Lilac Blossoms
WE mark the playing-time of sun and rain,
Until the rain too heavily upon us
Leans, and the sun stamps down upon our lustres,
And then our trees stand in their greennesses
No different from the privets in the hedges,
And we who made a pleasaunce at the door-step,
And, whether by the ash-heap or the spring-well
Growing, were ever fresh and ever radiant,
And fragrant more than grass is
We, we are gone without a word that praised us
You did not know how short the playing-time!
poem by Padraic Colum
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The City Clocks
THE City clocks point out the hours
They look like moons on their darkened towers-
And I who was shown my destination
Thrice, but have no sense of location,
Am back again at one or the other
Looming clocks that have changed the figure.
Moments a thousand have hurried over,
And the sought place is as far as ever.
The City clocks point out the hours
They look like moons on their darkened towers;
That Time and Place are a tangled skein
Their mingled strokes say over again.
poem by Padraic Colum
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Wild Ass
THE Wild Ass lounges, legs struck out
In vagrom unconcern:
The tombs o Achaemenian kings
Are for those hooves to spurn.
And all of rugged Tartary
Lies with him on the ground,
The Tartary that knows no awe,
That has nor ban nor bound.
The wild horse from the herd is plucked
To bear a saddle's weight;
The boar is one keeps covert, and
The wolf runs with a mate.
But he's the solitary of space,
Curbless and unbeguiled;
The only being that bears a heart
Not recreant to the wild.
poem by Padraic Colum
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Laburnums
OVER old walls the Laburnums
hang cones of fire;
Laburnums that grow out of old
mould in old gardens:
Old maids and old men who have savings or pensions have
Shuttered themselves in the pales of old gardens.
The gardens grow wild; out of their mould the Laburnums
Draw cones of fire.
And we, who've no lindens, no palms, no cedars of Lebanon,
Rejoice you have gardens with mould, old men and old maids:
The bare and the dusty streets have now the Laburnums,
Have now cones of fire!
poem by Padraic Colum
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Garadh
FOR the poor body that I own
I could weep many a tear:
The days have stolen flesh and bone,
And left a changeling here.
Four feeble bones are left to me,
And the basket of my breast,
And I am mean and ugly now
As the scald flung from the nest.
The briars drag me at the knee,
The brambles go within,
And often do I feel him turn,
The old man in my skin.
The strength is carded from my bones,
The swiftness drained from me,
And all the living thoughts I had
Are like far ships at sea!
poem by Padraic Colum
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The Sister's Lullaby
You would not slumber
If laid at my breast:
You would not slumber.
The river-flood beats
The swan from her nest:
You would not slumber.
And like that quick flood
My blood goes unguessed:
You would not slumber.
Times without number
Has called the wood quest:
Times without number.
As oft as she called
To me you were pressed:
Times without number.
[...] Read more
poem by Padraic Colum
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Imitation of a Welsh Poem
AND that was when the chevaldour
Through the whole of night
Sang, for the moon of mid-July
Made the hillside bright.
Morfydd to David ap Gwillam spoke
When the song they did not hear,
'Something is stirring in the fern,
A living thing comes near.'
'Twas not the wolf, 'twas not the deer
That came with pause and bound;
A creature stood above the pair
Ap Gwillam's Irish hound
And knew them then, and knew them there
Where the pine branches wave,
As close beside, as deep in earth,
As lone as in a grave!
poem by Padraic Colum
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The Terrible Robber Men
OH I wish the sun was bright in the sky,
And the fox was back in his den O!
For always I'm hearing the passing by
Of the terrible robber men O!
Of the terrible robber men.
Oh what does the fox carry over the rye,
When it's bright in the morn again O!
And what is it making the lonesome cry
With the terrible robber men O!
With the terrible robber men.
Oh I wish the sun was bright m the sky,
And the fox was back in his den O!
For always I'm hearing the passing by
Of the terrible robber men O!
With the terrible robber men.
poem by Padraic Colum
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On Two Sisters Whose Deaths Were Together
IN woods remote, hid in the mountain hollows,
Doves there are that have a gentler beauty,
Doves that are marked as by a poet's image,
And hence are called Doves of the Wounded Heart.
And such ye were, and we could never learn the
Call that would bring you to our breasts, our hands!
And such ye were, and ye were aliens in our
Barnyard-world Doves of the Wounded Heart!
You who were proud no storm had ever turned your
Flight, and you who were her cherished one
May ye have found, hid in your mountain hollows,
Your wood remote, Doves of the Wounded Heart!
poem by Padraic Colum
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Aquarium Fish
MOULD-COLOURED like the leaf long fallen from
The autumn branch, he rises now, the Fish.
The cold eyes of the gannets see their rock:
He has No-whither. Who was it marked
Earth from the waters? Who
Divided space into such lines for us,
Giving men To and Fro, not Up and Down?
This dweller in the ancient element
Knows Space's cross-road. Who
Closed up the Depth to us? He rises now
Mould-coloured like the leaf long fallen from
The autumn branch, with eyes that are like lamps
Magicians fill with oils from dead men ta'en,
Most rootless of all beings, the Fish.
poem by Padraic Colum
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