THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
“FIONA MACLEOD"
(WILLIAM SHARP)

SELECTED WRITINGS OF
WILLIAM SHARP

Uniform with above, in two volumes
A MEMOIR OF WILLIAM SHARP
(FIONA MACLEOD)
Compiled by Mrs William Sharp

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

The Celtic
Library

LYRA CELTICA

LYRA CELTICA

AN ANTHOLOGY OF REPRE-
SENTATIVE CELTIC POETRY
EDITED BY
E. A. SHARP AND J. MATTHAY
WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
By WILLIAM SHARP
ANCIENT IRISH, ALBAN, GAELIC, BRETON,
CYMRIC, AND MODERN SCOTTISH AND
IRISH CELTIC POETRY
EDINBURGH: JOHN GRANT
31 GEORGE IV. BRIDGE
1924

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
OLIVER AND BOYD EDINBURGH

CONTENTS

“ ... a troubled Eden, rich
In throb of heart ...”

GEORGE MEREDITH

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

IN this foreword I must deal cursorily with a great and fascinating subject, for “Lyra Celtica” has extended beyond its original limits, and Text and Notes have absorbed much of the space which had been allotted for a preliminary dissertation on the distinguishing qualities and characteristics of Celtic literature.

For most readers, the interest of an anthology is independent of any introductory remarks: the appeal is in the wares, not in the running commentary of the hawker. For those, however, who have looked for a detailed synthesis, as well as for the Celticists who may have expected an ample, or, at least, a more adequately representative selection from the older Celtic literatures, I have a brief word to say before passing on to the matter in hand.

In the first place, this volume is no more than an early, and, in a sense, merely arbitrary, gleaning from an abundant harvest. For “Lyra Celtica” is not so much the introduction to a much larger, more organic, and more adequately representative work, to be called “Anthologia Celtica,” but is rather the outcome of the latter, itself culled from a vast mass of material, ancient, mediæval, and modern. It is, moreover, intentionally given over mainly to modern poetry. “Anthologia Celtica” may not appear for a year or two hence, perhaps not for several years; for a systematic effort to compile a scholarly anthology, on chronological and comparative lines, of the ancient poetry of Irish and Scottish Gaeldom, of the Cymric, Armorican, and other Brythonic bards, is a task not to be lightly undertaken, or fulfilled in anything like satisfactory degree without that patience and care which only enthusiastic love of the subject can give, and for which the extrinsic reward is payable in rainbow-gold alone.

In the second place, all that was intended to be written here, will be given more fully and more systematically in a volume to be published later: “An Introduction to the Study of Celtic Literature.” Therein an effort is made to illustrate the distinguishing imaginative qualities of the several Celtic races; to trace the origins, dispersion, interfusion, and concentration of the early Celtic, Picto-Celtic, and later Goidelic and Brythonic peoples, and to reflect Celtic mythopœic and authentic history through Celtic poetry and legendary lore. Concurrently there is an endeavour to relate, in natural order, the development of the literature of contemporary Wales, Brittany, Ireland, and Celtic Scotland, from their ancient Cymric, Armorican, Erse, and Alban-Gaelic congeners.

It is not yet thirty years ago since Matthew Arnold published his memorable and beautiful essay on Celtic Literature, so superficial in its knowledge, it is true, but informed by so keen and fine an interpretative spirit; yet already, since 1868, the writings of Celtic specialists constitute quite a library.

Of recent years we have had many works of the greatest value in Celtic ethnology, philology, history, archæology, art, legendary ballads and romances, folk-lore, and literature. Of all the Celtic literatures, that which was least known, when Arnold wrote, was the Scoto-Gaelic; but now with books such as Skene’s “Celtic Scotland,” Campbell’s “Popular Tales of the West Highlands,” with its invaluable supplementary matter, Dr Cameron’s “Reliquiæ Celticæ,” and many others, there is no difficulty for the would-be student. Again, it is impossible to overrate the value of popular books at once so able, so trustworthy, and so readily attainable, as Professor Rhys’s “Celtic Britain,” or Dr Douglas Hyde’s “Story of Early Gaelic Literature”; while Breton literature, ancient or modern, has found almost as many, and certainly as able and enthusiastic, exponents as that of Wales or that of Ireland. In Ireland there is, with Mr Standish Hayes O’Grady, Dr Douglas Hyde, Dr Sigerson, and many more, quite an army of workers in every branch of Celtic science and literature; in Scotland one less numerous perhaps, but not less ardent and justly enthusiastic; and in Wales the old Cymric spirit survives unabated, from the Butt of Anglesea to the marches of Hereford. In Brittany there was, till the other day, Hersart de la Villemarqué, and now there are M. de Jubainville, M. Loth, M. Anatole Le Braz, M. Auguste Brizeux, Charles Le Goffic, Louis Tiercelin, and many more philologists and other students, poets, romancists, and critics. Cornwall has not been neglected, nor has Man, and even the outlying fringe of Celtdom has found interpreters and expounders. In France the “Revue Celtique”; in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, Gaelic or Welsh or Anglo-Celtic periodicals and “Transactions,” stimulate a wider and deeper interest, and do inestimable service. The writings of men such as Renan, De Jubainville, Valroger, and other French Celticists: of Windisch, Kuno Meyer, and other Germans: of English specialists such as Mr Whitley Stokes, Mr Alfred Nutt, and others: these, together, and in all their different ways of approach, are, along with the writings of native specialists in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, accomplishing a work greater than is now to be measured or even accurately apprehended.

To all who would know something authentic concerning the history of the Celtic race since its occupation of these Isles, and of a large section, and latterly of a corner, of Western Europe, I would recommend Professor Rhys’s admirable little book, “Celtic Britain,” a volume within the reach of all. In the Irish National Library, the volumes of which are sold at a trifling sum, may be had Dr Douglas Hyde’s lucid and excellent exposition of early Gaelic literature; and, among valuable popular contributions to Anglo-Celtic Literature, mention should be made of the Rev. Nigel MacNeill’s “Literature of the Highlanders.” These three books alone, each priced at a moderate sum, will give a reader, hitherto ignorant of the subject, much trustworthy information on the history, ethnology, and literature of the Irish and Scottish Gael. I know of no “popular” book on early Welsh literature, and certainly none that, in trustworthiness, has superseded Stephens’s “Literature of the Cymri.” Mr Norris has introduced us to much ancient Cornish writing which it would have been a pity to let lapse uncollected: and of MM. Villemarqué, De Jubainville, Valroger, Le Braz, and other Breton specialists I have already spoken.

It would seem reserved for this coming century, says Dr Hyde, unless a vigorous, sustained, and national effort at once be made, to catch the last tones of “that beautiful, unmixed Aryan language which, with the exception of that glorious Greek which has now renewed its youth like the eagle, has left the longest, most luminous, and most consecutive literary track behind it of any of the vernacular tongues of Europe.” But, alas, a stronger law than that which man can make or unmake, or nations can resolve, is slowly disintegrating the subsoil wherefrom the roots of the Celtic speech draw the sole nurture which can give it the beauty and fragrance of life.

Some idea of the vastness of the mass of the as yet untranslated Celtic literature may be had from the notes in books by Dr Douglas Hyde, J. F. Campbell, Alfred Nutt, and other specialists. In the National Libraries in Great Britain alone it is estimated that, if all the inedited MSS. were printed, they would fill at least twelve hundred or fourteen hundred octavo volumes. Those who would realise more adequately the extent and importance of this early literature should, besides the authorities already mentioned, consult Eugene O’Curry’s invaluable “Manners and Customs,” and in particular the section of 130 pp. devoted to Education and Literature in Ancient Erinn, which deals with the most important Irish-Gaelic poets from the earliest times down to the eleventh century: the likewise invaluable “Myvyrian Archaiology,” which sets forth an imposing list of Cymric poets, with much information concerning life in Ancient Wales: and books such as Campbell’s “Leabhar na Féinne,” and “Tales of the West Highlands,” MacNeill’s “Literature of the Highlanders,” and (though for students rather than the general reader) the writings of Skene, Anderson, Whitley Stokes, Nutt, and many others.

Modern Irish-Celtic literature may be said to date from O’Donovan’s superb redaction and amplification of “The Annals of the Four Masters,” one of the monumental achievements in world-literature, on the side of scholarship; and from Keating’s “History of Ireland,” on the side of popular writing. Since O’Donovan and Keating, the literary activity of Ireland has again and again re-asserted itself, and is once more so much in evidence, in Celtic scholarship and in Anglo-Celtic romance and poetry, that the not over-ready attention of England is perforce drawn to it.

The contemporary Anglo-Celtic poetry of Ireland has a quality which no other English poetry possesses in like degree: the quality which Matthew Arnold defined as natural magic—“Celtic poetry drenched in the dew of natural magic.” Obviously, the lover of poetry may at once object that Shakespere, Milton, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, are English, and Byron, Burns, and Scott are Scottish, and not distinctively Anglo-Celtic. Well, of Shakespere’s ancestry we know little; and if Celtic enthusiasts maintain that he must have had a strong Celtic strain in his blood, they may be innocent blasphemers, but do not deserve crucifixion for their iniquity. Milton was of Welsh blood through his maternal descent; and Keats is a Celtic name. Keats’ mother’s name is Welsh of the Welsh, while his genius is as convincingly Celtic in its distinguishing qualities as though he were able to trace his descent from Oisìn or Fergus Honey-Mouth of “the Fingalians.” Keats, born a Cockney, is pre-eminently a Celtic poet, by virtue of the nationality of the brain if for no other authentic reason; while Moore, born in Ireland of Celtic ancestry, is the least Celtic of all modern poets of eminence. So far as we know, Coleridge and Shelley are of unmixed English blood, though who can say there was nothing atavistic in their genius, and that the wild lyricism of the one and the glamour and magic of the other were not in part the expression of some “ancestral voice”?

Of the three great modern Scots, it is still a debatable point if Burns was not more Celtic than “Lowland,” that is, by paternal as well as by maternal descent; and it surely is almost unquestionable that, in the geography of the soul, Burns’ natal spot must be sought in the Fortunate Isles of Celtdom. Byron, of course, though far more British than Scottish, and again more Scottish than Celtic, had a strong Celtic strain in his blood; and Scott, as it happens, was of the ancient stock, and not “the typical Lowlander” he is so often designated.[1]

The truth is, that just as in Scotland we may come upon a type which is unmistakably national without being either Anglo-Saxon or Celtic or Anglo-Celtic, but which, rightly or wrongly, we take to be Pictish (and possibly a survival of an older race still), so, throughout our whole country, and in Sussex and Hampshire, as well as in Connemara or Argyll, we may at any moment encounter the Celtic brain in the Anglo-Saxon flesh. In Scotland, in particular, it may be doubted if there are many families native to the soil who have not at least a Celtic strain. People are apt to forget that Celtic Scotland does not mean only the Western Isles and the Highlands, and that the whole country was at one time Celtic (Goidelic), and before that was again Celtic, when Brythonic or Cymric Scotland and the Dalriadic Scoto-Irish of Argyll, and the northern Picts, who were probably Gaels, or of kindred Celtic origin, held the land, and sowed the human seed whence arose much of the finest harvest of a later Scotland.

Here I may conveniently quote a significant passage from “Celtic Britain”:—

“This means, from the Celtic point of view, that the Goidelic race of history is not wholly Celtic or Aryan, but inherits in part a claim to the soil of these islands, derived from possession at a time when, as yet, no Aryan waggoner had driven into Europe; and it is, perhaps, from their Kynesian ancestry that the Irish of the present day have inherited the lively humour and ready wit, which, among other characteristics, distinguish them from the Celts of the Brythonic branch, most of whom, especially the Kymry, are a people still more mixed, as they consist of the Goidelic element of the compound nature already suggested, with an ample mixture of Brythonic blood, introduced mostly by the Ordovices. And as to Welsh, it is, roughly speaking, the Brythonic language, as spoken by the Ordovices, and as learned by the Goidelic peoples they overshadowed in the Principality of Wales. To this its four chief dialects still correspond, being those, respectively, of Powys, Gwent or Siluria, Dyved or Demetia, and Venedot or Gwynedd.

“Skulls are harder than consonants, and races lurk when languages slink away. The lineal descendants of the neolithic aborigines are ever among us, possibly even those of a still earlier race. On the other hand, we can imagine the Kynesian impatiently hearing out the last echoes of palæolithic speech; we can guess dimly how the Goidel gradually silenced the Kynesian; we can detect the former coming slowly round to the keynote of the Brython; and, lastly, we know how the Englishman is engaged, linguistically speaking, in drowning the voice of both of them in our own day. Such, to take another metaphor, are some of the lines one would have to draw in the somewhat confused picture we have suggested of one wave of speech chasing another, and forcing it to dash itself into oblivion on the western confines of the Aryan world; and that we should fondly dream English likely to be the last, comes only from our being unable to see into a distant future pregnant with untold changes of no less grave a nature than have taken place in the dreary wastes of the past.”

To return: among the great English and Scottish writers of to-day two may be taken as examples of this brain-kinship with a race physically alien. Much of the poetry of Algernon Charles Swinburne is distinctively Celtic, particularly in its lyric fire and wonderful glow and colour, as well as its epithetical luxuriance; but, indeed, this is hardly a good instance after all, for Mr Swinburne’s north-country ancestry is not without definite Celtic admixture. “Tristram of Lyonesse” is, in its own way, as Celtic as “The Voyage of St Brendan,” and with more of innate inevitableness than in those lovely Celtic reflections in the essentially English brain of Tennyson, “The Dream” and “The Voyage of Maelduin.”

As for Robert Louis Stevenson, come of Lowland stock, and, as he said himself once, “made up o’ Lallan dust, body and soul,” there is not, so far as I know, any proof that a near paternal or maternal ancestor was of Celtic blood. But who, that has studied his genius, can question the Celtic strain in him, or who believe that, though “the Lallan dust” may have been unadulterate for generations, the brain which conceived and wrought “The Merry Men” and “Thrawn Janet” was not attuned to Celtic music? There is a poem of his which seems to me typically Celtic in its indescribable haunting charm, its air of I know not what rare music, its deep yearning emotion, and its cosmic note—

“In the highlands, in the country places,
Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
And the young fair maidens
Quiet eyes;
Where essential silence cheers and blesses
And forever in the hill-recesses
Her more lovely music
Broods and dies,

O to mount again where erst I haunted;
Where the old red hills are bird-enchanted,
And the low green meadows
Bright with sward;
And when even dies, the million tinted,
And the night has come, and planets glinted,
Lo, the valley hollow
Lamp-bestarred!

O to dream, O to awake and wander
There, and with delight to take and render,
Through the trance of silence,
Quiet breath;
Lo! for there, among the flowers, and grasses,
Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;
Only winds and rivers,
Life and death.”

Of course there is a certain poignant note common to all poetry, and he might be a zealous Celticist, but a poor worshipper of Apollo, who would try to limit this charm of exquisite regret and longing to Celtic poetry. It is an unfrontiered land, this pleasant country in the geography of the soul which we call Bohemia; and here all parochial and national, and even racial distinctions fall away, and Firdausi and Oisìn, Omar the Tentmaker and Colum the Saint, and all and every “Honey-Mouth” of every land and time, move in equal fellowship. Even in one of the most haunting quatrains by any modern Anglo-Celtic poet—

“O wind, O mighty melancholy wind,
Blow through me, blow!
Thou blowest forgotten things into my mind,
From long ago”—

we must not forget the elder music of one who is among the truest of the poets of Nature whom the world has seen: though neither in brain nor, so far as we know, in blood, had Wordsworth any kinship with the Celt—the music “Of old, unhappy, far-off things.”

By a natural association, “Ossian” comes to mind. It is pleasant to think that a book like “Lyra Celtica” appears just at the centenary of James Macpherson. Macpherson died in 1796, but long before his death his reputed “Ossian” had become one of the most vital influences in literature. This is not the occasion to go into the “Ossian” dispute. It must suffice to say that the concensus of qualified opinion decides—(1) That Macpherson’s “Ossian” is not a genuine rendering of ancient originals; (2) that he worked incoherently upon a genuine but unsystematised, unsifted, and fragmentary basis, without which, however, he could have achieved nothing; (3) that inherent evidence disproves Macpherson’s sole or even main authorship as well as “Ossian’s,” and that he was at most no more than a skilful artificer; (4) that, if he were the sole author, he would be one of the few poetic creators of the first rank, and worthy of all possible honour; (5) that no single work in our literature has had so wide-reaching, so potent, and so enduring an influence.

Much of the tragic gloom, of which “Ossian” is a true mirror, colours even contemporary Scoto-Celtic poetry; and though in Gaelic there is much humorous verse, and much poetry of a blithe, bright, and even joyous nature, the dominant characteristic is that of gloom, the gloom of unavailing regret, of mournful longing, a lament for what cannot be again. True, in a Gaelic poem by Mary Mackellar, a contemporary Highland poet, we hear of

Spioraid aosmhoir tìr nan Gàidheal,
Ciod an diugh a’s fàth do ’n ghàirich
’Dhùisg thu comhdaichte le aighear,
As an uaigh ’s an robh thu’d ’chadal?

(Spirit of the Gaelic earth
Wherefore is this mirth unwonted
That hath waked thee from the tomb,
And to triumph turned thy gloom?)—

but, alas! that fine line, “Spioraid aosmhoir tìr nan Gàidheal” is not an invocation to the Gaelic muse to arouse herself to a new and blither music, but is simply part of some congratulatory lines of a “Welcome to the Marquis of Lorne on his union with the Princess Louise”![2]

The “Spirit of the Gaelic earth” does not make for mirth, as a rule, at least in the Highlands, save in verse of a frankly Bacchanalian or satiric kind.

In this, there is a marked contrast with the Irish-Gaelic, whose muse is laughter-loving though ever with “dewy dark eyes.”

If, however, the blithe and delightful peasant poetry of Mr Alfred Percival Graves, and that so beautifully translated and paraphrased by Dr Douglas Hyde, be characteristically Irish, so also is such typically Celtic poetry as this lyric by the latest Irish singer, Miss Moira O’Neill—

“SEA WRACK.”

The wrack was dark an’ shiny where it floated in the sea,
There was no room in the brown boat but only him an’ me;
Him to cut the sea wrack—me to mind the boat,
An’ not a word between us the hours we were afloat.
The wet wrack,
The sea wrack,
The wrack was strong to cut.

We laid it on the grey rocks to wither in the sun;
An’ what should call my lad then to sail from Cushendun?
With a low moon, a full tide, a swell upon the deep,
Him to sail the old boat—me to fall asleep.
The dry wrack,
The sea wrack,
The wrack was dead so soon.

There’s a fire low upon the rocks to burn the wrack to kelp;
There’s a boat gone down upon the Moyle, an’ sorra one to help.
Him beneath the salt sea—me upon the shore—
By sunlight or moonlight we’ll lift the wrack no more.
The dark wrack,
The sea wrack,
The wrack may drift ashore.

When we come to examine the literature of the four great divisions of the Celtic race, a vast survey lies before us, with innumerable vistas. A lifetime might well be given to the study of any one of the ancient Erse, Alban-Gaelic, Cymric, and Armorican literatures: a lifetime that would yet have to leave much undiscovered, much unrelated. There is room for every student. In old Irish literature alone, though so many enthusiasts are now working towards its greater elucidation and the transference of the better part of it into Anglo-Celtic literature, there remain whole tracts, and even regions, of unexploited land. In a score of ways, pioneers have been clearing the ground for us: philologists like Windisch, Loth, Kuno Meyer, Whitley Stokes; literary scholars like S. Hayes O’Grady, Campbell of Islay, Cameron of Brodick, Dr Douglas Hyde; folklorists innumerable, in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland; romancists like Standish O’Grady, who write across the angle of the historic imagination, and romancists like W. B. Yeats, who write across the angle of the poetic imagination; and poets, an ever-growing band of sweet singers, who catch for us the fugitive airs, the exquisite fleeting cadences, the haunting, indefinable music of an earlier day.

