POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS

BY JOHN M. SYNGE

MAUNSEL & COMPANY, LTD 96 MIDDLE ABBEY ST. DUBLIN

1911

Cuala Press Edition. 1909. Copyright. John Quinn. 1909
Reprinted with additions (Collected Works of J. M. Synge) 1910
All rights reserved

Printed by Maunsel and Co., Ltd., Dublin

CONTENTS

POEMS

TRANSLATIONS FROM PETRARCH
SONNETS FROM “LAURA IN DEATH”

TRANSLATIONS FROM VILLON
AND OTHERS

POEMS

PREFACE

I have often thought that at the side of the poetic diction, which everyone condemns, modern verse contains a great deal of poetic material, using poetic in the same special sense. The poetry of exaltation will be always the highest; but when men lose their poetic feeling for ordinary life, and cannot write poetry of ordinary things, their exalted poetry is likely to lose its strength of exaltation, in the way men cease to build beautiful churches when they have lost happiness in building shops.

Many of the older poets, such as Villon and Herrick and Burns, used the whole of their personal life as their material, and the verse written in this way was read by strong men, and thieves, and deacons, not by little cliques only. Then, in the town writing of the eighteenth century, ordinary life was put into verse that was not poetry, and when poetry came back with Coleridge and Shelley, it went into verse that was not always human.

In these days poetry is usually a flower of evil or good; but it is the timber of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms.

Even if we grant that exalted poetry can be kept successful by itself, the strong things of life are needed in poetry also, to show that what is exalted or tender is not made by feeble blood. It may almost be said that before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.

The poems which follow were written at different times during the last sixteen or seventeen years, most of them before the views just stated, with which they have little to do, had come into my head.

The translations are sometimes free, and sometimes almost literal, according as seemed most fitting with the form of language I have used.

J. M. S.

Glenageary, December, 1908.

QUEENS

Seven dog-days we let pass

Naming Queens in Glenmacnass,

All the rare and royal names

Wormy sheepskin yet retains:

Etain, Helen, Maeve, and Fand,

Golden Deirdre’s tender hand;

Bert, the big-foot, sung by Villon,

Cassandra, Ronsard found in Lyon.

Queens of Sheba, Meath, and Connaught,

Coifed with crown, or gaudy bonnet;

Queens whose finger once did stir men,

Queens were eaten of fleas and vermin,

Queens men drew like Monna Lisa,

Or slew with drugs in Rome and Pisa.

We named Lucrezia Crivelli,

And Titian’s lady with amber belly,

Queens acquainted in learned sin,

Jane of Jewry’s slender shin:

Queens who cut the bogs of Glanna,

Judith of Scripture, and Gloriana,

Queens who wasted the East by proxy,

Or drove the ass-cart, a tinker’s doxy.

Yet these are rotten—I ask their pardon—

And we’ve the sun on rock and garden;

These are rotten, so you’re the Queen

Of all are living, or have been.

IN KERRY

We heard the thrushes by the shore and sea,

And saw the golden stars’ nativity,

Then round we went the lane by Thomas Flynn,

Across the church where bones lie out and in;

And there I asked beneath a lonely cloud

Of strange delight, with one bird singing loud,

What change you’d wrought in graveyard, rock and sea,

This new wild paradise to wake for me....

Yet knew no more than knew those merry sins

Had built this stack of thigh-bones, jaws and shins.

A WISH

May seven tears in every week

Touch the hollow of your cheek,

That I—signed with such a dew—

For a lion’s share may sue

Of the roses ever curled

Round the May-pole of the world.

Heavy riddles lie in this,

Sorrow’s sauce for every kiss.

THE ’MERGENCY MAN

He was lodging above in Coom,

And he’d the half of the bailiff’s room.

Till a black night came in Coomasaharn

A night of rains you’d swamp a star in.

“To-night,” says he, “with the devil’s weather

The hares itself will quit the heather.

I’ll catch my boys with a latch on the door,

And serve my process on near a score.”

The night was black at the fording place,

And the flood was up in a whitened race,

But devil a bit he’d turn his face.

Then the peelers said, “Now mind your lepping,

How can you see the stones for stepping?

“We’ll wash our hands of your bloody job.”

“Wash and welcome,” says he, “begob.”

He made two leps with a run and dash,

Then the peelers heard a yell and splash;

And the ’mergency man in two days and a bit

Was found in the ebb tide stuck in a net.

DANNY

One night a score of Erris men,

A score I’m told and nine,

Said, “We’ll get shut of Danny’s noise

Of girls and widows dyin’.

“There’s not his like from Binghamstown

To Boyle and Ballycroy,

At playing hell on decent girls,

At beating man and boy.

“He’s left two pairs of female twins

Beyond in Killacreest,

And twice in Crossmolina fair

He’s struck the parish priest.

“But we’ll come round him in the night

A mile beyond the Mullet;

Ten will quench his bloody eyes,

And ten will choke his gullet.”

It wasn’t long till Danny came,

From Bangor making way,

And he was damning moon and stars

And whistling grand and gay.

Till in a gap of hazel glen—

And not a hare in sight—

Out lepped the nine-and-twenty lads

Along his left and right.

Then Danny smashed the nose on Byrne,

He split the lips on three,

And bit across the right hand thumb

On one Red Shawn Magee.

But seven tripped him up behind,

And seven kicked before,

And seven squeezed around his throat

Till Danny kicked no more.

Then some destroyed him with their heels,

Some tramped him in the mud,

Some stole his purse and timber pipe,

And some washed off his blood.

And when you’re walking out the way

From Bangor to Belmullet,

You’ll see a flat cross on a stone

Where men choked Danny’s gullet.

