by.
In the garden the fire-flies
Quench and kindle their soft glow:
I am one separated,
But from whom I do not know.
poem by Padraic Colum
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Night-Fliers
THE birds that soar break space
Like heavy bodies hurled!
Not so the birds of night
They move as in a sphere
On which they touch always
How patterned their flight!
The owl, the whippoorwill!
And like volcano's ash
His plumes all cinderous
Black mirrors are his eyes
(The owl's). They'll fill with light
What time will come the cries
As from tongues taut with dews
(The whippoorwills). What sounds
Are in their day-lost world,
What motions and what hues!
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A Rann Of Exile
NOR right, nor left, nor any road I see a comrade face,
Nor word to lift the heart in me I hear in any place;
They leave me, who pass by me, to my loneliness and
care,
Without a house to draw my step nor a fire that I might share!
Ochone, before our people knew the scatt'ring of the
dearth,
Before they saw potatoes rot and melt black in the earth,
I might have stood in Connacht, on the top of Cruchmaelinn,
And all around me I would see the hundreds of my
kin.
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The Resplendent Quetzal-Bird
OTHERS have divers paints and enamels,
Lavish and bright on breast and wing feathers:
You, Guatemalan, have sunken all colours
Into glory of greenness!
There may be palms as greenly resplendent,
Palms by the Fountain of Youth in Anahuac
Such greens there may be on sea-sunken bronzes
The Gates of Callao!
There may be words in rituals spoken
To Quetzalcoatl who makes verdure through rain-flow
Words like the gash made by knives of obsidian
To tell of such greenness!
poem by Padraic Colum
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Achill Girl's Song
FROM THE IRISH
I’d bring you these for dowry
A field from heather free,
White sheep upon the mountain,
And calves that follow me.
I saw you by the well-side
Upon Saint Finnian's Day;
I thought you'd come and ask for me
But you kept far away.
Oh, if you ask not for me,
But leave me here instead,
The petticoat in dye-pot here
Will never fast its red
For me upon the well-slope
To wear on Finnian's Day
My dress will be the sheet bleached there,
[...] Read more
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