From Ireland the Neo-Celtic Renascence has extended through Gaeldom. The concurrent Welsh development may be independent of this Irish influence, and probably is: largely because the poetic imagination of the Cymri of to-day was stirred from within, by the stimulus to the national genius through the world-wide attention drawn by the publication of the “Mabinogion,” as in turn the Gaelic imagination was stirred by the incalculable influence of “Ossian”—an influence so great, so deep, so wide-reaching, that, as already said, were Macpherson to be proved the sole author, were it convincingly demonstrable that he was, not a more or less confused and unscholarly interpreter, but himself a creator, himself “Ossian,” he would deserve to rank with the three or four great ancients and moderns who have dug, deep and wide, new channels for the surging flow of human thought. Possibly, at any rate, this may prove to be one good reason for the independence of the Welsh development from any Irish stimulus—an impulse from within always being more potent and enduring than one from without; but, fundamentally, this independence is due to an organic difference. In a word, the Celtic genius is broadly divisible, even at this day, into two great sections: the Goidelic and the Brythonic or Cymric—let us say, is represented by the Welsh Celt and the Gaelic Celt. Those readers or students who approach the literature of either, ancient or modern, but particularly the latter, and expect to find identity both of sentiment and in method of expression, will ultimately be as disappointed as one who should, with the same idea, approach Spanish and Portuguese, or Dutch and German, or Provençal and French. In every respect, save that of ancient kinship, the Welsh and the Gaels differ materially. There is, perhaps, more likeness between the Highlander and the Welshman than between the latter and the Irishman; but even here the distinctions are considerable, and the Gaelic islesman of Barra or Uist is as different a creature from the native of Glamorgan or Caermarthen as though no racial cousinship united them. But, in the instance of Welsh and Irish, the unlikeness is so marked that the best analogue is that of the Frenchman and the German. The Irish are the French of the Celtic races, the Welsh the Germans. The two people are distinct in their outer and inner life as well as in their literature; and for a Connaught man or a Hebridean to go through Wales would be as foreign an experience as for a Welshman to find himself among the Catholic islesmen of South Uist, or among the moorside villages of Connemara.

To-day the Gael and Cymri are foreigners. Strangely enough, the section of the Celtic race most akin to the Welsh is the Manx—a Goidelic people, and with a Gaelic dialect. The Gael himself, however, does not stand out distinctly. Although there is a far greater likeness between the Scoto-Celt and the Irish-Celt than between either and the Welshman, there are traits which unmistakably distinguish them. In Ireland itself, the Celt of the south-east and south differs in more respects than mere dialect from his kinsman by the Connaught shore or of the hills of Connemara; as, in Scotland, there is a marked distinction between the “Tuathach” (North Highlander) and the “Deasach” (the South and West Highlander). A Farquharson or a Gordon from Aberdeenshire has to shake hands across the arms of many a Mackenzie and Macgregor, many a Cameron and Macpherson, before he can link in brotherly grip with a MacNeill of Barra, a Macdonald of Skye, a Macleod of the Lewis. These distinctions, of course, are in their nature parochial rather than racial; but they are highly indicative of a fundamental weakness in the Celtic nature, and suggest a cogent reason for the failure of the race to cohere into one compact and indispersable nation, as the central Teutonic races merged into “Germany,” as Gauls, Normans, and Provençals merged into “France,” and as the Brythons, the Teutonic outlanders (Frisians, Angles, Jutes, &c.), Saxons, Danes, Normans, and Anglo-Celts merged into “England,” and, later, into “Great Britain,” into the “British Empire.”

The most marked Celtic national homogeneity is to be found in Wales. Wales has ever persisted, and still persists in her moat and her drawbridge. In the preservation of her language is her safeguard. Without Welsh, Wales would be as English as Cumberland or Cornwall. In this way only, knit indissolubly to the flank of England as she is, and without any natural eastern frontier of mountain range or sea, can she isolate herself; and I am convinced that herein we have one main reason for the passionate attachment of the Cymri of to-day to their ancient language—an attachment as strong among the unlettered as among ardent scholars, and even among those who have no heed for the beauty of traditional literature or, indeed, heed of any kind other than for the narrow personal interests of domesticity.

But this very isolation of Wales, through her language, has, no doubt, interfered materially with the development of her Anglo-Celtic literature. Contrasted with that of Ireland or that of Scotland, how astonishingly meagre it is. All Ireland is aflame with song; Scotland is again becoming the land of old romance. Here and there are a few writers, a poet-romancist like Mr Ernest Rhys, a poet like the late Emily Davis, a few novelists who are Welsh by the accident of birth rather than by the nationality of the brain. For, of course, Mr George Meredith stands so far above all localisation of this kind that it would be out of place to rank him merely as the head of contemporary Wales. He is the foremost Anglo-Celtic voice of to-day; so emphatically foremost, by the distinguishing qualities of his genius, that if to-morrow he were proved to be come of a stock of long unmixed Saxon ancestry never dissociated from that southern country of which he is by birth a native, we should be justified in abiding by the far more significant and important lineage of the brain.

But this great exception apart, the difference alluded to is extraordinary. Wales is so animated by national enthusiasms, pride, and incalculable hereditary uplift, that her silence—in English, that is—can hardly be accounted for away from the supposition that, in closing her ears against English, she has also set her lips against utterance in that tongue.

The Scoto-Celtic writers of to-day, both in prose and poetry, have produced more Anglo-Celtic literature than Wales has done since the beginning of the century, and with a range, a vitality, a beauty, far beyond anything that has come forth from modern Cymru; and Ireland, again, in poetry at any rate, has given us even more than Scotland.

The Celtic Renascence, of which so much has been written of late—that is, the re-birth of the Celtic genius in the brain of Anglo-Celtic poets and the brotherhood of dreamers—is, fundamentally, the outcome of “Ossian,” and, immediately, of the rising of the sap in the Irish nation.

Of the immense and never yet approximately defined Irish-Celtic influence in literature a fine and true word has been said by one of the ablest of the Irish fellowship; and I would strongly urge every reader to obtain Mr Stopford Brooke’s admirable and stimulating little essay “On the Need and Use of getting Irish Literature into the English Tongue.”[3] With its conclusion, every lover of English poetry and romance will agree.

“When we have got the old [Celtic] legendary tales rendered into fine prose and verse, I believe we shall open out English poetry to a new and exciting world, an immense range of subjects, entirely fresh and full of inspiration. Therefore, as I said, get them out into English, and then we may bring England and [Celtdom] into a union which never can suffer separation, and send another imaginative force on earth which may (like Arthur’s tale) create Poetry for another thousand years.”

These are inspiring words, and should find an eager response.

More and more we may hope that the beautiful poetry of Ireland, ancient and modern, with its incommunicable charm and exquisite spontaneity; that the strange, elemental, sombre imagination of the West Highlander and of the Gael of the Isles; and that the vivid spell of the old Welsh bards, will, before long, become a still greater, a still more regenerating, and a lasting force and influence in our English literature.

In the Notes I have something to say concerning each of the many ancient and modern writers drawn upon for this representative anthology, so need not here enter into further detail of the kind.

Obviously, it would be impossible to make a work of this nature as welcome to the Celtic scholar as to the general reader. No one in the least degree acquainted with ancient Gaelic and Cymric literature could fail to note how merely superficial this section of “Lyra Celtica” is. Therefore, let me again aver that this anthology has been compiled, not for the specialist, but for the lover of poetry; and to serve, for the many who have no knowledge of “Anglo-Celtic” as distinct from “Anglo-Saxon” poetry, as a small Pisgah whence to gain a glimpse into a strange and beautiful land, a land wherein, as in a certain design by William Blake, the sun, the moon, and the morning star all shine together, and where the horizons are spanned by fugitive rainbows ever marvellously dissolving and more marvellously re-forming.

The effort of the Editor has been to give, not always the finest or most unquestionably authentic examples of early Celtic poetry, but the most characteristic. Thus only could some idea be conveyed of the physiognomy of this ancient literature.

In the first section, that representative of Early Gaelic, a long period of time is covered. A whole heroic age lies between that strange pantheistic utterance of Amergin, who is now accepted as the earliest Erse poet of whom we have authentic record, and the hymns of Columba: and the quaint “Shaving Hymn” of Murdoch the Monk, though it precedes the Ossianic fragments, relates to a much nearer period of history than they do. Of these Ossianic fragments, it is not needful to say more here than that, in their actual form, they are no more genuinely old than, for example, are many of the lovely fantasias on old themes by modern Irish poets. They are, at most, fundamentally ancient, and are given here on this plea, and not as the translations of Macpherson. The day is gone when the stupid outcry against Macpherson’s “Ossian,” as no more than a gigantic fraud, finds a response among lovers of literature. We all know, now, that Macpherson’s “Ossian” is not a genuine translation of authentic Dana Oisìn mhic Fhionn, but, for all its great and enduring beauty, a clumsily-constructed, self-contradictory, and sometimes grotesquely impossible rendering of disconnected, fugitive, and, for the most part, oral lore. Of the genuineness of this legendary lore there is no longer any doubt in the minds of those native and alien students, who alone are qualified to pronounce a definite verdict on this long disputed point. It would have been easy to select other Ossianic fragments; but as, in this anthology, the spirit and not the letter was everything, it was considered advisable to make as apt a compromise with Macpherson’s “Ossian” as practicable. Ancient poetry of the nature of pieces such as “The Song of Fionn” (page 4) convey little to the ordinary reader, not only on account of their puzzling allusions to events and persons of whom the Englishman is not likely to have heard, or from the strangeness of their style, as because of the remoteness of the underlying sentiment and mental standpoint. And of this there can be no question: that the ancient poetry, the antique spirit, breathes throughout this eighteenth-century restoration, and gives it enduring life, charm, and all the spell of cosmic imagination. It may well be, indeed, that the literary historian has another signal discovery to make, and, in definitively dissociating Oisìn of the Féinn and Ossian of Badenoch, prove convincingly that James Macpherson was not even the author (of the greater part at any rate) of the matter that has been interpolated into the original, inchoate, traditional bardic lore.

However much or little appeal “Ossian” may have for English readers of to-day, there can surely be no doubt that all who have the spirit of poetry must recognise the charm of the ancient Celtic imagination in compositions such as “Credhe’s Lament” (page 5). This lovely haunting lament, from the “Book of Lismore,” comes in its English form from that invaluable work of Mr S. Hayes O’Grady, “Silva Gadelica.” Of how much Celtic poetry, modern as well as ancient, is not this, though variously expressed, the refrain: “Melodious is the crane, and O melodious is the crane, in the marshlands of Druim-dá-thrén! ’tis she that may not save her brood alive!”

For the remarkable continuity of both expression and sentiment which characterises Celtic poetry, ancient and modern, let the student turn, for example, to the most famous Gaelic poem in Scotland to-day, Duncan Bàn Macintyre’s “Ben Dorain,” and compare it with this “Lay of Arran” by Caeilte, the Ossianic bard—Arran, no longer Arran of the many stags, but still one of the loveliest of the Scottish isles, and touched on every headland and hill with the sunset glamour of the past.

CAEILTE—LAY OF ARRAN.[4]

“Arran of the many stags—the sea impinges on her very shoulders! an island in which whole companies were fed—and with ridges among which blue spears were reddened! Skittish deer are on her pinnacles, soft blackberries upon her waving heather; cool water there is upon her rivers, and mast upon her russet oaks! Greyhounds there were in her, and beagles; blaeberries and sloes of the blackthorn; dwellings with their backs set close against her woods, and the deer fed scattered by her oaken thickets! A crimson crop grew on her rocks, in all her glades a faultless grass; over her crags affording friendly refuge, leaping went on and fawns were skipping! Smooth were her level spots—her wild swine they were fat; cheerful her fields (this is a tale that may be credited), her nuts hung on her forest hazel’s boughs, and there was sailing of long galleys past her! Right pleasant their condition all when the fair weather sets in: under her rivers’ brinks trouts lie; the sea-gulls wheeling round her grand cliff answer one the other—at every fitting time delectable is Arran!”

Again, most readers will be able to apprehend the delight of the barbaric outlook in compositions such as “Cuchullin in His Chariot,” which has been excerpted from Hector MacLean’s “Ultonian Hero Ballads”; or the fantastic beauty of “The March of the Faerie Host,” as rendered by Prof. Kuno Meyer after the original in “The Book of Lismore”; or the lovely portrait of a beautiful woman, by a Highland poet of old, the “Aisling air Dhreach Mna; or, Vision of a Fair Woman.” Possibly, too, even Celtic scholars may not be displeased to read here English metrical paraphrases, such as Sir Samuel Ferguson’s “Lament of Deirdrê for the Sons of Usnach,”[5] or Mr T. W. Rolleston’s haunting “The Lament of Queen Maev”; or, again, in dubiously authentic fragments such as “Fingal and Ros-crana,” to have an opportunity to trace the “inner self” of many a familiar ballad or legend.

The Breton section, also, is represented equally slightly, though perhaps not inadequately, all things considered. “The Dance of the Sword” is, probably, fundamentally one of the most ancient of Celtic bardic utterances. In the modern selection, it will be a surprise to many readers to encounter names so familiar to lovers of French poetry as Leconte de Lisle and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. There are many contemporary Breton poets of distinction, but it was feasible to select no more than one or two. Auguste Brizeux and Charles Le Goffic may be taken as typical exemplars of the historically re-creative and the individually impressionistic methods. Unfortunately neither is represented here. It was desirable to select at least one poet who still uses the old Armorican tongue; but in my translation from Leo-Kermorvan’s “Taliesen” (as again in that of Tiercelin’s “By Menec’hi Shore”), I have not attempted a rhymed version, as in the original, or in the French version published in the “Anthologie.” There are very few translators who can be faithful both to the sound and sense, in the attempt concurrently to reproduce identity of form, music, and substance; and, as a rule, therefore, rhythmic prose, or an unrhymed metrical version, is likely to prove more interesting as well as more truly interpretative.

Out of the rich garth of ancient and mediæval Welsh poetry, the Editor has culled only a few blossoms. They contain, at least, something of that lyric love of Nature which is so distinctively Celtic, and is the chief charm of the poetic literature of Wales. It is earnestly to be hoped that some poet-scholar will give us before long, in English, an anthology of the best contemporary Welsh poetry.

Of living poets who write in Gaelic, there are more in Scotland than in Ireland. The Hebrides have been a nest of singers, since Mary Macleod down to the youngest of the Uist poets of to-day; and though there is not at present any Alexander Macdonald or Duncan Bàn Macintyre, there are many singers who have a sweet and fine note, and many writers whose poems have beauty, grace, and distinction. Perhaps the last fine product of the pseudo-antique school is the “Sean Dàna”[6] of Dr John Smith, late in the last century; but occasionally there occurs in our own day a noteworthy instance of the re-telling of the old tales in the old way. In “The Celtic Monthly,” and other periodicals, much good Gaelic verse is to be found, and it is no exaggeration to say that at this moment there are more than a hundred Gaelic singers in Western Scotland whose poetry is as fresh and winsome, and, in point of form as well as substance, as beautiful, as any that is being produced throughout the rest of the realm. The Gaelic Muse has also found a home in Canada, and it is interesting to note that one of the longest of recent Gaelic poems was written by a Highlander in far-away Burmah.

“The Highlander” (and in this and the following passage I quote the words of Professor Mackinnon, from his Inaugural Address on his succession to the Celtic Chair at Edinburgh University) “The Highlander may be truly described as the child of music and song. For many a long year his language is the language, for the most part, of the uneducated classes. And yet, amid surroundings which too often are but mean and wretched, without the advantages of education beyond what his native glen supplied, he has contrived to enliven his lot by the cultivation of such literature as the local bards, the traditions of the clan, and the popular tales of the district supplied. He has attempted, not unsuccessfully, to live not for the day and hour alone, but, in a true sense, to live the life of the spirit! He has produced a mass of lyric poetry which, in rhythmical flow, purity of sentiment, and beauty of expression, can compare favourably with the literature of more powerful and more highly-civilised communities.

“In the highest efforts of Gaelic literature, in the prose of Norman Macleod, in the masterpieces of the lyric poets, in the “Sean Dàna” of Dr Smith, and above all, in the poems of Ossian, whether composed by James Macpherson or the son of Fingal, the intellect of the Scottish Celt, in its various moods and qualities, finds its deepest and fullest expression. Here we have humour, pathos, passion, vehemence, a rush of feeling and emotion not always under restraint, and apt to run into exaggeration and hyperbole—characteristics which enter largely into the mental and spiritual organisation of the people. But above and beneath all these, there is a touch of melancholy, a ‘cry of the weary,’ pervading the spirit of the Celt. Ossian gives expression to this sentiment in the touching line which Matthew Arnold, the most sympathetic and penetrating critic of the Celtic imagination, with the true instinct of genius, prefixes to his charming volume, ‘On the Study of Celtic Literature’:

“‘They went forth to the war, but they always fell.’”

Professor Mackinnon goes on to adduce a familiar legend, which may again be quoted, for we are all now waiting for that longed-for blast which shall arouse the spell-bound trance wherein sleeps “Anima Celtica.” The Féinn, he says, were laid spell-bound in a cave which no man knew of. At the mouth of the cave hung a horn, which if ever any man should come and blow three times, the spell would be broken, and the Féinn would arise, alive and well. A hunter, one day wandering in the mist, came on this cave, saw the horn, and knew what it meant. He looked in and saw the Féinn lying asleep all round the cave. He lifted the horn and blew one blast. He looked in again, and saw that the Féinn had wakened, but lay still with their eyes staring, like those of dead men. He took the horn again, blew another blast, and instantly the Féinn all moved, each resting on his elbow. Terrified at their aspect, the hunter turned and fled homewards. He told what he had seen, and, accompanied by friends, went to search for the cave. They could not find it; it has never again been found; and so there still sit, each resting on his elbow, waiting for the final blast to rouse them into life, the spell-bound heroes of the old Celtic world.

Of the modern and larger section of “Lyra Celtica” I need say little here. To avoid confusion, the Editor has refrained from representing poets whose “Celtic strain” is more or less obviously disputable; hence the wise ignoring of the claims even of Scott and Burns. Byron was more Celtic in blood than in brain, and is represented really by virtue of this accidental kinship.

Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Man, Cornwall, and Brittany are all more or less adequately represented; and among the poets are some whose voices will be new to most readers. One or two writers, also, have been drawn upon as representatives of the distinctively Anglo-Celtic section of England. Finally, “greater Gaeldom”—the realm of the Irish and Scottish Gaels in the United States, Canada, and Australasia—is also represented; and one, at any rate, of these outlanders is a poet who has won distinction on both sides of the Atlantic.

If it be advisable to select one poet, still “with a future,” as pre-eminently representative of the Celtic genius of to-day, I think there can be little doubt that W. B. Yeats’ name is that which would occur first to most lovers of contemporary poetry. He has grace of touch and distinction of form beyond any of the younger poets of Great Britain, and there is throughout his work a haunting beauty, and a haunting sense of beauty everywhere perceived with joy and longing, that make its appeal irresistible for those who feel it at all. He is equally happy whether he deals with antique or with contemporary themes, and in almost every poem he has written there is that exquisite remoteness, that dream-like music, and that transporting charm which Matthew Arnold held to be one of the primary tests of poetry, and, in particular, of Celtic poetry.

As an example of Mr Yeats’ narrative method, with legendary themes, I may quote this from his beautiful “Wanderings of Oisìn” (rather affectedly and quite needlessly altered to Usheen in the latest version)—

“Fled foam underneath us, and round us a wandering and milky smoke,
High as the saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the tide;
And those that fled, and that followed, from the foampale distance broke;
The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their faces, and sighed.

I mused on the chase with the Fenians, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair,
And never a song sang Neave, and over my fingertips
Came now the sliding of tears and sweeping of mist-cold hair,
And now the warmth of sighs, and after the quiver of lips.

Were we days long or hours long in riding, when rolled in a grisly peace,
An isle lay level before us, with dripping hazel and oak?
And we stood on a sea’s edge we saw not; for whiter than new washed fleece
Fled foam underneath us, and round us a wandering and milky smoke.

And we rode on the plains of the sea’s edge—the sea’s edge barren and gray,
Gray sands on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,
Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away
Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.

But the trees grew taller and closer, immense in their wrinkling bark;
Dropping—a murmurous dropping—old silence and that one sound;
For no live creatures lived there, no weasels moved in the dark—
Long sighs arose in our spirits, beneath us bubbled the ground.