PATCH-SHANEEN

Shaneen and Maurya Prendergast

Lived west in Carnareagh,

And they’d a cur-dog, cabbage plot,

A goat, and cock of hay.

He was five foot one or two,

Herself was four foot ten,

And he went travelling asking meal

Above through Caragh Glen.

She’d pick her bag of carrageen

Or perries through the surf,

Or loan an ass of Foxy Jim

To fetch her creel of turf.

Till on one windy Samhain night,

When there’s stir among the dead,

He found her perished, stiff and stark,

Beside him in the bed.

And now when Shaneen travels far

From Droum to Ballyhyre

The women lay him sacks or straw,

Beside the seed of fire.

And when the grey cocks crow and flap,

And winds are in the sky,

“Oh, Maurya, Maurya, are you dead?”

You’ll hear Patch-Shaneen cry.

ON AN ISLAND

You’ve plucked a curlew, drawn a hen,

Washed the shirts of seven men,

You’ve stuffed my pillow, stretched the sheet,

And filled the pan to wash your feet,

You’ve cooped the pullets, wound the clock,

And rinsed the young men’s drinking crock;

And now we’ll dance to jigs and reels,

Nailed boots chasing girls’ naked heels,

Until your father’ll start to snore,

And Jude, now you’re married, will stretch on the floor.

BEG-INNISH

Bring Kateen-beug and Maurya Jude

To dance in Beg-Innish,

And when the lads (they’re in Dunquin)

Have sold their crabs and fish,

Wave fawny shawls and call them in,

And call the little girls who spin,

And seven weavers from Dunquin,

To dance in Beg-Innish.

I’ll play you jigs, and Maurice Kean,

Where nets are laid to dry,

I’ve silken strings would draw a dance

From girls are lame or shy;

Four strings I’ve brought from Spain and France

To make your long men skip and prance,

Till stars look out to see the dance

Where nets are laid to dry.

We’ll have no priest or peeler in

To dance in Beg-Innish;

But we’ll have drink from M’riarty Jim

Rowed round while gannets fish,

A keg with porter to the brim,

That every lad may have his whim,

Till we up sails with M’riarty Jim

And sail from Beg-Innish.

EPITAPH

After reading Ronsard’s lines from Rabelais

If fruits are fed on any beast

Let vine-roots suck this parish priest,

For while he lived, no summer sun

Went up but he’d a bottle done,

And in the starlight beer and stout

Kept his waistcoat bulging out.

Then Death that changes happy things

Damned his soul to water springs.

THE PASSING OF THE SHEE

After looking at one of A. E.’s pictures

Adieu, sweet Angus, Maeve, and Fand,

Ye plumed yet skinny Shee,

That poets played with hand in hand

To learn their ecstasy.

We’ll stretch in Red Dan Sally’s ditch,

And drink in Tubber fair,

Or poach with Red Dan Philly’s bitch

The badger and the hare.

ON AN ANNIVERSARY

After reading the dates in a book of Lyrics.

With Fifteen-ninety or Sixteen-sixteen

We end Cervantes, Marot, Nashe or Green:

Then Sixteen-thirteen till two score and nine,

Is Crashaw’s niche, that honey-lipped divine.

And so when all my little work is done

They’ll say I came in Eighteen-seventy-one,

And died in Dublin.... What year will they write

For my poor passage to the stall of night?

TO THE OAKS OF GLENCREE

My arms are round you, and I lean

Against you, while the lark

Sings over us, and golden lights, and green

Shadows are on your bark.

There’ll come a season when you’ll stretch

Black boards to cover me:

Then in Mount Jerome I will lie, poor wretch,

With worms eternally.

A QUESTION

I asked if I got sick and died, would you

With my black funeral go walking too,

If you’d stand close to hear them talk or pray

While I’m let down in that steep bank of clay.

And, No, you said, for if you saw a crew

Of living idiots pressing round that new

Oak coffin—they alive, I dead beneath

That board—you’d rave and rend them with your teeth.

DREAD

Beside a chapel I’d a room looked down,

Where all the women from the farms and town,

On Holy-days and Sundays used to pass

To marriages, and christenings, and to Mass.

Then I sat lonely watching score and score,

Till I turned jealous of the Lord next door....

Now by this window, where there’s none can see,

The Lord God’s jealous of yourself and me.

IN GLENCULLEN

Thrush, linnet, stare and wren,

Brown lark beside the sun,

Take thought of kestril, sparrow-hawk,

Birdlime and roving gun.

You great-great-grand-children

Of birds I’ve listened to,

I think I robbed your ancestors

When I was young as you.

I’VE THIRTY MONTHS

I’ve thirty months, and that’s my pride,

Before my age’s a double score,

Though many lively men have died

At twenty-nine or little more.

I’ve left a long and famous set

Behind some seven years or three,

But there are millions I’d forget

Will have their laugh at passing me.

25, IX, 1908.

EPITAPH

A silent sinner, nights and days,

No human heart to him drew nigh,

Alone he wound his wonted ways,

Alone and little loved did die.

And autumn Death for him did choose,

A season dank with mists and rain,

And took him, while the evening dews

Were settling o’er the fields again.

PRELUDE

Still south I went and west and south again,

Through Wicklow from the morning till the night,

And far from cities, and the sights of men,

Lived with the sunshine, and the moon’s delight.

I knew the stars, the flowers, and the birds,

The grey and wintry sides of many glens,

And did but half remember human words,

In converse with the mountains, moors, and fens.

IN MAY

In a nook

That opened south,

You and I

Lay mouth to mouth.

A snowy gull

And sooty daw

Came and looked

With many a caw;

“Such,” I said,

“Are I and you,

When you’ve kissed me

Black and blue!”