And the ears of the horse went sinking away in the hollow night,
For, as drift from a sailor slow drowning the gleams of the world and the sun,
Ceased on our hands and our faces, on hazel and oak leaf, the light,
And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the world was one.”

Often, too, there occur in his verse new and striking imagery, as in the superb epithetical value of the fourth line in the concluding stanza of “The Madness of King Goll,” one of the most beautiful of his poems—

“And now I wander in the woods
When summer gluts the golden bees,
Or in autumnal solitudes
Arise the leopard-coloured trees;
Or when along the wintry strands
The cormorants shiver on their rocks;
I wander on, and wave my hands,
And sing, and shake my heavy locks.
The gray wolf knows me; by one ear
I lead along the woodland deer;
The hares ran by me growing bold.
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter
round me, the beech leaves old.”

Indeed, through all his work, “They will not hush; the leaves a-flutter, the beech leaves old”—the mystic leaves of life, touched by the wind of old romance. We can imagine him hearing often that fairy lure which his “Stolen Child” listed and yielded to—

“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a fairy, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than
you can understand.”

For him always there is the Beauty of Beauty, the Passion of Passion: the “Rose of the World.”

“Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna’s children died.

We and the labouring world are passing by:
Amid men’s souls, that waver and give place,
Like the pale waters in their wintry race,
Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,
Lives on this lonely face.”

It is the lonely face that haunts the dreams of poets of all races and ages: that “Lady Beauty” enthroned

“Under the arch of life, where love and death,
Terror and mystery, guard her shrine....”

The vision of which we follow—

“How passionately, and irretrievably,
In what fond flight, how many ways and days!”

And of all races, none has so worshipped the “Rose of the World” as has the Celt.

“No other human tribe,” says Renan, “has carried so much mystery into love. No other has conceived with more delicacy the ideal of woman, nor been more dominated by her. It is a kind of intoxication, a madness, a giddiness. Read the strange mabinogi of ‘Pérédur,’ or its French imitation, ‘Parceval le Gallois’; these pages are dewy, so to say, with feminine sentiment. Woman appears there as a sort of vague vision intermediate between man and the supernatural world. There is no other literature which offers anything analogous to this. Compare Guinevere and Iseult to those Scandinavian furies Gudruna and Chrimhilde, and you will acknowledge that woman, as chivalry conceived her—that ideal of sweetness and beauty set up as the supreme object of life—is a creation neither classic, Christian, nor Germanic, but in reality Celtic.”

And having quoted from Ernest Renan, himself one of the greatest of modern Celts, and a Celt in brain and genius as well as by blood, race, and birth, let me interpolate here a paraphrase of some words of his in that essay on “La Poesie de la Race Celtique,” which was to intellectual France what Matthew Arnold’s essay was to intellectual England.

If, he says, the eminence of races should be estimated according to the purity of their blood and inviolability of national character, there could be none able to dispute supremacy with the Celtic race. Never has human family lived more isolated from the world, nor less affected by foreign admixture.

Restricted by conquest to forgotten isles and peninsulas, the Celtic race has habitually striven to oppose an impassable barrier to all alien influences. It has ever trusted in itself, and in itself alone, and has drawn its mental and spiritual nurture from its own resources.

Hence that powerful individuality, that hatred of the stranger, which up to our day has formed the essential characteristic of the Celtic peoples. The civilisation of Rome hardly reached them, and left among them but few traces. The Germanic invasion flowed back on them, but it did not affect them at all. At the present hour they still resist an invasion, dangerous in quite another way, that of modern civilisation, so destructive of local varieties and national types. Ireland in particular (and there, perhaps, is the secret of her irremediable weakness) is the sole country of Europe where the native can produce authentic documents of his remote unbroken lineage, and designate with certainty, up to pre-historic ages, the race from which he sprang.

One does not enough reflect on how strange it is that an ancient race should continue down to our day, and almost under our eyes, in some islands and peninsulas of the West, its own life, more and more diverted from it, it is true, by the noise from without, but still faithful to its language, its memories, its ideals, and its genius. We are especially apt to forget that this small race, contracted now to the extreme confines of Europe, in the midst of those rocks and mountains where its enemies have driven it, is in possession of a literature, which in the Middle Ages exerted an immense influence, changed the current of European imagination, and imposed upon almost the whole of Christianity its poetical motifs. It is, however, only necessary to open authentic monuments of Celtic genius to convince oneself that the race which created these has had its own original method of thought and feeling; and that nowhere does the eternal illusion dress itself in more seductive colours. In the grand concert of the human species, no family equals this, for penetrating voices which go to the heart. Alas! if it, also, is condemned to disappear, this fading glory of the West! Arthur will not return to his enchanted isle, and Saint Patrick was right in saying to Ossian: “The heroes whom you mourn are dead; can they live again?”

A strange melancholy characterises the genius of the Celtic race. For all the blithe songs and happy abandon of so many Irish singers, the Irish themselves have given us the most poignant, the most hauntingly-sad lyric cries in all modern literature. Renan fully recognises this, and how, even in the heroic age, the melancholy of inappeasible regret, of insatiable longing, is as obvious as in our own day, when spiritual weariness is as an added crown of thorns. Whence comes this sadness, he asks? Take the songs of the sixth century bards; they mourn more defeats than they sing victories. The history of the Celtic race itself is but a long complaint, the lament of exiles, the grief of despairing flights beyond the seas. If occasionally it seems to make merry, a tear ever lurks behind the smile; it rarely knows that singular forgetfulness of the human state and of its destinies which is called gaiety. But, if its songs of joy end in elegies, nothing equals the delicious sadness of these national melodies.

Nevertheless, concludes the most famous of modern Breton writers, we are still far from believing that the Celtic race has said its last word. After having exercised all the godly and worldly chivalries, sought with Pérédur the Holy Graal and the Beautiful, dreamed with Saint Brandan of mystical Atlantides, who knows what the Celtic genius would produce in the domain of the intelligence if it should embolden itself to make its entrance into the world, and if it subjected its rich and profound nature to the conditions of modern thought? Few races have had a poetical infancy as complete as the Celtic—mythology, lyricism, epic, romanesque imagination, religious enthusiasm, nothing have they lacked. Why should philosophic thought be lacking? Germany, which had begun by science and criticism, has finished with poetry; why should not the Celtic races, which began with poetry, not end with a new and vivid criticism of actual life as it now is? It is not so far from the one to the other as we are apt to suppose; the poetical races are the philosophical races, and philosophy is at bottom but a manner of poetry like any other. When one thinks that Germany fronted, less than a century ago, the revelation of its genius; that everywhere national idiosyncrasies, which seemed effaced, have suddenly risen again in our day more alive than ever, one is persuaded that it is rash to set a law for the discontinuances and awakenings of races. Modern civilisation, which seemed made to absorb them, may, perhaps, be but the forcing-house for a new and more superb efflorescence.

No, it is no “disastrous end”: whether the Celtic peoples be slowly perishing or are spreading innumerable fibres of life towards a richer and fuller, if a less national and distinctive existence. From Renan, the high priest of the Breton faith, to the latest of his kindred of the Gael, there is a strange new uprising of hope. It is realised that the Dream is nigh dreamed: and then ...

“Till the soil—bid cities rise—
Be strong, O Celt—be rich, be wise—
But still, with those divine grave eyes,
Respect the realm of Mysteries.”

Let me conclude, then, in the words of the most recent of those many eager young Celtic writers whose songs and romances are charming the now intent mind of the Anglo-Saxon. “A doomed and passing race. Yes, but not wholly so. The Celt has at last reached his horizon. There is no shore beyond. He knows it. This has been the burden of his song since Malvina led the blind Oisìn to his grave by the sea. ‘Even the Children of Light must go down into darkness.’ But this apparition of a passing race is no more than the fulfilment of a glorious resurrection before our very eyes. For the genius of the Celtic race stands out now with averted torch, and the light of it is a glory before the eyes, and the flame of it is blown into the hearts of the mightier conquering people. The Celt falls, but his spirit rises in the heart and the brain of the Anglo-Celtic peoples, with whom are the destinies of the generations to come.”

WILLIAM SHARP.

Read these faint runes of Mystery,
O Celt, at home and o’er the sea;
The bond is loosed—the poor are free—
The world’s great future rests with thee!

Till the soil—bid cities rise—
Be strong, O Celt—be rich, be wise—
But still, with those divine grave eyes,
Respect the realm of Mysteries.
The Book of Orm.

I
ANCIENT IRISH
AND SCOTTISH

The Mystery of Amergin.

ANCIENT ERSE

I am the wind which breathes upon the sea,
I am the wave of the ocean,
I am the murmur of the billows,
I am the ox of the seven combats,
I am the vulture upon the rocks,
I am a beam of the sun,
I am the fairest of plants,
I am a wild boar in valour,
I am a salmon in the water,
I am a lake in the plain,
I am a word of science,
I am the point of the lance of battle,
I am the God who creates in the head [i.e. of man] the fire [i.e. the thought].
Who is it who throws light into the meeting on the mountain?
Who announces the ages of the moon [If not I]?
Who teaches the place where couches the sun [If not I]?

The Song of Fionn.

May-day, delightful time! How beautiful the colour!
The blackbirds sing their full lay. Would that Læg were here!
The cuckoos sing in constant strains. How welcome is the noble
Brilliance of the seasons ever! On the margin of the branching woods
The summer swallows skim the stream: the swift horses seek the pool:
The heather spreads out her long hair: the weak fair bog-down grows.
Sudden consternation attacks the signs; the planets, in their courses running, exert an influence:
The sea is lulled to rest, flowers cover the earth.

Credhe’s Lament.

ANCIENT ERSE

The haven roars, and O the haven roars, over the rushing race of Rinn-dá-bharc! the drowning of the warrior of loch dá chonn, that is what the wave impinging on the strand laments. Melodious is the crane, and O melodious is the crane, in the marshlands of Druim-dá-thrén! ’tis she that may not save her brood alive: the wild dog of two colours is intent upon her nestlings. A woeful note, and O a woeful note, is that which the thrush in Drumqueen emits! but not more cheerful is the wail that the blackbird makes in Letterlee. A woeful sound, and O a woeful sound, is that the deer utters in Drumdaleish! dead lies the doe of Druim Silenn: the mighty stag bells after her. Sore suffering to me, and O suffering sore, is the hero’s death—his death, that used to lie with me!... Sore suffering to me is Cael, and O Cael is a suffering sore, that by my side he is in dead man’s form! That the wave should have swept over his white body—that is what hath distracted me, so great was his delightfulness. A dismal roar, and O a dismal roar, is that the shore-surf makes upon the strand! seeing that the same hath drowned the comely noble man, to me it is an affliction that Cael ever sought to encounter it. A woeful booming, and O a boom of woe, is that which the wave makes upon the northward beach! beating as it does against the polished rock, lamenting for Cael, now that he is gone. A woeful fight, and O a fight of woe, is that the wave wages against the southern shore! As for me my span is determined!... A woeful melody, and O a melody of woe, is that which the heavy surge of Tullachleish emits! As for me: the calamity that is fallen upon me having shattered me, for me prosperity exists no more. Since now Crimthann’s son is drowned, one that I may love after him there is not in being. Many a chief is fallen by his hand, and in the battle his shield never uttered outcry!

Cuchullin in his Chariot.

“What is the cause of thy journey or thy story?”

The cause of my journey and my story
The men of Erin, yonder, as we see them,
Coming towards you on the plain.
The chariot on which is the fold, figured and cerulean,
Which is made strongly, handy, solid;
Where were active, and where were vigorous;
And where were full-wise, the noble hearted folk;
In the prolific, faithful city;—
Fine, hard, stone-bedecked, well-shafted;
Four large-chested horses in that splendid chariot;
Comely, frolicsome.

“What do we see in that chariot?”

The white-bellied, white-haired, small-eared,
Thin-sided, thin-hoofed, horse-large, steed-large horses;
With fine, shining, polished bridles;
Like a gem; or like red sparkling fire;—
Like the motion of a fawn, wounded;
Like the rustling of a loud wind in winter;—
Coming to you in that chariot.—

“What do we see in that chariot?”

We see in that chariot,
The strong, broad-chested, nimble, gray horses,—
So mighty, so broad-chested, so fleet, so choice;—
Which would wrench the sea skerries from the rocks.—
The lively, shielded, powerful horses;—
So mettlesome, so active, so clear-shining;—
Like the talon of an eagle ’gainst a fierce beast;
Which are called the beautiful Large-Gray—
The fond, large Meactroigh.

ANCIENT ERSE

“What do we see in that chariot?”

We see in that chariot,
The horses; which are white-headed, white-hoofed,
slender-legged,
Fine-haired, sturdy, imperious;
Satin-bannered, wide-chested;
Small-aged, small-haired, small-eared;
Large-hearted, large-shaped, large-nostriled;
Slender-waisted, long-bodied,—and they are foal-like;
Handsome, playful, brilliant, wild-leaping;
Which are called the Dubh-Seimhlinn.

“Who sits in that chariot?”

He who sits in that chariot,
Is the warrior, able, powerful, well-worded,
Polished, brilliant, very graceful.—
There are seven sights on his eye;
And we think that that is good vision to him;
There are six bony, fat fingers,
On each hand that comes from his shoulder;
There are seven kinds of fair hair on his head;—
Brown hair next his head’s skin,
And smooth red hair over that;
And fair-yellow hair, of the colour of gold;
And clasps on the top, holding it fast;—
Whose name is Cuchullin, Seimh-suailte,
Son of Aodh, son of Agh, son of other Aodh.—
His face is like red sparkles;—
Fast-moving on the plain like mountain fleet-mist;
Or like the speed of a hill hind;
Or like a hare on rented level ground.—
It was a frequent step—a fast step—a joyful step;—
The horses coming towards us:—
Like snow hewing the slopes;—
The panting and the snorting,
Of the horses coming towards thee.

Deirdrê’s Lament for the Sons of Usnach

The lions of the hill are gone,
And I am left alone—alone—
Dig the grave both wide and deep,
For I am sick, and fain would sleep!

The falcons of the wood are flown,
And I am left alone—alone—
Dig the grave both deep and wide,
And let us slumber side by side.

The dragons of the rock are sleeping,
Sleep that wakes not for our weeping—
Dig the grave, and make it ready,
Lay me on my true-love’s body.

Lay their spears and bucklers bright
By the warriors’ sides aright;
Many a day the three before me
On their linkèd bucklers bore me.

Lay upon the low grave floor,
’Neath each head, the blue claymore;
Many a time the noble three
Reddened their blue blades for me.

Lay the collars, as is meet,
Of the greyhounds at their feet;
Many a time for me have they
Brought the tall red deer to bay.

In the falcon’s jesses throw,
Hook and arrow, line and bow;
Never again, by stream or plain,
Shall the gentle woodsmen go.

Sweet companions, were ye ever—
Harsh to me, your sister, never;

ANCIENT ERSE

Woods and wilds, and misty valleys,
Were with you as good’s a palace.

O, to hear my true-love singing,
Sweet as sounds of trumpets ringing;
Like the sway of ocean swelling
Rolled his deep voice round our dwelling.

O! to hear the echoes pealing
Round our green and fairy shealing,
When the three, with soaring chorus,
Passed the silent skylark o’er us.

Echo now, sleep, morn and even—
Lark alone enchant the heaven!
Ardan’s lips are scant of breath,
Neesa’s tongue is cold in death.

Stag, exult on glen and mountain—
Salmon, leap from loch to fountain—
Heron, in the free air warm ye—
Usnach’s sons no more will harm ye!

Erin’s stay no more you are,
Rulers of the ridge of war;
Never more ’twill be your fate
To keep the beam of battle straight!

Woe is me! by fraud and wrong,
Traitors false and tyrants strong,
Fell Clan Usnach, bought and sold,
For Barach’s feast and Conor’s gold!

Woe to Eman, roof and wall!
Woe to Red Branch, hearth and hall!—
Tenfold woe and black dishonour
To the foul and false Clan Conor!

Dig the grave both wide and deep,
Sick I am, and fain would sleep!
Dig the grave and make it ready,
Lay me on my true-love’s body.

The Lament of Queen Maev.

Raise the Cromlech high!
Mac Moghcorb is slain,
And other men’s renown
Has leave to live again.

Cold at last he lies
’Neath the burial stone.
All the blood he shed
Could not save his own.

Stately, strong he went,
Through his nobles all,
When we paced together
Up the banquet-hall.

Dazzling white as lime,
Was his body fair,
Cherry-red his cheeks,
Raven-black his hair.

Razor-sharp his spear,
And the shield he bore,
High as champion’s head—
His arm was like an oar.

Never aught but truth
Spake my noble king;
Valour all his trust
In all his warfaring.

As the forkèd pole
Holds the roof-tree’s weight,
So my hero’s arm
Held the battle straight.

Terror went before him,
Death behind his back,
Well the wolves of Erinn
Knew his chariot’s track.

Seven bloody battles
He broke upon his foes,
In each a hundred heroes
Fell beneath his blows.

Once he fought at Fossud,
Thrice at Ath-finn-fail.
’Twas my king that conquered
At bloody Ath-an-Scaìl.

At the Boundary Stream
Fought the Royal Hound,
And for Bernas battle
Stands his name renowned.

Here he fought with Leinster—
Last of all his frays—
On the Hill of Cucorb’s Fate
High his Cromlech raise.

The March of the Faerie Host.

In well-devised battle array,
Ahead of their fair chieftain
They march amidst blue spears,
White curly-headed bands.

They scatter the battalions of the foe,
They ravage every land I have attacked,
Splendidly they march to combat
An impetuous, distinguished, avenging host!

No wonder though their strength be great:
Sons of kings and queens are one and all.
On all their heads are
Beautiful golden-yellow manes:

With smooth, comely bodies,
With bright blue-starred eyes,
With pure crystal teeth,
With thin red lips:

Good they are at man-slaying.

ANCIENT ERSE

Vision of a Fair Woman.
(Aisling air Dhreach Mna.)

Tell us some of the charms of the stars:
Close and well set were her ivory teeth;
White as the canna upon the moor
Was her bosom the tartan bright beneath.

Her well-rounded forehead shone
Soft and fair as the mountain-snow;
Her two breasts were heaving full;
To them did the hearts of heroes flow.

Her lips were ruddier than the rose;
Tender and tunefully sweet her tongue;
White as the foam adown her side
Her delicate fingers extended hung.

Smooth as the dusky down of the elk
Appeared her shady eyebrows to me;
Lovely her cheeks were, like berries red;
From every guile she was wholly free.

Her countenance looked like the gentle buds
Unfolding their beauty in early spring;
Her yellow locks like the gold-browed hills;
And her eyes like the radiance the sunbeams bring.

The Fian Banners.

The Norland King stood on the height
And scanned the rolling sea;
He proudly eyed his gallant ships
That rode triumphantly.

And then he looked where lay his camp,
Along the rocky coast,
And where were seen the heroes brave
Of Lochlin’s famous host.

Then to the land he turn’d, and there
A fierce-like hero came;
Above him was a flag of gold,
That waved and shone like flame.

“Sweet bard,” thus spoke the Norland King,
“What banner comes in sight?
The valiant chief that leads the host,
Who is that man of might?”

“That,” said the bard, “is young MacDoon,
His is that banner bright;
When forth the Féinn to battle go,
He’s foremost in the fight.”

“Sweet bard, another comes; I see
A blood-red banner toss’d
Above a mighty hero’s head
Who waves it o’er a host?”

“That banner,” quoth the bard, “belongs
To good and valiant Rayne;
Beneath it feet are bathed in blood
And heads are cleft in twain.”

“Sweet bard, what banner now I see
A leader fierce and strong
Behind it moves with heroes brave
Who furious round him throng?”

“That is the banner of Great Gaul:
That silken shred of gold,
Is first to march and last to turn,
And flight ne’er stained its fold.”

“Sweet bard, another now I see,
High o’er a host it glows,
Tell whether it has ever shone
O’er fields of slaughtered foes?”

“That gory flag is Cailt’s,” quoth he,
“It proudly peers in sight;
It won its fame on many a field
In fierce and bloody fight.”

“Sweet bard, another still I see;
A host it flutters o’er;
Like bird above the roaring surge
That laves the storm-swept shore.”

“The Broom of Peril,” quoth the bard,
“Young Oscur’s banner, see:
Amidst the conflict of dread chiefs
The proudest name has he.”

The banner of great Fionn we raised;
The Sunbeam gleaming far,
With golden spangles of renown
From many a field of war.

The flag was fastened to its staff
With nine strong chains of gold,
With nine times nine chiefs for each chain;
Before it foes oft rolled.

“Redeem your pledge to me,” said Fionn;
“And show your deeds of might
To Lochlin as you did before
In many a gory fight.”

Like torrents from the mountain heights
That roll resistless on;
So down upon the foe we rushed,
And victory won.

OLD GAELIC

The Rune of St Patrick.
“The Faedh Fiada”; or, “The Cry of the Deer.”

At Tara to-day in this fateful hour
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And fire with all the strength it hath,
And lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the earth with its starkness:
All these I place,
By God’s almighty help and grace,
Between myself and the powers of darkness.

Columcille cecenit.

O, Son of my God, what a pride, what a pleasure
To plough the blue sea!
The waves of the fountain of deluge to measure
Dear Eiré to thee.

We are rounding Moy-n-Olurg, we sweep by its head, and
We plunge through Loch Foyle,
Whose swans could enchant with their music the dead, and
Make pleasure of toil.

The host of the gulls come with joyous commotion
And screaming and sport,
I welcome my own “Dewy-Red” from the ocean
Arriving in port.[7]

O Eiré, were wealth my desire, what a wealth were
To gain far from thee,
In the land of the stranger, but there even health were
A sickness to me!

Alas for the voyage O high King of Heaven
Enjoined upon me,
For that I on the red plain of bloody Cooldrevin
Was present to see.

How happy the son is of Dima; no sorrow
For him is designed,
He is having, this hour, round his own hill in Durrow
The wish of his mind.

The sounds of the winds in the elms, like the strings of
A harp being played,
The note of the blackbird that claps with the wings of
Delight in the glade.

With him in Ros-Grencha the cattle are lowing
At earliest dawn,
On the brink of the summer the pigeons are cooing
And doves in the lawn.

Three things am I leaving behind me, the very
Most dear that I know,
Tir-Leedach I’m leaving, and Durrow and Derry,
Alas, I must go!

Yet my visit and feasting with Comgall have eased me
At Cainneach’s right hand,
And all but thy government, Eiré, has pleased me,
Thou waterfall land.

Columcille fecit.

Delightful would it be to me to be in Uchd Ailiun
On the pinnacle of a rock,
That I might often see
The face of the ocean;
That I might see its heaving waves
Over the wide ocean,
When they chant music to their Father
Upon the world’s course;
That I might see its level sparkling strand,
It would be no cause of sorrow;
That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds,
Source of happiness;
That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves
Upon the rocks;
That I might hear the roar by the side of the church
Of the surrounding sea;
That I might see its noble flocks
Over the watery ocean;
That I might see the sea-monsters,
The greatest of all wonders;
That I might see its ebb and flood
In their career;
That my mystical name might be, I say,
Cul ri Erin;[8]
That contrition might come upon my heart
Upon looking at her;
That I might bewail my evils all,
Though it were difficult to compute them;
That I might bless the Lord
Who conserves all,
Heaven with its countless bright orders,
Land, strand and flood;
That I might search the books all,
That would be good for my soul;
At times kneeling to beloved Heaven;
At times psalm singing;
At times contemplating the King of Heaven,
Holy the chief;
At times at work without compulsion,
This would be delightful.
At times plucking duilisc from the rocks;
At times at fishing;
At times giving food to the poor;
At times in a carcair:[9]
The best advice in the presence of God
To me has been vouchsafed.
The King whose servant I am will not let
Anything deceive me.

The Song of Murdoch the Monk.

Murdoch, whet thy knife, that we may shave our crowns to the Great King.
Let us sweetly give our vow, and the hair of both our heads to the Trinity.
I will shave mine to Mary; this is the doing of a true heart:
To Mary shave thou these locks, well-formed, soft-eyed man.
Seldom hast thou had, handsome man, a knife on thy hair to shave it;
Oftener has a sweet, soft queen comb’d her hair beside thee.
Whenever it was that we did bathe, with Brian of the well-curled locks,
And once on a time that I did bathe at the well of the fair-haired Boroimhe,
I strove in swimming with Ua Chais, on the cold waters of the Fergus.
When he came ashore from the stream, Ua Chais and I strove in a race:
These two knives, one to each, were given us by Duncan Cairbreach;
No knives were better: shave gently then, Murdoch.
Whet your sword, Cathal, which wins the fertile Banva;
Ne’er was thy wrath heard without fighting, brave, red-handed Cathal.
Preserve our shaved heads from cold and from heat, gentle daughter of Iodehim,
Preserve us in the land of heat, softest branch of Mary.

DOMHNULL MAC FHIONNLAIDH

The Aged Bard’s Wish.
(Miann a’ Bhaird Aosda.)

O, lay me by the gentle stream
Which glides with stealing course;
Lay my head beneath the shady boughs,
And thou, O sun, be mild upon my rest.

There, in the flowery grass,
Where the breeze sighs softly on the bank,
My feet shall be bathed with the dew
When it falls on the silent vale.

There, on my lone green heap,
The primrose and the daisy shall bloom over my head,
And the wild bright star of St John
Shall bend beside my cheek.

Above, on the steeps of the glen,
Green flowering boughs shall spread,
And sweet, from the still grey craigs,
The birds shall pour their songs.

There, from the ivied craig,
The gushing spring shall flow,
And the son of the rock shall repeat
The murmur of its fall.

The hinds shall call around my bed;
The hill shall answer to their voice,
When a thousand shall descend on the field,
And feed around my rest.

The calves shall sport beside me
By the stream of the level plain,
And the little kids, weary of their strife,
Shall sleep beneath my arm.

Far in the gentle breeze
The stag cries on the field;
The herds answer on the hill,
And descend to meet the sound.

I hear the steps of the hunter!
His whistling darts—his dog upon the hill.
The joy of youth returns to my cheek
At the sound of the coming chase!

My strength returns at the sounds of the wood;
The cry of hounds—the thrill of strings.
Hark! the death-shout—“The deer has fallen!”
I spring to life on the hill!

I see the bounding dog,
My companion on the heath;
The beloved hill of our chase,
The echoing craig of woods.

I see the sheltering cave
Which often received us from the night,
When the glowing tree and the joyful cup
Revived us with their cheer.

Glad was the smoking feast of deer,
Our drink was from Loch Treig, our music its hum of waves;
Though ghosts shrieked on the echoing hills,
Sweet was our rest in the cave.

I see the mighty mountain,
Chief of a thousand hills;
The dream of deer is in its locks,
Its head is the bed of clouds.

I see the ridge of hinds, the steep of the sloping glen,
The wood of cuckoos at its foot,
The blue height of a thousand pines,
Of wolves, and roes, and elks.

DOMHNULL MAC FHIONNLAIDH

Like the breeze on the lake of firs
The little ducks skim on the pool,
At its head is the strath of pines,
The red rowan bends on its bank.

There, on the gliding wave,
The fair swan spreads her wing,
The broad white wing which never fails
When she soars amidst the clouds.

Far wandering over ocean
She seeks the cold dwelling of seals,
Where no sail bends the mast,
Nor prow divides the wave.

Come to the woody hills
With the lament of thy love;
Return, O swan, from the isle of waves,
And sing from thy course on high.

Raise thy mournful song—
Pour the sad tale of thy grief;
The son of the rock shall hear the sound,
And repeat thy strain of woe.

Spread thy wing over ocean,
Mount up on the strength of the winds;
Pleasant to my ear is thy sound,
The song of thy wounded heart.

O youth! thou who hast departed,
And left my grey and helpless hairs,
What land has heard on its winds
Thy cry come o’er its rocks?

Are the tears in thy eye, O maiden?
Thou of the lovely brow and lily hand;
Brightness be around thee for ever!
Thou shalt return no more from the narrow bed!

Tell me, O winds! since now I see them not,
Where grow the murmuring reeds?
The reeds which sigh where rest the trout
On their still transparent fins.

O raise and bear me on your hands,
Lay my head beneath the young boughs,
That their shade may veil my eyes
When the sun shall rise on high.

And thou, O gentle sleep!
Whose course is with the stars of night;
Be near with thy dreams of song
To bring back my days of joy.

My soul beholds the maid!
In the shade of the mighty oak,
Her white hand beneath her golden hair,
Her soft eye on her beloved.

He is near—but she is silent,
His beating heart is lost in song,
Their souls beam from their eyes—
Deer stand on the hill!

The song has ceased!—
Their bosoms meet;—
Like the young and stainless rose
Her lips are pressed to his!—

Blessed be that commune sweet!
Recalling the joy which returns no more—
Blessed be thy soul, my love!
Thou maid with the bright flowing locks.

Hast thou forsaken me, O dream!
Once more return again!
Alas! thou art gone, and I am sad—
Bless thee, my love—farewell!

Friends of my youth, farewell!
Farewell, ye maids of love!
I see you now no more—with you is summer still,
With me—the winter night!

O lay me by the roaring fall,
By the sound of the murmuring craig,
Let the cruit and the shell be near,
And the shield of my father’s wars.

O breeze of Ocean come,
With the sound of thy gentle course,
Raise me on thy wings, O wind,
And bear me to the isle of rest;

Where the heroes of old are gone,
To the sleep which shall wake no more
Open the hall of Ossian and Daol—
The night is come—the bard departs!

Behold my dim grey mist!—
I go to the dwelling of bards on the hill!
Give me the airy cruit and shell for the way—
And now—my own loved cruit and shell—farewell!

Ossian Sang.

Sweet is the voice in the land of gold,
And sweeter the music of birds that soar,
When the cry of the heron is heard on the wold,
And the waves break softly on Bundatrore.

Down floats on the murmuring of the breeze
The call of the cuckoo from Cossahun,
The blackbird is warbling among the trees,
And soft is the kiss of the warming sun.

The cry of the eagle of Assaroe
O’er the court of Mac Morne to me is sweet,
And sweet is the cry of the bird below
Where the wave and the wind and the tall cliff meet.

Finn mac Cool is the father of me,
Whom seven battalions of Fenians fear:
When he launches his hounds on the open lea
Grand is their cry as they rouse the deer.

OLD GAELIC

Fingal and Ros-crana.

ROS-CRANA.

By night, came a dream to Ros-crana! I feel my beating soul. No vision of the forms of the dead came to the blue eyes of Erin. But, rising from the wave of the north, I beheld him bright in his locks. I beheld the son of the king. My beating soul is high. I laid my head down in night: again ascended the form. Why delayest thou thy coming, young rider of stormy waves!

But, there, far-distant, he comes; where seas roll their green ridges in mist! Young dweller of my soul; why dost thou delay——

FINGAL.

It was the soft voice of Moi-lena! the pleasant breeze of the valley of roes! But why dost thou hide thee in shades? Young love of heroes, rise. Are not thy steps covered with light? In thy groves thou appearest, Ros-crana, like the sun in the gathering of clouds. Why dost thou hide thee in shades? Young love of heroes, rise.

ROS-CRANA.

My fluttering soul is high! Let me turn from steps of the king. He has heard my secret voice, and shall my blue eyes roll in his presence? Roe of the hill of moss, toward thy dwelling I move. Meet me, ye breezes of Mora! as I move through the valley of the winds. But why should he ascend his ocean? Son of heroes, my soul is thine! my steps shall not move to the desert; the light of Ros-crana is here.

FINGAL.

It was the light tread of a ghost, the fair dweller of eddying winds. Why deceivest thou me with thy voice? Here let me rest in shades. Shouldst thou stretch thy white arm from thy grove, thou sunbeam of Cormac of Erin——

ROS-CRANA.

He is gone; and my blue eyes are dim; faint-rolling, in all my tears. But, there, I behold him, alone; king of Selma, my soul is thine. Ah me! what clanging of armour! Colc-ulla of Atha is near!

OLD GAELIC

The Night-Song of the Bards.

[Five bards passing the night in the house of a chief, who was a poet himself, went severally to make their observations on, and returned with an extempore description of, night.]

FIRST BARD.

Night is dull and dark. The clouds rest on the hills. No star with green trembling beam; no moon looks from the sky. I hear the blast in the wood, but I hear it distant far. The stream of the valley murmurs; but its murmur is sullen and sad. From the tree at the grave of the dead the long-howling owl is heard. I see a dim form on the plain! It is a ghost! it fades, it flies. Some funeral shall pass this way: the meteor marks the path.

The distant dog is howling from the hut of the hill. The stag lies on the mountain moss: the hind is at his side. She hears the wind in his branchy horns. She starts, but lies again.

The roe is in the cleft of the rock; the heath-cock’s head is beneath his wing. No beast, no bird is abroad, but the owl and the howling fox: she on a leafless tree; he in a cloud on the hill.

Dark, panting, trembling, sad, the traveller has lost his way. Through shrubs, through thorns, he goes, along the gurgling rill. He fears the rock and the fen. He fears the ghost of night. The old tree groans to the blast; the falling branch resounds. The wind drives the withered burrs, clung together, along the grass. It is the light tread of a ghost! He trembles amidst the night.

Dark, dusky, howling, is night, cloudy, windy, and full of ghosts! The dead are abroad! my friends, receive me from the night.

SECOND BARD.

The wind is up, the shower descends. The spirit of the mountain shrieks. Woods fall from high. Windows flap.[10] The growing river roars. The traveller attempts the ford. Hark! that shriek! he dies! The storm drives the horse from the hill, the goat, the lowing cow. They tremble as drives the shower, beside the shouldering bank.

The hunter starts from sleep, in his lonely hut; he wakes the fire decayed. His wet dogs smoke around him. He fills the chinks with heath. Loud roar two mountain streams which meet beside his booth.[11]

Sad on the side of a hill the wandering shepherd sits. The tree resounds above him. The stream roars down the rock. He waits for the rising moon to guide him to his home.

Ghosts ride on the storm to-night. Sweet is their voice between the squalls of wind. Their songs are of other worlds.

The rain is past. The dry wind blows. Streams roar, and windows flap. Cold drops fall from the roof. I see the starry sky. But the shower gathers again. The west is gloomy and dark. Night is stormy and dismal; receive me, my friends, from night.

THIRD BARD.

The wind still sounds between the hills, and whistles through the grass of the rock. The firs fall from their place. The turfy hut is torn. The clouds, divided, fly over the sky, and show the burning stars. The meteor, token of death! flies sparkling through the gloom. It rests on the hill. I see the withered fern, the dark-browed rock, the fallen oak. Who is that in his shroud beneath the tree, by the stream?

The waves dark-tumble on the lake, and lash its rocky sides. The boat is brimful in the cove; the oars on the rocking tide. A maid sits sad beside the rock, and eyes the rolling stream. Her lover promised to come. She saw his boat, when yet it was light, on the lake. Is this his broken boat on the shore? Are these his groans on the wind?

Hark! the hail rattles around. The flaky snow descends. The tops of the hills are white. The stormy winds abate. Various is the night and cold; receive me, my friends, from night.

FOURTH BARD.

Night is calm and fair; blue, starry, settled is night. The winds, with the clouds, are gone. They sink behind the hill. The moon is up on the mountain. Trees glister, streams shine on the rock. Bright rolls the settled lake; bright the stream of the vale.

I see the trees overturned; the shocks of corn on the plain. The wakeful hind rebuilds the shocks, and whistles on the distant field.

Calm, settled, fair is night! Who comes from the place of the dead? That form with the robe of snow, white arms, and dark-brown hair! It is the daughter of the chief of the people: she that lately fell! Come, let us view thee, O maid! Thou that hast been the delight of heroes! The blast drives the phantom away; white, without form, it ascends the hill.

The breezes drive the blue mist, slowly, over the narrow vale. It rises on the hill, and joins its head to heaven. Night is settled, calm, blue, starry, bright with the moon. Receive me not, my friends, for lovely is the night.

FIFTH BARD.

Night is calm, but dreary. The moon is in a cloud in the west. Slow moves that pale beam along the shaded hill. The distant wave is heard. The torrent murmurs on the rock. The cock is heard from the booth.[12] More than half the night is past. The house-wife, groping in the gloom, re-kindles the settled fire. The hunter thinks that day approaches, and calls his bounding dogs. He ascends the hill, and whistles on his way. A blast removes the cloud. He sees the starry plough of the north. Much of the night is to pass. He nods by the mossy rock.

Hark! the whirlwind is in the wood! A low murmur in the vale! It is the mighty army of the dead returning from the air.

The moon rests behind the hill. The beam is still on that lofty rock. Long are the shadows of the trees. Now it is dark over all. Night is dreary, silent, and dark; receive me, my friends, from night.

THE CHIEF.

Let clouds rest on the hills: spirits fly, and travellers fear. Let the winds of the woods arise, the sounding storms descend. Roar streams and windows flap, and green-winged meteors fly! Rise the pale moon from behind her hills, or inclose her head in clouds! Night is alike to me, blue, stormy, or gloomy the sky. Night flies before the beam, when it is poured on the hill. The young day returns from his clouds, but we return no more.

Where are our chiefs of old? Where are our kings of mighty name? The fields of their battles are silent. Scarce their mossy tombs remain. We shall also be forgot. This lofty house shall fall. Our sons shall not behold the ruins in grass. They shall ask of the aged, “Where stood the walls of our fathers?”

Raise the song, and strike the harp; send round the shells of joy. Suspend a hundred tapers on high. Youths and maids begin the dance. Let some grey bard be near me, to tell the deeds of other times; of kings renowned in our land, of chiefs we behold no more. Thus let the night pass until morning shall appear in our halls. Then let the bow be at hand, the dogs, the youths of the chase. We shall ascend the hill with day, and awake the deer.

OSSIAN

Comala.

DERSAGRENA.

The chase is over. No noise on Ardven but the torrent’s roar! Daughter of Morni, come from Crona’s banks. Lay down the bow and take the harp. Let the night come on with songs, let our joy be great on Ardven.

MELILCOMA.

Night comes apace, thou blue-eyed maid! Grey night grows dim along the plain. I saw a deer at Crona’s stream; a mossy bank he seemed through the gloom, but soon he bounded away. A meteor played round his branching horns! The awful faces of other times looked from the clouds of Crona!

DERSAGRENA.

These are the signs of Fingal’s death. The king of shields is fallen! and Caracul prevails. Rise, Comala, from thy rock: daughter of Sarno, rise in tears! The youth of thy love is low; his ghost is on our hills.

MELILCOMA.

There Comala sits forlorn! two grey dogs near shake their rough ears, and catch the flying breeze. Her red cheek rests upon her arm, the mountain-wind is in her hair. She turns her blue eyes toward the fields of his promise. Where art thou, O Fingal? The night is gathering around!

COMALA.

O Carun of the streams! Why do I behold thy waters rolling in blood? Has the noise of the battle been heard; and sleeps the King of Morven? Rise, moon, thou daughter of the sky! Look from between thy clouds, rise that I may behold the gleam of his steel, on the field of his promise. Or rather let the meteor, that lights our fathers through the night, come, with its red beam, to show me the way to my fallen hero. Who will defend me from sorrow? Who from the love of Hydallan? Long shall Comala look before she can behold Fingal in the midst of his host; bright as the coming forth of the morning, in the cloud of an early shower.

HYDALLAN.

Dwell, thou mist of gloomy Crona, dwell on the path of the king! Hide his steps from mine eyes, let me remember my friend no more. The bands of battle are scattered, no crowding tread is round the noise of his steel. O Carun! roll thy streams of blood, the chief of the people is low.

COMALA.

Who fell on Carun’s sounding banks, son of the cloudy night? Was he white as the snow of Ardven? Blooming as the bow of the shower? Was his hair like the mist of the hill, soft and curling in the day of the sun? Was he like the thunder of heaven in battle? Fleet as the roe of the desert?

HYDALLAN.

O that I might behold his love, fair leaning from her rock! Her red eye dim in tears, her blushing cheek half hid in her locks! Blow, O gentle breeze! Lift thou the heavy locks of the maid, that I may behold her white arm, her lovely cheek in her grief.

COMALA.

And is the son of Comhal fallen, chief of the mournful tale? The thunder rolls on the hill! The lightning flies on wings of fire! They frighten not Comala; for Fingal is low. Say, chief of the mournful tale, fell the breaker of the shields?

HYDALLAN.

The nations are scattered on their hills; they shall hear the voice of the king no more.

COMALA.

Confusion pursue thee over thy plains! Ruin overtake thee, thou king of the world! Few be thy steps to thy grave; and let one virgin mourn thee! Let her be like Comala, tearful in the days of her youth! Why hast thou told me, Hydallan, that my hero fell? I might have hoped a little while his return, I might have thought I saw him on the distant rock; a tree might have deceived me with his appearance; the wind of the hill might have been the sound of his horn in mine ear. O that I were on the banks of Carun! that my tears might be warm on his cheek!

HYDALLAN.

He lies not on the banks of Carun; on Ardven heroes raise his tomb. Look on them, O moon! from thy clouds; be thy beam bright on his breast, that Comala may behold him in the light of his armour!

COMALA.

Stop, ye sons of the grave, till I behold my love! He left me at the chase alone. I knew not that he went to war. He said he would return with the night; the King of Morven is returned! Why didst thou not tell me that he would fall, O trembling dweller of the rock? Thou sawest him in the blood of his youth; but thou didst not tell Comala!

MELILCOMA.

What sound is that on Ardven? Who is that, bright in the vale? Who comes like the strength of rivers, when their crowded waters glitter to the moon?

COMALA.

Who is it but the foe of Comala, the son of the king of the world? Ghost of Fingal! Do thou from thy cloud direct Comala’s bow. Let him fall like the hart of the desert. It is Fingal in the crowd of his ghosts. Why dost thou come, my love, to frighten and please my soul?

FINGAL.

Raise, ye bards, the song; raise the wars of the streamy Carun! Caracul has fled from our arms along the fields of his pride. He sets far distant like a meteor, that incloses a spirit of night, when the winds drive it over the heath, and the dark woods are gleaming around. I heard a voice, or was it the breeze of my hills? Is it the huntress of Ardven, the white-handed daughter of Sarno? Look from thy rocks, my love; let me hear the voice of Comala!

COMALA.

Take me to the cave of my rest, O lovely son of death!

FINGAL.

Come to the cave of my rest. The storm is past, the sun is on our fields. Come to the cave of my rest, huntress of echoing Ardven!

COMALA.

He is returned with his fame. I feel the right hand of his wars. But I must rest beside the rock till my soul returns from my fear. O let the harp be near! Raise the song, ye daughters of Morni!

OSSIAN

DERSAGRENA.

Comala has slain three deer on Ardven, the fire ascends on the rock; go to the feast of Comala, king of the woody Morven!

FINGAL.

Raise, ye sons of song, the wars of the streamy Carun; that my white-handed maid may rejoice: while I behold the feast of my love.

BARDS.

Roll, streamy Carun, roll in joy, the sons of battle are fled! The steed is not seen on our fields; the wings of their pride spread in other lands. The sun will now rise in peace, and the shadows descend in joy. The voice of the chase will be heard; the shields hang in the hall. Our delight will be in the war of the ocean, our hands shall grow red in the blood of Lochlin. Roll, streamy Carun, roll in joy, the sons of battle fled!

MELILCOMA.

Descend, ye light mists from high! Ye moonbeams, lift her soul! Pale lies the maid at the rock. Comala is no more!

FINGAL.

Is the daughter of Sarno dead, the white-bosomed maid of my love? Meet me, Comala, on my heaths, when I sit alone at the streams of my hills!

HYDALLAN.

Ceased the voice of the huntress of Ardven? Why did I trouble the soul of the maid? When shall I see thee, with joy, in the chase of the dark-brown hinds?

FINGAL.

Youth of the gloomy brow! No more shalt thou feast in my halls. Thou shalt not pursue my chase, my foes shall not fall by thy sword. Lead me to the place of her rest that I may behold her beauty. Pale she lies at the rock, cold winds lift her hair. Her bow-string sounds in the blast, her arrow was broken in her fall. Raise the praise of the daughter of Sarno! Give her name to the winds of Heaven!

BARDS.

See! Meteors gleam around the maid! See! Moonbeams lift her soul! Around her, from their clouds, bend the awful faces of her fathers; Sarno of the gloomy brow! The red-rolling eyes of Fidallan! When shall thy white hand arise? When shall thy voice be heard on our rocks? The maids shall seek thee on the heath but they shall not find thee. Thou shalt come, at times, to their dreams, to settle peace in their soul. Thy voice shall remain in their ears, they shall think with joy on the dreams of their rest. Meteors gleam around the maid, and moon-beams lift her soul.

OSSIAN

The Death-Song of Ossian.

Such were the words of the bards in the days of song; when the king heard the music of harps, the tales of other times! The chiefs gathered from all their hills, and heard the lovely sound. They praised the Voice of Cona! The first among a thousand bards! But age is now on my tongue; my soul has failed! I hear, at times, the ghosts of the bards, and learn their pleasant song. But memory fails on my mind. I hear the call of years! They say, as they pass along, why does Ossian sing? Soon shall he lie in the narrow house, and no bard shall raise his fame! Roll on, ye dark-brown years; ye bring no joy on your course! Let the tomb open to Ossian, for his strength has failed. The sons of song are gone to rest. My voice remains, like a blast, that roars, lonely, on a sea-surrounded rock, after the winds are laid. The dark moss whistles there; the distant mariner sees the waving trees!

II
ANCIENT
CORNISH

The Pool of Pilate.

[Wayfarer loq.

Guel yv thy’mmo vy may fe
mos the wolhy ow dule
a Thesempes
me a vyn omma yn dour
may fons y guyn ha glan lour
a vostethes
. . . . . .
Ellas pan fema gynys
ancow sur yw dynythys
Scon thy’mmo vy
ny’m bus bywe na fella
an dour re wruk thy’m henna
yn pur deffry.

ANCIENT CORNISH

The Pool of Pilate.

[Wayfarer loq.

It is best to me that it be so
Go to wash my hands
Immediately
I will, here in the water,
That they may be white, and clean enough
From dirt.

[He washes his hands in the water and dies immediately.]

Alas that I was born!
Death surely is come
Soon to me.
Life is no longer for me,
The water has done that to me
Very clearly.

Merlin the Diviner.

Merlin! Merlin! where art thou going
So early in the day, with thy black dog?
Oi! oi! oi! oi! oi! oi! oi! oi! oi! oi!
Oi! oi! oi! ioi! oi!

I have come here to search the way,
To find the red egg;
The red egg of the marine serpent,
By the sea-side in the hollow of the stone.
I am going to seek in the valley
The green water-cress, and the golden grass,
And the top branch of the oak,
In the wood by the side of the fountain.

Merlin! Merlin! retrace your steps;
Leave the branch on the oak,
And the green water-cress in the valley,
As well as the golden grass;
And leave the red egg of the marine serpent,
In the foam by the hollow of the stone.
Merlin! Merlin! retrace thy steps,
There is no diviner but God.

ANCIENT CORNISH DRAMA

The Vision of Seth.

[Adam bids Seth journey to the Gate of Paradise—the way to be known to him because of the burnt imprints of the feet of himself and Eve on the day they were driven forth, sere marks never grass-grown since—and, after telling him to ask for the oil of mercy, blesses him, and sees him go.]

CHERUBIN.

Seth, what is thy errand,
That thou wouldst come so long a way?
Tell me soon.

SETH.

O angel, I will tell thee:
My father is old and weary,
He would not wish to live longer;

And through me he prayed thee
To tell the truth
Of the oil promised to him
Of mercy in the last day.

CHERUBIN.

Within the gate put thy head,
And behold it all, nor fear,
Whatever thou seest,
And look on all sides;
Examine well every particular;
Search out everything diligently.

SETH.

Very joyfully I will do it;
I am glad to have permission
To know what is there,
To tell it to my father.

[And he looks, and turns round, saying:—]

Fair field is this;
Unhappy he who lost the country:
And the tree, it is to me
A great wonder that it is dry;
But I believe that it is dry,
And all made bare, for the sin
Which my father and mother sinned.
Like the prints of their feet,
They are all dry, like herbs.
Alas, that the morsel was eaten.

CHERUBIN.

O Seth, thou art come
Within the Gate of Paradise;
Tell me what thou sawest.

SETH.

All the beauty that I saw
The tongue of no man in the world can
Tell it ever.
Of good fruit, and fair flowers,
Minstrels and sweet song,
A fountain bright as silver;
And four springs, large indeed,
Flowing from it,
That there is a desire to look at them.

In it there is a tree,
High with many boughs;
But they are all bare, without leaves.
And around it, bark
There was none, from the stem to the head
All its boughs are bare.

And at the bottom, when I looked,
I saw its roots
Even into hell descending,
In the midst of great darkness.
And its branches growing up,
Even to heaven high in light;
And it was without bark altogether,
Both the head and the boughs.

CHERUBIN.

Look yet again within,
And all else thou shalt see
Before thou come from it.

SETH.

I am happy that I have permission;
I will go to the gate immediately,
That I may see further good.
[He goes, and looks, and returns.

CHERUBIN.

Dost thou see more now,
Than what there was just now?

SETH.

There is a serpent in the tree;
An ugly beast, without fail.

CHERUBIN.

Go yet a third time to it,
And look better at the tree.
Look, what you can see in it,
Besides roots and branches.
[Again he goes up.

SETH.

Cherub, angel of the God of grace,
In the tree I saw,
High up on the branches,
A little child newly born;
And he was swathed in cloths,
And bound fast with napkins.

CHERUBIN.

The Son of God it was whom thou sawest,
Like a little child swathed.
He will redeem Adam, thy father,
With his flesh and blood too,
When the time is come,
And thy mother, and all the good people.

He is the oil of mercy,
Which was promised to thy father;
Through his death, clearly,
All the world will be saved.

SETH.

Blessed be he:
O God, now I am happy;
Knowing the truth all plainly,
I will go from thee.

CHERUBIN.

Take three kernels of the apple,
Which Adam, thy father, ate.
When he dies, put them, without fail,
Between his teeth and tongue.
From them thou wilt see
Three trees grow presently;
For he will not live more than three days
After thou reachest home.

SETH.

Blessed be thou every day;
I honour thee ever very truly:
My father will be very joyful,
If he soon passes from life.

III
ANCIENT ARMORICAN
(Breton)

ANCIENT BRETON

The Dance of the Sword.
(Ha Korol ar C’Hleze.)

Blood, wine, and glee,
Sun, to thee,—
Blood, wine, and glee!
Fire! fire! steel, Oh! steel!
Fire, fire! steel and fire!
Oak! oak, earth, and waves!
Waves, oak, earth and oak!

Glee of dance and song,
And battle-throng,—
Battle, dance, and song!
Fire! fire! steel, etc.

Let the sword blades swing
In a ring,—
Let the sword blades swing!
Fire! fire! steel, etc.

Song of the blue steel,
Death to feel,—
Song of the blue steel!
Fire! fire! steel, etc.

Fight, whereof the sword
Is the Lord,—
Fight of the fell sword!
Fire! fire! steel, etc.

Sword, thou mighty king
Of battle’s ring,—
Sword thou mighty king!
Fire! fire! steel, etc.

With the rainbow’s light
Be thou bright,—
With the rainbow’s light!
Fire! fire! steel, Oh! steel!
Fire, fire! steel and fire!
Oak! oak, earth and waves!
Waves, oak, earth, and oak!

ANCIENT BRETON

The Lord Nann and the Fairy.
(Aotron Nann Hag ar Gorrigan.)

The good Lord Nann and his fair bride
Were young when wedlock’s knot was tied—
Were young when death did them divide.

But yesterday that lady fair
Two babes as white as snow did bear;
A man-child and a girl they were.

“Now, say what is thy heart’s desire,
For making me a man-child’s sire?
’Tis thine, whate’er thou may’st require,—

“What food soe’er thee lists to take,
Meat of the woodcock from the lake,
Meat of the wild deer from the brake.”

“Oh, the meat of the deer is dainty food!
To eat thereof would do me good,
But I grudge to send thee to the wood.”

The Lord of Nann, when this he heard,
Hath gripp’d his oak spear with never a word;
His bonny black horse he hath leap’d upon,
And forth to the greenwood hath he gone.

By the skirts of the wood as he did go,
He was ware of a hind as white as snow.

Oh, fast she ran, and fast he rode,
That the earth it shook where his horse-hoofs trode.

Oh, fast he rode, and fast she ran,
That the sweat to drop from his brow began—

That the sweat on his horse’s flank stood white;
So he rode and rode till the fall o’ the night.

When he came to a stream that fed a lawn,
Hard by the grot of a Corrigaun.

The grass grew thick by the streamlet’s brink,
And he lighted down off his horse to drink.

The Corrigaun sat by the fountain fair,
A-combing her long and yellow hair.

A-combing her hair with a comb of gold,—
(Not poor, I trow, are those maidens cold).—

“Now who’s the bold wight that dares come here
To trouble my fairy fountain clear?

“Either thou straight shall wed with me,
Or pine for four long years and three;
Or dead in three days’ space shall be.”

“I will not wed with thee, I ween,
For wedded man a year I’ve been;

“Nor yet for seven years will I pine,
Nor die in three days for spell of thine;

“For spell of thine I will not die,
But when it pleaseth God on high.

“But here, and now, I’d leave my life,
Ere take a Corrigaun to wife.
. . . . . . . . . .
“O mother, mother! for love of me,
Now make my bed, and speedily,
For I am sick as a man can be.

“Oh, never the tale to my lady tell;
Three days and ye’ll hear my passing bell;
The Corrigaun hath cast her spell.”

Three days they pass’d, three days were sped,
To her mother-in-law the ladye said;

“Now tell me, madam, now tell me, pray,
Wherefore the death-bells toll to-day?

“Why chaunt the priests in the street below,
All clad in their vestments white as snow?”

“A strange poor man, who harbour’d here,
He died last night, my daughter dear.”

“But tell me, madam, my lord, your son—
My husband—whither is he gone?”

“But to the town, my child, he’s gone;
And at your side he’ll be back anon.”

“What gown for my churching were’t best to wear,—
My gown of grain, or of watchet fair?”

“The fashion of late, my child, hath grown,
That women for churching black should don.”

As through the churchyard porch she stept,
She saw the grave where her husband slept.

“Who of our blood is lately dead,
That our ground is new raked and spread?”

“The truth I may no more forbear,
My son—your own poor lord—lies there!”

She threw herself on her knees amain,
And from her knees ne’er rose again.

That night they laid her, dead and cold,
Beside her lord, beneath the mould;
When, lo!—a marvel to behold!—

Next morn from the grave two oak-trees fair,
Shot lusty boughs high up in air;

And in their boughs—oh wondrous sight!—
Two happy doves, all snowy white—

That sang, as ever the morn did rise,
And then flew up—into the skies!

Alain the Fox.

The bearded fox is yelping, yelp, yelping through the glades;
Woe to the foreign rabbits! His eyes are two keen blades.

His teeth are keen; his feet are swift; his nails are red with blood.
Alain the fox is yelping war: yelp, yelping in the wood.

The Bretons making sharp their arms of terror I did see,
It was on cuirasses of Gaul, not stones of Brittany.

The Bretons reaping did I see, upon the fields of war;
It was not notched reaping-hooks, but swords of steel they bore.

They reapt no wheat of our own land, they reaped not our rye;
But the beardless ears, the beardless ears of Gaul and Saxony.

I saw upon the threshing-floor the Bretons threshing corn:
I saw the beaten chaff fly out from beardless ears off-torn.

It was not with their wooden flails the Bretons thresht the wheat;
But with their iron boar-spears and with their horses’ feet.

I heard the cry when threshing’s done, the joy-cry onward borne
Far, far from Mont-Saint-Michel to the valleys of Elorn:

From the abbey of Saint Gildas far on to the Land’s-End rocks.
In Brittany’s four corners give a glory to the Fox!

From age to age give glory to the Fox a thousand times!
But weep ye for the rhymer, though he recollect his rhymes!

For he that sang this song the first since then hath never sung:
Ah me, alas! Unhappy man! The Gauls cut out his tongue.

But though no more he hath a tongue, a heart is always his:
He has both hand and heart to shoot his arrowy melodies.

Bran.
(The Crow.)

Wounded full sore is Bran the knight;
For he was at Kerloan fight;
At Kerloan fight, by wild seashore
Was Bran-Vor’s grandson wounded sore;
And, though we gained the victory,
Was captive borne beyond the sea.
He when he came beyond the sea,
In the close keep wept bitterly.
“They leap at home with joyous cry
While, woe is me, in bed I lie.
Could I but find a messenger,
Who to my mother news would bear!”
They quickly found a messenger;
His best thus gave the warrior:
“Heed thou to dress in other guise,
My messenger, dress beggar-wise!
Take thou my ring, my ring of gold,
That she thy news as truth may hold!
Unto my country straightway go,
It to my lady mother show!
Should she come free her son from hold,
A flag of white do thou unfold!
But if with thee she come not back,
Unfurl, ah me, a pennon black!”

So, when to Leon-land he came,
At supper table sat the dame,
At table with her family,
The harpers playing as should be.
“Dame of the castle, hail! I bring
From Bran your son this golden ring,
His golden ring and letter too;
Read it, oh read it, straightway through!”
“Ye harpers, cease ye, play no more,
For with great grief my heart is sore!
My son (cease harpers, play no more!)
In prison, and I did not know!
Prepare to-night a ship for me!
To-morrow I go across the sea.”

The morning of the next, next day
The Lord Bran question’d, as he lay:
“Sentinel, sentinel, soothly say!
Seest thou no vessel on its way?”
“My lord the knight, I nought espy
Except the great sea and the sky.”
The Lord Bran askt him yet once more,
Whenas the day’s course half was o’er;
“Sentinel, sentinel, soothly say!
Seest thou no vessel on its way?”
“I can see nothing, my lord the knight,
Except the sea-birds i’ their flight.”
The Lord Bran askt him yet again,
Whenas the day was on the wane;
“Sentinel, sentinel, soothly say!
Seest thou no vessel on its way?”
Then that false sentinel, the while
Smiling a mischief-working smile;
“I see afar a misty form—
A ship sore beaten by the storm.”
“The flag? Quick give the answer back!
The banner? Is it white or black?”
“Far as I see, ’tis black, Sir knight,
I swear it by the coal’s red light.”
When this the sorrowing knight had heard
Again he never spoke a word;
But turn’d aside his visage wan;
And then the fever fit began.

Now of the townsmen askt the dame,
When at the last to shore she came,
“What is the news here, townsmen, tell!
That thus I hear them toll the bell?”
An aged man the lady heard,
And thus he answer’d to her word:
“We in the prison held a knight;
And he hath died here in the night.”
Scarcely to end his words were brought,
When the high tower that lady sought;
Shedding salt tears and running fast,
Her white hair scatter’d in the blast,
So that the townsmen wonderingly
Full sorely marvell’d her to see;
Whenas they saw a lady strange,
Through their streets so sadly range
Each one in thought did musing stand;
“Who is the lady, from what land?”
Soon as the donjon’s foot she reacht,
The porter that poor dame beseecht;
“Ope, quickly ope, the gate for me!
My son! My son! Him would I see!”
Slowly the great gate open drew;
Herself upon her son she threw,
Close in her arms his corpse to strain,
The lady never rose again.

There is a tree, that doth look o’er
From Kerloan’s battle-field to th’ shore;
An oak. Before great Evan’s face
The Saxons fled in that same place.
Upon that oak in clear moonlight,
Together come the birds at night;
Black birds and white, but sea birds all;
On each one’s brow a blood-stain small,
With them a raven gray and old;
With her a crow comes young and bold.
Both with soil’d wings, both wearied are;
They come beyond the seas from far:
And the birds sing so lovelily
That silence comes on the great sea.
All sing in concert sweet and low
Except the raven and the crow.
Once was the crow heard murmuring:
“Sing, little birds, ye well may sing!
Sing, for this is your own countrie!
Ye died not far from Brittany!”

IV
EARLY CYMRIC AND MEDIÆVAL WELSH

The Soul.
(From “The Black Book of Caermarthen.”)

EARLY CYMRIC

Soul, since I was made in necessity blameless
True it is, woe is me that thou shouldst have come to my design,
Neither for my own sake, nor for death, nor for end, nor for beginning.
It was with seven faculties that I was thus blessed,
With seven created beings I was placed for purification;
I was gleaming fire when I was caused to exist;
I was dust of the earth, and grief could not reach me;
I was a high wind, being less evil than good;
I was a mist on a mountain seeking supplies of stags;
I was blossoms of trees on the face of the earth.
If the Lord had blessed me, He would have placed me on matter.
Soul, since I was made——

LLYWARC’H HEN

The Gorwynion.

The tops of the ash glisten, that are white and stately,
When growing on the top of the dingle:
The breast rackt with pain, longing is its complaint.

Brightly glitters the top of the cliff at the long midnight hour;
Every ingenious person will be honoured:
’Tis the duty of the fair, to afford sleep to him that is in pain.

Brightly glistens the willow tops; the fish are merry in the lakes,
Blustering is the wind over the tops of the small branches:
Nature over learning doth prevail.

Brightly glisten the tops of the furze; have confidence with the wise,
But from the unwise tear thyself afar;
Besides God there is none that sees futurity.

Brightly glisten the clover tops: the timid has no heart;
Wearied out are the jealous ones:
Cares attend the weak.

Brightly glisten the tops of reed-grass; furious is the jealous,
If any should perchance offend him:
’Tis the maxim of the prudent to love with sincerity.

Brightly glare the tops of the mountains from the blustering of winter,
Full are the stalks of reeds; heavy is oppression:
Against famine bashfulness will vanish.

Brightly glare the tops of mountains assail’d by winter cold;
Brittle are the reeds; the mead is incrusted over;
Playful is the heedless in banishment.

Bright are the tops of the oaks, bitter are the ash branches;
Before the duck, the dividing waves are seen:
Confident is deceit; care is deeply rooted in my heart.

Brightly glisten the tops of the oaks, bitter are the ash branches;
Sweet is the sheltering hedge; the wave is a noisy grinner;
The cheek cannot conceal the trouble of the heart.

Bright is the top of the eglantine; hardship dispenses with forms,
Let everyone keep his fire-side:
The greatest blemish is ill-manners.

Brightly glitters the top of the broom; may the lover have a home;
Very yellow seem the clustered branches;
Shallow is the ford; sleep visits the contented mind.

Brightly glitters the top of the apple-tree; the prosperous is circumspect.
In the long day the stagnant pool is warm;
Thick is the veil on the light of the blind prisoner.

Very glittering are the hazel-tops by the hill of Dig;
Every prudent one will be free from harm;
’Tis the act of the mighty to keep a treaty.

Glittering are the tops of the reeds; the fat are drowsy
And the young imbibe instruction;
None but the foolish will break faith.

Glittering is the top of the lily; let every bold one be a drinker;
The word of a tribe is superior;
’Tis usual for the unjust to break his word.

Bright are the tops of heath; miscarriage attends the timid;
Boldly laves the water on its banks.
Tis the maxim of the just to keep his word.

The tops of the rushes glitter; the kine are gentle;
Running are my tears this day,
Social comfort from man there is not.

Glittering are the tops of fern, yellow is the wild marygold;
The sea is a fence for blind ones:
Swift and active are the young men.

Glittering are the tops of the service-tree; care attends the old;
The bees frequent the wilds;
Vengeance only to God belongs.

Brightly glitters the tops of the oak; incessant is the tempest;
The bees are high in their flight, brittle is the charr’d brushwood,
The wanton is apt to laugh too frequently.

The hazel grove brightly glitters, even and uniform seem the brakes;
And with leaves the oaks envelop themselves;
Happy is he who sees the one he loves!

Glittering seems the top of the oak; coolly purls the stream;
I wish to obtain the top of the birchen grove;
Abruptly goes the arrow of the haughty to give pain.

Brightly glitters the top of the hard holly, that opens its golden leaves;
When all are asleep on the surrounding walls,
God slumbers not when He means to give deliverance.

Glittering are the tops of the willows, brittle and tender;
In the long day of summer the war-horse flags,
Those that have mutual friendships will not offend.

Glittering are the tops of rushes, the stems are full of prickles;
When drawn under the pillow;
The wanton mind will be haughty.

Bright is the top of the hawthorn; confident is the fight of the steed;
It behoves the dependant to be grateful;
May it be good what the speedy messenger brings.

Glittering are the tops of cresses; warlike is the steed;
Trees are fair ornaments of the ground;
Joyful is the soul with the one it loves.

Brightly glares the top of the bush, valuable is the steed;
Reason joined with strength is effectual;
Let the unskilful be void of strength.

Glittering are the tops of the brakes, birds are their fair jewels;
The long day is the gift of the radiant light,
Mercy was formed by God, the most beneficent.

Glittering are the elmwood tops, sweet the music of the grove;
Boisterous among the trees the wind doth whistle;
Interceding with the obdurate will not avail.

Glittering are the tops of elder-trees; bold is the solitary songster;
Accustomed is the violent to oppress;
By want of care the food in hand may be lost.

The Tercets of Llywarc’h.

Entangling is the snare, clustered is the ash;
The ducks are in the pond; white breaks the wave;
More powerful than a hundred is the counsel of the heart.

Long the night, boisterous is the sea-shore;
Usual a tumult in a congregation;
The vicious will not agree with the good.

Long the night, boisterous is the mountain,
The wind whistles over the tops of trees;
Ill-nature will not deceive the discreet.

The saplings of the green-topped birch
Will extricate my foot from the shackle;
Disclose not thy secret to a youth.

The saplings of oaks in the grove
Will extricate my foot from the chain;
Disclose no secret to a maid.

The saplings of the leafy oaks
Will extricate my foot from the prison;
Divulge no secret to a babbler.

The saplings of bramble have berries on them;
The thrush is on her nest;
The liar will never be silent.

Rain without, the fern is drenched;
White the gravel of the sea; there is spray on the margin;
Reason is the fairest lamp for man.

Rain without, near is the shelter,
The furze yellow; the cow-parsnip withered and dry;
God the Creator! why hast thou made me a coward?

Rain without, my hair is drenched;
Full of complaint is the feeble; steep the cliff;
Pale white is the sea; salt is the brine.

Rain without, the ocean is drenched;
The wind whistles over the tops of the reeds;
After every feat, still without the genius.

Song to the Wind.

TALIESIN

Discover thou what is
The strong creature from before the flood,
Without flesh, without bone,
Without vein, without blood,
Without head, without feet;
It will neither be older nor younger
Than at the beginning;
For fear of a denial,
These are no rude wants
With creatures.
Great God! how the sea whitens
When first it comes!
Great are its gusts
When it comes from the south;
Great are its evaporations
When it strikes on coasts.
It is in the field, it is in the wood,
Without hand and without foot,
Without signs of old age,
Though it be co-eval
With the five ages or periods;
And older still,
Though they be numberless years.
It is also so wide;
As the surface of the earth;
And it was not born,
Nor was it seen.
It will cause consternation
Wherever God willeth.
On sea, and on land,
It neither sees, nor is seen.
Its course is devious,
And will not come when desired
On land and on sea
It is indispensable.
It is without an equal,
It is four-sided;
It is not confined,
It is incomparable;
It comes from four quarters;
It will not be advised,
It will not be without advice.
It commences its journey
Above the marble rock.
It is sonorous, it is dumb,
It is mild,
It is strong, it is bold,
When it glances over the land.
It is silent, it is vocal,
It is clamorous,
It is the most noisy
On the face of the earth.
It is good, it is bad,
It is extremely injurious.
It is concealed,
Because sight cannot perceive it.
It is noxious, it is beneficial;
It is yonder, it is here;
It will discompose,
But will not repair the injury;
It will not suffer for its doings,
Seeing it is blameless.
It is wet, it is dry,
It frequently comes,
Proceeding from the heat of the sun,
And the coldness of the moon.
The moon is less beneficial,
Inasmuch as her heat is less.
One Being has prepared it,
Out of all creatures,
By a tremendous blast,
To wreak vengeance
On Maelgwn Gwynedd.

Odes of the Months.

ANEURIN

Month of January—smoky is the vale;
Weary the wine-bearer; strolling the minstrel;
Lean the cow; seldom the hum of the bee;
Empty the milking fold; void of meat the kiln;
Slender the horse; very silent the bird;
Long to the early dawn; short the afternoon;
Justly spoke Cynfelyn,
“Prudence is the best guide for man.”

Month of February—scarce are the dainties;
Wakeful the adder to generate its poison;
Habitual is reproach from frequent acknowledgment;
The hired ox has not skill to complain;
Three things produce dreadful evils,
A woman’s counsel, murder, and way-laying;
Best is the dog upon a morning in spring;
Alas! to him who murders his maid!

Month of March—great is the forwardness of the birds,
Severe is the cold wind upon the headlands;
Serene weather will be longer than the crops;
Longer continues anger than grief;
Every one feels dread;
Every bird wings to its mate.
Every thing springs through the earth;
But the dead, strong is his prison!

Month of April—aerial is the horizon;
Fatigued the oxen; bare the land;
Common is the visitor without an invitation;
Poor the deer; blithesome the hare;
Everyone claims his labour;
Happy his state who governs himself;
Common is separation with virtuous children;
Common, after presumption, is a long cessation.

Month of May—wanton is the lascivious;
Sheltering the ditch to everyone who loves it;
Joyous the aged in his robes;
Loquacious the cuckoo in the rural vales;
Easy is society where there is affection;
Covered with foliage are the woods, sportive the amorous,
There comes as often to the market,
The skin of the lamb as the skin of the sheep.

Month of June—beautiful are the fields;
Smooth the sea, pleasing the strand;
Beautifully long the day, playful the ladies;
Full the flocks, apt to be firm the bog;
God loves all tranquillity;
The devil loves all mischief;
Every one covets honour;
Every mighty one, feeble his end.

Month of July—the hay is apt to smoke;
Ardent the heat, dissolved the snow;
The vagrant does not love a long confederacy;
There is no success to the progeny of an unchaste person;
Bare the farm-yard—partly empty the circular eminence;
Clean the perfect person, disgraceful the boasting word;
Justly spoke the foster-son of Mary,
“God judges, though man may prate.”

Month of August—covered with foam is the beach;
Blithesome the bee, full the hive;
Better the work of the sickle than the bow;
Fuller the stack than the theatre.
He that will neither work nor pray,
Is not worthy to have bread;
Justly spoke Saint Breda,
“Evil will not be approached less than good.”

Month of September—benign are the planets;
Tending to please, the sea and the hamlet;
Common is it for steeds and men to be fatigued;
Common is it to possess all kinds of fruit:—
A princely girl was born,
To be our leader from painful slavery;—
Justly spake Saint Berned,
“God does not sleep when he gives deliverance.”

Month of October—penetrable is the shelter;
Yellow the tops of the birch, solitary the summer dwelling;
Full of fat the birds and the fish;
Less and less the milk of the cow and the goat;
Alas! to him who merits disgrace by sin!
Death is better than frequent extravagance;
Three things follow every crime,
Fasting, prayer, and charity.

Month of November—very fat are the swine;
Let the shepherd go; let the minstrel come;
Bloody the blade, full the barn;
Pleased the sea, tasteless the caldron;
Long the night, active the prisoner;
Respected is every one who possesses property;
For three things men are not often concerned,
Sorrow, angry look, and an illiberal miser.

Month of December—the shoe is covered with dirt:
Heavy the land, flagging the sun;
Bare are the trees, still is the muscle;
Cheerful the cock, and determined the thief;
Whilst the twelve months proceed so sprightly,
Round the youthful mind, is the spoiler Satan;
Justly spoke Yscolan,
“God is better than an evil prophecy.”

The Summer.

Thou Summer! father of delight,
With thy dense spray and thickets deep;
Gemm’d monarch, with thy rapt’rous light.
Rousing thy subject glens from sleep!
Proud has thy march of triumph been,
Thou prophet, prince of forest green!
Artificer of wood and tree,
Thou painter of unrivalled skill,
Who ever scatters gems like thee,
And gorgeous webs on park and hill?
Till vale and hill with radiant dyes
Become another Paradise!
And thou hast sprinkled leaves and flow’rs,
And goodly chains of leafy bow’rs;
And bid thy youthful warblers sing
On oak and knoll, the song of spring,
And black-birds’ note of ecstacy
Burst loudly from the woodbine tree,
Till all the world is thronged with gladness—
Her multitudes have done with sadness!
O Summer! do I ask in vain?
Thus in thy glory wilt thou deign
My messenger to be?
Hence from the bowels of the land
Of wild, wild Gwyneth to the strand
Of fair Glamorgan—ocean’s band—
Sweet margin of the sea!
To dear Glamorgan, when we part,
Oh bear a thousand times my heart!
My blessing give a thousand times,
And crown with joy her glowing climes?
Take on her lovely vales thy stand,
And tread and trample round the land,
The beauteous shore whose harvest lies
All sheltered from inclement skies.
Radiant with corn and vineyards sweet,
The lakes of fish and mansions neat,
With halls of stone where kindness dwells,
And where each hospitable lord
Heaps for the stranger guest his board!
And where the generous wine cup swells;
With trees that bear a luscious pear,
So thickly clustering everywhere,
That the fair country of my love
Looks dense as one continuous grove!
Her lofty woods with warblers teem,
Her fields with flow’rs that love the stream;
Her valleys varied crops display,
Eight kinds of corn, and three of hay;
Bright parlour, with her trefoiled floor!
Sweet garden, spread on ocean’s shore!
Glamorgan’s bounteous knights award
Bright mead and burnished gold to me:
Glamorgan boasts of many a bard,
Well skilled in harp and vocal glee:
The districts round her border spread
From her have drawn their daily bread—
Her milk, her meat, her varied stores,
Have been the life of distant shores!
And court and hamlet food have found
From the rich soil of Britain’s southern bound.
And wilt thou then obey my power,
Thou Summer, in thy brightest hour?
To her thy glorious hues unfold
In one rich embassy of gold!
Her morns with bliss and splendour light,
And fondly kiss her mansions white;
Fling wealth and verdure o’er her bow’rs!
And for her gather all thy flow’rs!
Glance o’er her castles, white with lime,
With genial glimmerings sublime;
Plant on the verdant coast thy feet,
Her lofty hills, her woodlands greet.
Oh! lavish blossoms with thy hand
O’er all the forests of the land;
And let thy gifts like floods descending,
O’er every hill and glen be blending;
Let orchard, garden, vine express
Thy fulness and thy fruitfulness—
O’er all the land of beauty fling
The costly traces of thy wing!
And thus ’mid all thy radiant flowers,
Thy thickening leaves and glossy bowers,
The poet’s task shall be to glean
Roses and flowers that softly bloom
(The jewel of the forest’s gloom!),
And trefoils wove in pavement green,
With sad humility to grace
His golden Ivor’s resting-place.

To the Lark.
T’R Ehedydd.

DAVYDD AB GWILYM

Sentinel of the morning light!
Reveller of the spring!
How sweetly, nobly wild thy flight,
Thy boundless journeying:
Far from thy brethren of the woods, alone,
A hermit chorister before God’s throne!

Oh! wilt thou climb yon heavens for me,
Yon rampart’s starry height,
Thou interlude of melody
’Twixt darkness and the light,
And seek with heav’n’s first dawn upon thy crest,
My lady love, the moonbeam of the west?

No woodland caroller art thou;
Far from the archer’s eye,
Thy course is o’er the mountain’s brow,
Thy music in the sky:
Then fearless float thy path of cloud along,
Thou earthly denizen of angel song.

To the Fox.

The wretch my starry bird who slew,
Beast of the flameless ember hue,
Assassin, glutton of the night,
Mixed of all creatures that defile,
Land lobster, fugitive of light,
Thou coward mountain crocodile;
With downcast eye and ragged tail,
That haunt’st the hollow rocks,
Thief, ever ready to assail
The undefended flocks,
Thy brass-hued breast and tattered locks
Shall not protect thee from the hound,
When with unbaffled eye he mocks
Thy mazy fortress underground,
Whilst o’er my peacock’s shattered plumes shall shine
A pretty bower of faery eglantine.

The Song of the Thrush.

RYHS GOCH

I was on the margin of a plain,
Under a wide spreading tree,
Hearing the song
Of the wild birds;
Listening to the language
Of the thrush cock,
Who from the wood of the valley
Composed a verse—
From the wood of the steep,
He sang exquisitely.
Speckled was his breast
Amongst the green leaves,
As upon branches
Of a thousand blossoms
On the bank of a brook,
All heard
With the dawn the song,
Like a silver bell;
Performing a sacrifice,
Until the hour of forenoon;
Upon the green altar
Ministering Bardism.
From the branches of the hazel
Of green broad leaves
He sings an ode
To God the Creator;
With a carol of love
From the green glade,
To all in the hollow
Of the glen, who love him;
Balm of the heart
To those who love.
I had from his beak
The voice of inspiration,
A song of metres
That gratified me;
Glad was I made
By his minstrelsy.
Then respectfully
Uttered I an address
From the stream of the valley
To the bird.
I requested urgently
His undertaking a message
To the fair one
Where dwells my affection.
Gone is the bard of the leaves
From the small twigs
To the second Lunet,
The sun of the maidens!
To the streams of the plain
St Mary prosper him,
To bring to me,
Under the green woods
The hue of the snow of one night,
Without delay.

PART II

I
IRISH
(Modern and Contemporary)

Sacrifice.

“A. E.”

Those delicate wanderers,
The wind, the star, the cloud,
Ever before mine eyes,
As to an altar bowed,
Light and dew-laden airs
Offer in sacrifice.

The offerings arise:
Hazes of rainbow light,
Pure crystal, blue, and gold,
Through dreamland take their flight;
And ’mid the sacrifice
God moveth as of old.

In miracles of fire
He symbols forth His days,
In gleams of crystal light
Reveals what pure pathways
Lead to the soul’s desire,
The silence of the height.

The Great Breath.

Its edges foamed with amethyst and rose,
Withers once more the old blue flower of day:
There where the ether like a diamond glows
Its petals fade away.

A shadowy tumult stirs the dusky air;
Sparkle the delicate dews, the distant snows;
The great deep thrills, for through it everywhere
The breath of Beauty blows.

I saw how all the trembling ages past,
Moulded to her by deep and deeper breath,
Neared to the hour when Beauty breathes her last
And knows herself in death.

Mystery.

“A. E”

Why does this sudden passion smite me?
I stretch my hands all blind to see:
I need the lamp of the world to light me,
Lead me and set me free.

Something a moment seemed to stoop from
The night with cool cool breath on my face:
Or did the hair of the twilight droop from
Its silent wandering ways?

About me in the thick wood netted
The wizard glow looks human-wise;
And over the tree-tops barred and fretted
Ponders with strange old eyes.

The tremulous lips of air blow by me
And hymn their time-old melody:
Its secret strain comes nigh and nigh me:
“Ah, brother, come with me;

“For here the ancient mother lingers
To dip her hands in the diamond dew,
And lave thine ache with cloud-cool fingers
Till sorrow die from you.”

By the Margin of the Great Deep.

When the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies,
All its vaporous sapphire, violet glow and silver gleam,
With their magic flood me through the gateway of the eyes;
I am one with the twilight’s dream.

When the trees and skies and fields are one in dusky mood,
Every heart of man is rapt within the mother’s breast:
Full of peace and sleep and dreams in the vasty quietude,
I am one with their hearts at rest.

From our immemorial joys of hearth and home and love
Strayed away along the margin of the unknown tide,
All its reach of soundless calm can thrill me far above
Word or touch from the lips beside.

Aye, and deep and deep and deeper let me drink and draw
From the olden fountain more than light or peace or dream,
Such primeval being as o’erfills the heart with awe,
Growing one with its silent stream.

The Breath of Light.

“A. E.”

From the cool and dark-lipped furrows breathes a dim delight
Through the woodland’s purple plumage to the diamond night.
Aureoles of joy encircle every blade of grass
Where the dew-fed creatures silent and enraptured pass:
And the restless ploughman pauses, turns, and wondering
Deep beneath his rustic habit finds himself a king;
For a fiery moment looking with the eyes of God
Over fields a slave at morning bowed him to the sod.
Blind and dense with revelation every moment flies,
And unto the Mighty Mother, gay, eternal, rise
All the hopes we hold, the gladness, dreams of things to be.
One of all thy generations, Mother, hails to thee!
Hail! and hail! and hail for ever: though I turn again
From thy joy unto the human vestiture of pain.
I, thy child, who went forth radiant in the golden prime
Find thee still the mother-hearted through my night in time;
Find in thee the old enchantment, there behind the veil
Where the Gods my brothers linger, Hail! for ever, Hail!

Æolian Harp.

WILLIAM ALLINGHAM

O pale green sea,
With long pale purple clouds above—
What lies in me like weight of love?
What dies in me
With utter grief, because there comes no sign
Through the sun-raying West, or the dim sea-line?

O salted air,
Blown round the rocky headlands chill—
What calls me there from cove and hill?
What calls me fair
From Thee, the first-born of the youthful night?
Or in the waves is coming through the dusk twilight?

O yellow Star,
Quivering upon the rippling tide—
Sendest so far to one that sigh’d?
Bendest thou, Star,
Above where shadows of the dead have rest
And constant silence, with a message from the blest?

The Fairies.

WILLIAM ALLINGHAM

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!

Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.

High on the hill-top
The old king sits;
He is now so old and gray
He’s nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music
On cold starry nights,
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.

They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought that she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag-leaves,
Watching till she wake.

By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and there.
Is any man so daring
As dig up them in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trouping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather.

To the Lianhaun Shee.

THOMAS BOYD

Where is thy lovely perilous abode?
In what strange phantom-land
Glimmer the fairy turrets whereto rode
The ill-starred poet band?

Say, in the Isle of Youth hast thou thy home,
The sweetest singer there,
Stealing on wingëd steed across the foam
Through the moonlit air?

And by the gloomy peaks of Erigal,
Haunted by storm and cloud,
Wing past, and to thy lover there let fall
His singing robe and shroud?

Or, where the mists of bluebell float beneath
The red stems of the pine,
And sunbeams strike thro’ shadow, dost thou breathe
The word that makes him thine?

Or, is thy palace entered thro’ some cliff
When radiant tides are full,
And round thy lover’s wandering starlit skiff
Coil in luxurious lull?

And would he, entering on the brimming flood,
See caverns vast in height,
And diamond columns, crowned with leaf and bud,
Glow in long lanes of light.

And there the pearl of that great glittering shell
Trembling, behold thee lone,
Now weaving in slow dance an awful spell,
Now still upon thy throne?

Thy beauty! ah, the eyes that pierce him thro’
Then melt as in a dream;
The voice that sings the mysteries of the blue
And all that Be and Seem!

Thy lovely motions answering to the rhyme
That ancient Nature sings,
That keeps the stars in cadence for all time,
And echoes through all things!

Whether he sees thee thus, or in his dreams,
Thy light makes all lights dim;
An aching solitude from henceforth seems
The world of men to him.

Thy luring song, above the sensuous roar,
He follows with delight,
Shutting behind him Life’s last gloomy door,
And fares into the Night.

Remembrance.

EMILY BRONTË

Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time’s all-severing wave?

Now, when alone, my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
Thy noble heart for ever, ever more.

Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers,
From these brown hills, have melted into Spring!
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!

Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world’s tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong.

No later light has lighted up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.

But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,
And even despair was powerless to destroy;
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.

Then did I check the tears of useless passion—
Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine.

And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in memory’s rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?

The Earth and Man.

STOPFORD A. BROOKE

A little sun, a little rain,
A soft wind blowing from the west—
And woods and fields are sweet again,
And warmth within the mountain’s breast.

So simple is the earth we tread,
So quick with love and life her frame,
Ten thousand years have dawned and fled,
And still her magic is the same.

A little love, a little trust,
A soft impulse, a sudden dream—
And life as dry as desert dust
Is fresher than a mountain stream.

So simple is the heart of man
So ready for new hope and joy;
Ten thousand years since it began
Have left it younger than a boy.

Song.
(From “Six Days.”)

STOPFORD A. BROOKE

Come, where on the moorland steep
Silent sunlight dreams of sleep,
And in this high morning air
Love me, my companion fair!
All the clouds that high in Heaven
Rest and rove from morn to even,
All the beauty that doth live
By the winds—to thee I give.

See below deep meadow lands,
Misty moors and shining sands,
And blue hills so far and dim
They melt on the horizon’s rim.
O how fresh the air, and sweet,
And with what a footfall fleet
O’er the grasses’ ebb and flow
The light winds to the eastward go.

Noon is now with us. Farewell
To this mountain citadel.
Come, and with your footing fine
Thread the scented paths of pine,
Till we see the Druid carn
Shadowed in the haunted tarn.
There the water blue and deep
Lies, like wearied thought, asleep.

While we watch, the storm awakes;
Flash on flash the ripple breaks,
Purple, with a snow-white crest,
On the meadow’s golden breast.
Roods of tinkling sedge are kissed
By the waves of amethyst:
Trouble knows the place, they say,
But we laugh at that to-day.

Onward to the glen below;
Every nook and turn we know
Where the passion-haunted stream
Laughs and lingers in its dream,
Making where its pebbles shine
Naiad music, clear and fine,
But not sweeter than the song
Love sings as we rove along.

At the last the grassy seat,
Where of old we used to meet,
Holds us in its close embrace.
Hallowed ever be the place!
Here we kissed our hearts away
In a lovers’ holiday!
Shall I dream a greater bliss
Than the memory of this?

Maire, my Girl.

JOHN K. CASEY

Over the dim blue hills
Strays a wild river,
Over the dim blue hills
Rests my heart ever.
Dearer and brighter than
Jewels and pearl,
Dwells she in beauty there,
Maire, my girl.

Down upon Claris heath
Shines the soft berry,
On the brown harvest tree
Droops the red cherry.
Sweeter thy honey lips,
Softer the curl
Straying adown thy cheeks,
Maire, my girl.

’Twas on an April eve
That I first met her;
Many an eve shall pass
Ere I forget her.
Since, my young heart has been
Wrapped in a whirl,
Thinking and dreaming of
Maire, my girl.

She is too kind and fond
Ever to grieve me,
She has too pure a heart
E’er to deceive me.
Were I Tryconnell’s chief
Or Desmond’s earl,
Life would be dark, wanting
Maire, my girl!

Over the dim blue hills
Strays a wild river,
Over the dim blue hills
Rests my heart ever.
Dearer and brighter than
Jewels or pearl,
Dwells she in beauty there,
Maire, my girl.

Gracie Og Machree.[13]
(Song of the “Wild Geese.”)

JOHN K. CASEY

I placed the silver in her palm,
By Inny’s smiling tide,
And vowed, ere summer time came on,
To claim her as a bride.
But when the summer time came on
I dwelt beyond the sea;
Yet still my heart is ever true
To Gracie Og Machree.

O bonnie are the woods of Targ,
And green thy hills, Rathmore,
And soft the sunlight ever falls
On Darre’s sloping shore;
And there the eyes I love—in tears
Shine ever mournfully,
While I am far, and far away
From Gracie Og Machree.

When battle-steeds were neighing loud,
With bright blades in the air,
Next to my inmost heart I wore
A bright tress of her hair.
When stirrup-cups were lifted up
To lips, with soldier glee,
One toast I always fondly pledged,
’Twas Gracie Og Machree.

Dirge.
(From “The Sea Bride.”)

GEORGE DARLEY

Prayer unsaid, and mass unsung,
Deadman’s dirge must still be rung:
Dingle-dong, the dead-bells sound!
Mermen chant his dirge around!

Wash him bloodless, smooth him fair,
Stretch his limbs, and sleek his hair:
Dingle-dong, the dead-bells go!
Mermen swing them to and fro!

In the wormless sand shall he
Feast for no foul glutton be:
Dingle-dong, the dead-bells chime!
Mermen keep the tone and time!

We must with a tombstone brave
Shut the shark out from his grave:
Dingle-dong, the dead-bells toll!
Mermen dirgers ring his knoll!

Such a slab will we lay o’er him
All the dead shall rise before him!
Dingle-dong, the dead-bells boom!
Mermen lay him in his tomb!

The Little Black Rose.

AUBREY DE VERE

The Little Black Rose shall be red at last;
What made it black but the March wind dry,
And the tear of the widow that fell on it fast?
It shall redden the hills when June is nigh.

The Silk of the Kine shall rest at last;
What drove her forth but the dragon-fly?
In the golden vale she shall feed full fast,
With her mild gold horn and slow, dark eye.

The wounded wood-dove lies dead at last!
The pine long bleeding, it shall not die!
This song is secret. Mine ear it passed
In a wind o’er the plains at Athenry.

Epitaph.

He roamed half round the world of woe,
Where toil and labour never cease;
Then dropped one little span below
In search of peace.

And now to him mild beams and showers,
All that he needs to grace his tomb,
From loneliest regions at all hours,
Unsought for come.

Killiney Far Away.

FRANCIS FAHY

To Killiney far away flies my fond heart night and day,
To ramble light and happy through its fields and dells;
For here life smiles in vain, and earth’s a land of pain,
While all that’s bright in Erin in Killiney dwells.

In Killiney in the West has a linnet sweet her nest,
And her song makes all the wild birds in the green wood dumb;
To the captive without cheer, it were freedom but to hear
Such sorrow-soothing music from her fair throat come.

In Killiney’s bower blows a blushing, budding rose,
With perfume of the rarest that the June day yields;
And none who pass the way, but sighing wish that they
Might cull that fragrant flower of the dewy fields.

Through Killiney’s meadows pass, on their way to early Mass,
Like twin-stars ’mid the grass, two small feet bare;
And angel-pure the heart, where the murmured Aves start
On their wingèd way to Heaven from the chapel there.

And the pride of Irish girls is the dear brown head of curls,
The pearl white of pearls, stoirin bàn mo chridhe;
As bright-browed as the dawn, and as meek-eyed as the fawn,
And as graceful as the swan gliding on to sea.

Not for jewels nor for gold, nor for hoarded wealth untold,
Not for all that mortals hold most desired and dear,
Would I my share forego in the loving heart aglow,
That beats beneath the snow of her bosom fair.

Soon Killiney will you weep—for I know not rest nor sleep,
Till swiftly o’er the deep I with white sails come,
To win the linnet sweet, and the two white twinkling feet,
And the heart with true love beating, to my far-off home.

And O! farewell to care, when the rose of perfume rare,
And the dear brown curling hair on my proud breast lie;
Then Killiney far away, never more by night or day,
To thy skies, or dark or grey, shall my fond heart fly.

Cean Dubh Deelish.[14]

SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON

Put your head, darling, darling, darling,
Your darling black head my heart above;
Oh, mouth of honey, with thyme for fragrance,
Who, with heart in breast, could deny you love?

Oh, many and many a young girl for me is pining,
Letting her locks of gold to the cold wind free,
For me, the foremost of our gay young fellows;
But I’d leave a hundred, pure love, for thee!

Then put your head, darling, darling, darling,
Your darling black head my heart above;
Oh, mouth of honey, with thyme for fragrance,
Who, with heart in breast, could deny you love?

Molly Asthore.

O Mary dear! O Mary fair!
O branch of generous stem!
White blossom of the banks of Nair,
Though lilies grow on them;
You’ve left me sick at heart for love,
So faint I cannot see;
The candle swims the board above,
I’m drunk for love of thee!
O stately stem of maiden pride,
My woe it is and pain
That I thus severed from thy side
The long night must remain.

Through all the towns of Innisfail
I’ve wandered far and wide,
But from Downpatrick to Kinsale,
From Carlow to Kilbride,
Many lords and dames of high degree
Where’er my feet have gone,
My Mary, one to equal thee
I never looked upon:
I live in darkness and in doubt
When’er my love’s away;
But were the gracious sun put out,
Her shadow would make day.

’Tis she, indeed, young bud of bliss,
As gentle as she’s fair.
Though lily-white her bosom is,
And sunny bright her hair,
And dewy azure her blue eye,
And rosy red her cheek,
Yet brighter she in modesty,
Most beautifully meek:
The world’s wise men from north to south
Can never cure my pain;
But one kiss from her honey mouth
Would make me well again.

The Fair Hills of Ireland.
(From the Irish.)

A plenteous place is Ireland for hospitable cheer,
Uileacan dubh O!
Where the wholesome fruit is bursting from the yellow barley ear;
Uileacan dubh O!
There is honey in the trees where her misty vales expand,
And her forest paths in summer are by falling waters fanned;
There is dew at high noontide there, and springs i’ the yellow sand,
On the fair hills of holy Ireland.

Curled is he and ringleted, and plaited to the knee,
Uileacan dubh O!
Each captain who comes sailing across the Irish Sea;
Uileacan dubh O!
And I will make my journey, if life and health but stand,
Unto that pleasant country, that fresh and fragrant strand,
And leave your boasted braveries, your wealth and high command,
For the fair hills of holy Ireland.

Large and profitable are the stacks upon the ground;
Uileacan dubh O!
The butter and the cream do wondrously abound,
Uileacan dubh O!
The cresses on the water and the sorrels are at hand,
And the cuckoo’s calling daily his note of music bland,
And the bold thrush sings so bravely his song i’ the forest grand,
On the fair hills of holy Ireland.

ALFRED PERCIVAL GRAVES

Herring is King.

Let all the fish that swim the sea,
Salmon and turbot, cod and ling,
Bow down the head and bend the knee
To herring, their king! to herring, their king!

Sing, Hugamar féin an sowra lin’,
’Tis we have brought the summer in.[15]

The sun sank down so round and red
Upon the bay, upon the bay;
The sails shook idly overhead,
Becalmed we lay, becalmed we lay;

Sing, Hugamar, etc.

Till Shawn the eagle dropped on deck,
The bright-eyed boy, the bright-eyed boy;
’Tis he has spied your silver track,
Herring, our joy, herring, our joy;

Sing, Hugamar, etc.

It is in with the sails and away to shore,
With the rise and swing, the rise and swing
Of two stout lads at each smoking oar,
After herring, our king! herring, our king.

Sing, Hugamar, etc.

The Manx and Cornish raised the shout,
And joined the chase, and joined the chase;
But their fleets they fouled as they went about,
And we won the race, we won the race;

Sing, Hugamar, etc.

For we turned and faced you full to land,
Down the góleen[16] long, the góleen long,
And after you slipped from strand to strand
Our nets so strong, our nets so strong;

Sing, Hugamar, etc.

Then we called to our sweethearts and our wives,
“Come welcome us home, welcome us home,”
Till they ran to meet us for their lives
Into the foam, into the foam;

Sing, Hugamar, etc.

O kissing of hands and waving of caps
From girl and boy, from girl and boy,
While you leapt by scores in the lasses’ laps,
Herring our joy, herring our joy!

Sing, Hugamar féin an sowra lin’,
’Tis we have brought the summer in!

ALFRED PERCIVAL GRAVES

The Rose of Kenmare.

I’ve been soft in a small way
On the girleens of Galway,
And the Limerick lasses have made me feel quare;
But there’s no use denyin’,
No girl I’ve set eye on
Could compate wid Rose Ryan of the town of Kenmare.

O, where
Can her like be found?
No where,
The country round,
Spins at her wheel
Daughter as true,
Sets in the reel,
Wid a slide of the shoe
a slinderer,
tinderer,
purtier,
wittier colleen than you,
Rose, aroo!

Her hair mocks the sunshine,
And the soft, silver moonshine
Neck and arm of the colleen completely eclipse;
Whilst the nose of the jewel
Slants straight as Carran Tual
From the heaven in her eye to her heather-sweet lip.

O, where, etc.

Did your eyes ever follow
The wings of the swallow
Here and there, light as air, o’er the meadow field glance?
For if not you’ve no notion
Of the exquisite motion
Of her sweet little feet as they dart in the dance.

O, where, etc.

If y’ inquire why the nightingale
Still shuns th’ invitin’ gale
That wafts every song-bird but her to the West,
Faix she knows, I suppose,
Ould Kenmare has a Rose
That would sing any Bulbul to sleep in her nest

O, where, etc.

When her voice gives the warnin’
For the milkin’ in the mornin’
Ev’n the cow known for hornin’, comes runnin’ to her pail;
The lambs play about her
And the small bonneens[17] snout her
Whilst their parints salute her wid a twisht of the tail.

O, where, etc.

When at noon from our labour
We draw neighbour wid neighbour
From the heat of the sun to the shelter of the tree,
Wid spuds[18] fresh from the bilin’,
And new milk, you come smilin’,
All the boys’ hearts beguilin’, alannah machree![19]

O, where, etc.

But there’s one sweeter hour
When the hot day is o’er,
And we rest at the door wid the bright moon above,
And she’s sittin’ in the middle,
When she’s guessed Larry’s riddle,
Cries, “Now for your fiddle, Shiel Dhuv, Shiel Dhuv.”

O, where
Can her like be found?
No where
The country round,
Spins at her wheel
Daughter as true,
Sets in the reel,
Wid a slide of the shoe
a slinderer,
tinderer,
purtier,
wittier colleen than you,
Rose, aroo!

The Song of the Pratee.

When after the Winter alarmin’,
The Spring steps in so charmin’,
So fresh and arch
In the middle of March,
Wid her hand St Patrick’s arm on,
Let us all, let us all be goin’,
Agra, to assist at your sowin’,
The girls to spread
Your iligant bed,
And the boys to set the hoe in.

Chorus—

Then good speed to your seed! God’s grace and increase.
Never more in our need may you blacken wid the blight;
But when summer is o’er, in our gardens, asthore,
May the fruit at your root fill our bosoms wid delight.

So rest and sleep, my jewel,
Safe from the tempest cruel;
Till violets spring
And skylarks sing
From Mourne to Carran Tual.
Then wake and build your bower,
Through April sun and shower,
To bless the earth
That gave you birth,
Through many a sultry hour.

Chorus—

Then good luck to your leaf. And ochone, ologone,
Never more to our grief may it blacken wid the blight;
But when summer is o’er, in our gardens, asthore,
May the fruit at your root fill our bosoms wid delight.

Thus smile with glad increasin’,
Till to St John we’re raisin’,
Through Erin’s isle
The pleasant pile
That sets the bonfire blazin’.
O ’tis then that the midsummer fairy,
Abroad on his sly vagary,
Wid purple and white,
As he passes by night,
Your emerald leaf shall vary.

Chorus—

Then more power to your flower, and your merry green leaf!
Never more to our grief may they blacken wid the blight;
But when summer is o’er, in our gardens, asthore,
May the fruit at your root fill our bosoms wid delight.

And once again Mavourneen,
Some yellow autumn mornin’,
At red sunrise
Both girls and boys
To your garden ridge we’re turnin’,
Then under your foliage fadin’
Each man of us sets his spade in,
While the colleen bawn
Her brown kishane[20]
Full up wid your fruit is ladin’.

Chorus—

Then good luck to your leaf! more power to your flower!
Never more to our grief may they blacken wid the blight;
But when summer is o’er, in our gardens, asthore,
May the fruit at your root fill our bosoms wid delight.

ALFRED PERCIVAL GRAVES

Irish Lullaby.

I’d rock my own sweet childie to rest in a cradle of gold on a bough of the willow,
To the shoheen ho of the wind of the west and the lulla lo of the soft sea billow.
Sleep, baby dear,
Sleep without fear,
Mother is here beside your pillow.

I’d put my own sweet childie to sleep in a silver boat on the beautiful river,
Where a shoheen whisper the white cascades, and a lulla lo the green flags shiver.
Sleep, baby dear,
Sleep without fear,
Mother is here with you for ever.

Lulla lo! to the rise and fall of mother’s bosom ’tis sleep has bound you,
And O, my child, what cosier nest for rosier rest could love have found you?
Sleep, baby dear,
Sleep without fear,
Mother’s two arms are clasped around you.

GERALD GRIFFIN

Eileen Aroon.

When, like the early rose,
Eileen Aroon!
Beauty in childhood blows,
Eileen Aroon!
When, like a diadem,
Buds blush around the stem,
Which is the fairest gem?
Eileen Aroon!

Is it the laughing eye,
Eileen Aroon!
Is it the timid sigh,
Eileen Aroon!
Is it the tender tone,
Soft as the stringed harp’s moan?
Oh! it is truth alone,
Eileen Aroon!

When, like the rising day,
Eileen Aroon!
Love sends his early ray,
Eileen Aroon!
What makes his dawning glow,
Changeless through joy or woe?
Only the constant know—
Eileen Aroon!

I know a valley fair,
Eileen Aroon!
I knew a cottage there,
Eileen Aroon!
Far in that valley’s shade
I knew a gentle maid,
Flower of a hazel glade,
Eileen Aroon!

Who in the song so sweet?
Eileen Aroon!
Who in the dance so fleet?
Eileen Aroon!
Dear were her charms to me,
Dearer her laughter free,
Dearest her constancy,
Eileen Aroon!

Were she no longer true,
Eileen Aroon!
What should her lover do?
Eileen Aroon!
Fly with his broken chain
Far o’er the sounding main,
Never to love again,
Eileen Aroon!

Youth must with time decay,
Eileen Aroon!
Beauty must fade away,
Eileen Aroon!
Castles are sacked in war,
Chieftains are scattered far,
Truth is a fixèd star,
Eileen Aroon!

The Dark Man.

NORA HOPPER

Rose o’ the world, she came to my bed
And changed the dreams of my heart and head:
For joy of mine she left grief of hers
And garlanded me with the prickly furze.

Rose o’ the world, they go out and in,
And watch me dream and my mother spin:
And they pity the tears on my sleeping face
While my soul’s away in a fairy place.

Rose o’ the world, they have words galore,
For wide’s the swing of my mother’s door:
And soft they speak of my darkened brain,
But what do they know of my heart’s dear pain?

Rose o’ the world, the grief you give
Is worth all days that a man may live:
Is worth all prayers that the colleens say
On the night that darkens the wedding-day.

Rose o’ the world, what man would wed
When he might remember your face instead?
Might go to his grave with the blessed pain
Of hungering after your face again?

Rose o’ the world, they may talk their fill,
But dreams are good, and my life stands still
While the neighbours talk by their fires astir:
But my fiddle knows: and I talk to her.

April in Ireland.

She hath a woven garland all of the sighing sedge,
And all her flowers are snowdrops grown on the winter’s edge:
The golden looms of Tir na n’ Og wove all the winter through
Her gown of mist and raindrops shot with a cloudy blue.

Sunlight she holds in one hand, and rain she scatters after,
And through the rainy twilight we hear her fitful laughter.
She shakes down on her flowers the snows less white than they,
Then quicken with her kisses the folded “knots o’ May.”

She seeks the summer-lover that never shall be hers,
Fain for gold leaves of autumn she passes by the furze,
Though buried gold it hideth: she scorns her sedgy crown,
And pressing blindly sunwards she treads her snowdrops down.

Her gifts are all a fardel of wayward smiles and tears,
Yet hope she also holdeth, this daughter of the years—
A hope that blossoms faintly set upon sorrow’s edge:
She hath a woven garland of all the sighing sedge.

The Wind Among the Reeds.

NORA HOPPER

Mavrone, Mavrone! the wind among the reeds.
It calls and cries, and will not let me be;
And all its cry is of forgotten deeds
When men were loved of all the Daoine-Sidhe.

O Shee that have forgotten how to love,
And Shee that have forgotten how to hate,
Asleep ’neath quicken boughs that no winds move,
Come back to us ere yet it be too late.

Pipe to us once again, lest we forget
What piping means, till all the Silver Spears
Be wild with gusty music, such as met
Carolan once, amid the dusty years.

Dance in your rings again: the yellow weeds
You used to ride so far, mount as of old—
Play hide-and-seek with wind among the reeds,
And pay your scores again with fairy gold.

My Grief on the Sea.

DOUGLAS HYDE

My grief on the sea,
How the waves of it roll!
For they heave between me
And the love of my soul!

Abandoned, forsaken,
To grief and to care,
Will the sea ever waken
Relief from despair?

My grief, and my trouble!
Would he and I wear,
In the province of Leinster,
Or County of Clare.

Were I and my darling—
O, heart-bitter wound!—
On the board of the ship
For America bound.

On a green bed of rushes
All last night I lay,
And I flung it abroad
With the heat of the day.

And my love came behind me—
He came from the South;
His breast to my bosom
His mouth to my mouth.

The Cooleen.

DOUGLAS HYDE

A honey mist on a day of frost, in a dark oak wood,
And love for thee in my heart in me, thou bright, white, and good;
Thy slender form, soft and warm, thy red lips apart,
Thou hast found me, and hast bound me, and put grief in my heart.

In fair-green and market, men mark thee, bright, young, and merry,
Though thou hurt them like foes with the rose of thy blush of the berry:
Her cheeks are a poppy, her eye it is Cupid’s helper,
But each foolish man dreams that its beams for himself are.

Whoe’er saw the Cooleen in a cool, dewy meadow
On a morning in summer in sunshine and shadow;
All the young men go wild for her, my childeen, my treasure,
But now let them go mope, they’ve no hope to possess her.

Let us roam, O my darling, afar through the mountains,
Drink milk of the goat, wine and bulcaun in fountains;
With music and play every day from my lyre,
And leave to come rest on my breast when you tire.

The Breedyeen.

’Tis the Breedyeen I love,
All dear ones above,
Like a star from the start
Round my heart she did move.
Her breast like a dove,
Or the foam in the cove,
With her gold locks apart,
In my heart she put love.

’Tis not Venus, I say,
Who grieved me this day,
But the white one, the bright one,
Who slighted my stay.
For her I shall pray—
I confess it—for aye,
She’s my sister, I missed her,
When all men were gay.

To the hills let us go,
Where the raven and crow
In dark dismal valleys
Croak death-like and low;
By this volume I swear,
O bright Cool of fair hair,
That though solitude shrieked
I should seek for thee there.

To the hills let us go,
Where the raven and crow
In the dark dismal valleys
Wing silent and slow.
There’s no Joy in men’s fate
But Grief grins in the gate;
There’s no Fair without Foul,
Without Crooked no Straight.

Her neck like the lime
And her breath like the thyme,
And her bosom untroubled
By care or by time.
Like a bird in the night,
At a great blaze of light,
Astounded and wounded
I swoon at her sight.

Since I gave thee my love,
I gave thee my love,
I gave thee my love,
O thou berry so bright;
The sun in her height
Looked on with delight,
And between thy two arms, may
I die on the night.

And I would that I were
In the glens of the air,
Or in dark dismal valleys
Where the wildwood is bare,
What a kiss from her there
I should coax without care,
From my star of the morning,
My fairer than fair!

Like a Phœnix of flame,
Or like Helen of fame,
Is the pearl of all pearls
Of girls who came,
And who kindled a flame,
In my bosom. Thy name
I shall rhyme thee in Irish
And heighten thy fame.

Nelly of the Top-Knots.

Dear God! were I fisher and
Back in Binédar,
And Nelly a fish who
Would swim in the bay there,
I would privately set there
My net there to catch her,
In Erin no maiden
Is able to match her.

And Nelly, dear God!
Why! you should not thus flee me,
I long to be near thee
And hear thee and see thee,
My hand on the Bible
And I swearing and kneeling
And giving thee part
Of the heart you are stealing.

I’ve a fair yellow casket
And it fastened with crystal,
And the lock opens not
To the shot of a pistol.
To Jesus I pray
And to Columbkill’s Master,
That Mary may guide thee
Aside from disaster.

We may be, O maiden
Whom none may disparage,
Some morning a-hearing
The sweet mass of marriage,
But if fate be against us,
To rend us and push us,
I shall mourn as the blackbird
At eve in the bushes.

O God, were she with me
Where the gull flits and tern,
Or in Paris the smiling,
Or an Isle in Loch Erne,
I would coax her so well,
I would tell her my story,
And talk till I won her,
My sunshine of glory.

I shall not Die for Thee.

DOUGLAS HYDE

For thee I shall not die,
Woman high of fame and name;
Foolish men thou mayest slay
I and they are not the same.

Why should I expire
For the fire of any eye,
Slender waist or swan-like limb,
Is’t for them that I should die?

The round breasts, the fresh skin,
Cheeks crimson, hair so long and rich;
Indeed, indeed, I shall not die,
Please God, not I, for any such.

The golden hair, the forehead thin,
The chaste mien, the gracious ease,
The rounded heel, the languid tone,
Fools alone find death from these.

Thy sharp wit, thy perfect calm,
Thy thin palm like foam o’ the sea;
Thy white neck, thy blue eye,
I shall not die for thee.

Woman, graceful as the swan,
A wise man did nurture me,
Little palm, white neck, bright eye,
I shall not die for ye.

The Red Wind.

LIONEL JOHNSON

Red Wind from out the East:
Red Wind of blight and blood!
Ah, when wilt thou have ceased
Thy bitter, stormy flood?

Red Wind from over sea,
Scourging our holy land!
What angel loosened thee
Out of his iron hand?

Red Wind! whose word of might
Winged thee with wings of flame?
O fire of mournful night!
What is thy Master’s name?

Red Wind! who bade thee burn,
Branding our hearts? Who bade
Thee on and never turn
Till waste our souls were laid?

Red Wind! from out the West
Pour Winds of Paradise:
Winds of eternal rest,
That weary souls entice.

Wind of the East! Red Wind!
Thou scorchest the soft breath
Of Paradise the kind:
Red Wind of burning death!

O Red Wind! hear God’s voice:
Hear thou, and fall, and cease.
Let Innisfail rejoice
In her Hesperian peace.

To Morfydd.

LIONEL JOHNSON

A voice on the winds,
A voice on the waters,
Wanders and cries:
O what are the winds?
And what are the waters?
Mine are your eyes.

Western the winds are,
And western the waters,
Where the light lies:
O what are the winds?
And what are the waters?
Mine are your eyes.

Cold, cold grow the winds,
And dark grow the waters,
Where the sun dies:
O what are the winds?
And what are the waters?
Mine are your eyes.

And down the night winds,
And down the night waters
The music flies:
O what are the winds?
And what are the waters?
Cold be the winds,
And wild be the waters,
So mine be your eyes.

A Lament.

DENIS FLORENCE MACCARTHY

Youth’s bright palace
Is overthrown,
With its diamond sceptre
And golden throne;
As a time-worn stone
Its turrets are humbled,—
All hath crumbled
But grief alone!

Whither, oh! whither
Have fled away
The dreams and hopes
Of my early day?
Ruined and grey
Are the towers I builded;
And the beams that gilded—
Ah! where are they?

Once this world
Was fresh and bright,
With its golden noon
And its starry night;
Glad and light,
By mountain and river,
Have I blessed the Giver
With hushed delight.

Youth’s illusions,
One by one,
Have passed like clouds
That the sun looked on.
While morning shone,
How purple their fringes!
How ashy their tinges
When that was gone!

As fire-flies fade
When the nights are damp—
As meteors are quenched
In a stagnant swamp—
Thus Charlemagne’s camp,
Where the Paladins rally,
And the Diamond Valley,
And the Wonderful Lamp,

And all the wonders
Of Ganges and Nile,
And Haroun’s rambles,
And Crusoe’s isle,
And Princes who smile
On the Genii’s daughters
’Neath the Orient waters
Full many a mile,

And all that the pen
Of Fancy can write,
Must vanish
In manhood’s misty light—
Squire and Knight,
And damosels’ glances,
Sunny romances
So pure and bright!

These have vanished,
And what remains?
Life’s budding garlands
Have turned to chains—
Its beams and rains
Feed but docks and thistles,
And sorrow whistles
O’er desert plains!

The Fair Hills of Eiré, O!
(After the Irish of DONOGH MAC CON-MARA.)

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN

Take a blessing from my heart to the land of my birth,
And the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
And to all that yet survive of Eibhear’s tribe on earth,
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
In that land so delightful the wild thrush’s lay—
Seems to pour a lament forth for Eiré’s delay—
Alas! alas! why pine I a thousand miles away
From the fair Hills of Eiré, O!

The soil is rich and soft—the air is mild and bland,
Of the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
Her barest rock is greener to me than this rude land—
O! the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
Her woods are tall and straight, grove rising over grove;
Trees flourish in her glens below, and on her heights above;
O, in heart and in soul, I shall ever, ever love
The fair Hills of Eiré, O!

A noble tribe, moreover, are the now hapless Gael,
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
A tribe in Battle’s hour unused to shrink or fail
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
For this is my lament in bitterness outpoured,
To see them slain or scattered by the Saxon sword.
Oh, woe of woes, to see a foreign spoiler horde
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!

Broad and tall rise the cruachs in the golden morning’s glow
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
O’er her smooth grass for ever sweet cream and honey flow
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
O, I long, I am pining, again to behold
The land that belongs to the brave Gael of old;
Far dearer to my heart than a gift of gems or gold
Are the fair Hills of Eiré, O!

The dewdrops lie bright ’mid the grass and yellow corn
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
And the sweet-scented apples blush redly in the morn
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
The water-cress and sorrel fill the vales below;
The streamlets are hushed, till the evening breezes blow;
While the waves of the Suir, noble river! ever flow
Near the fair Hills of Eiré, O!

A fruitful clime is Eiré’s, through valley, meadow, plain,
And the fair land of Eiré, O!
The very “Bread of Life” is in the yellow grain
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
Far dearer unto me than the tones music yields,
Is the lowing of her kine and the calves in her fields,
And the sunlight that shone long ago on the shields
Of the Gaels, on the fair Hills of Eiré, O!

Dark Rosaleen.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN

O my dark Rosaleen,
Do not sigh, do not weep!
The priests are on the ocean green,
They march along the Deep.
There’s wine ... from the royal Pope,
Upon the ocean green;
And Spanish ale shall give you hope,
My dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope,
Shall give you health, and help, and hope,
My dark Rosaleen.

Over hills, and through dales,
Have I roamed for your sake;
All yesterday I sailed with sails
On river and on lake.
The Erne ... at its highest flood,
I dashed across unseen,
For there was lightning in my blood,
My dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
Oh! there was lightning in my blood,
Red lightning lightened through my blood,
My dark Rosaleen!

All day long in unrest,
To and fro do I move,
The very soul within my breast
Is wasted for you, love!
The heart ... in my bosom faints
To think of you my Queen,
My life of life, my saint of saints,
My dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
To hear your sweet and sad complaints,
My life, my love, my saint of saints,
My dark Rosaleen!

Woe and pain, pain and woe,
Are my lot, night and noon,
To see your bright face clouded so,
Like to the mournful moon.
But yet ... will I rear your throne
Again in golden sheen;
’Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone,
My dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
’Tis you shall have the golden throne,
’Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone,
My dark Rosaleen!

Over dews, over sands,
Will I fly, for your weal:
Your holy delicate white hands
Shall girdle me with steel.
At home ... in your emerald bowers,
From morning’s dawn till e’en,
You’ll pray for me, my flower of flowers,
My dark Rosaleen!
My fond Rosaleen!
You’ll think of me through Daylight’s hours,
My virgin flower, my flower of flowers,
My dark Rosaleen!

I could scale the blue air,
I could plough the high hills,
Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer,
To heal your many ills!
And one ... beamy smile from you
Would float the light between
My toils and me, my own, my true,
My dark Rosaleen!
My fond Rosaleen!
Would give me life and soul anew,
A second life, a soul anew,
My dark Rosaleen!

O! the Erne shall run red
With redundance of blood,
The earth shall rock beneath our tread,
And flames wrap hill and wood,
And gun-peal, and slogan cry,
Wake many a glen serene,
Ere you shall fade, ere you can die,
My dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
The Judgment Hour must first be nigh
Ere you can fade, ere you can die,
My dark Rosaleen!

The One Mystery.

’Tis idle! we exhaust and squander
The glittering mine of thought in vain
All-baffled reason cannot wander,
Beyond her chain.
The flood of life runs dark—dark clouds
Make lampless night around its shore:
The dead, where are they? In their shrouds—
Man knows no more.

Evoke the ancient and the past,
Will one illumining star arise?
Or must the film, from first to last,
O’erspread thine eyes?
When life, love, glory, beauty, wither,
Will wisdom’s page, or science chart,
Map out for thee the region whither
Their shades depart?

Supposest thou the wondrous powers,
To high imagination given,
Pale types of what shall yet be ours,
When earth is heaven?
When this decaying shell is cold,
Oh! sayest thou the soul shall climb
What magic mount she trod of old,
Ere childhood’s time?

And shall the sacred pulse that thrilled,
Thrill once again to glory’s name?
And shall the conquering love that filled
All earth with flame,
Re-born, revived, renewed, immortal,
Resume his reign in prouder might,
A sun beyond the ebon portal,
Of death and night?

The Wild Geese.

ROSA MULHOLLAND

I had no sail to cross the sea,
A brave white bird went forth from me,
My heart was hid beneath his wing:
O strong white bird, come back in spring!

I watched the Wild Geese rise and cry
Across the flaring western sky;
Their winnowing pinions clove the light,
Then vanished, and came down the night.

I laid me low, my day was done,
I longed not for the morrow’s sun,
But closely swathed in swoon of sleep,
Forgot to hope, forgot to weep.

The moon, through veils of gloomy red,
A warm yet dusky radiance shed
All down our valley’s golden stream
And flushed my slumber with a dream.

Her mystic torch lit up my brain;
My spirit rose and lived amain,
And follow through the windy spray
That bird upon its watery way.

“O wild white bird, O wail for me!
My soul hath wings to fly with thee:
On foam waves, lengthening out afar,
We’ll ride toward the western star.

“O’er glimmering plains, through forest gloom,
To track a wanderer’s feet I come;
’Mid lonely swamp, by haunted brake,
I’ll pass unfrighted for his sake.

“Alone, afar, his footsteps roam,
The stars his roof, the tent his home.
Saw’st thou what way the Wild Geese flew
To sunward through the thick night dew?

“Carry my soul where he abides,
And pierce the mystery that hides
His presence, and through time and space
Look with mine eyes upon his face.”

“Beside his prairie fire he rests,
All feathered things are in their nests:
‘What strange wild bird is this,’ he saith,
‘Still fragrant with the ocean’s breath?

“‘Perch on my hand, thou briny thing,
And let me stroke thy shy wet wing;
What message in thy soft eye thrills?
I see again my native hills

“‘And vale, the river’s silver streak,
The mist upon the blue, blue peak,
The shadows grey, the golden sheaves,
The mossy walls, the russet eaves.

“‘I greet the friends I’ve loved and lost,
Do all forget? No, tempest-tost,
That braved for me the ocean’s foam,
Some heart remembers me at home.

“‘Ere spring’s return I will be there,
Thou strange sea-fragrant messenger!
I wake and weep; the moon shines sweet,
O dream too short! O bird too fleet!’”

Lament for a Little Child.

RODEN NOEL

I am lying in the tomb, love,
Lying in the tomb,
Tho’ I move within the gloom, love,
Breathe within the gloom!
Men deem life not fled, dear,
Deem my life not fled,
Tho’ I with thee am dead, dear,
I with thee am dead,
O my little child!

What is the grey world, darling,
What is the grey world,
Where the worm lies curled, darling,
The death-worm lies curled?
They tell me of the spring, dear!
Do I want the spring?
Will she waft upon her wing, dear,
The joy-pulse of her wing,
Thy songs, thy blossoming,
O my little child!

For the hallowing of thy smile, love,
The rainbow of thy smile,
Gleaming for a while, love,
Gleaming to beguile,
Re-plunged me in the cold, dear,
Leaves me in the cold,
And I feel so very old, dear,
Very, very old!

Would they put me out of pain, dear,
Out of all my pain,
Since I may not live again, dear,
Never live again!

I am lying in the grave, love,
In thy little grave,
Yet I hear the wind rave, love,
And the wild wave!
I would lie asleep, darling,
With thee lie asleep,
Unhearing the world weep, darling,
Little children weep!
O my little child!

The Swimmer.

Yonder, lo! the tide is flowing;
Clamber, while the breeze is blowing,
Down to where a soft foam flusters
Dulse and fairy feathery clusters!
While it fills the shelly hollows,
A swift sister-billow follows,
Leaps in hurrying with the tide,
Seems the lingering wave to chide;
Both push on with eager life,
And a gurgling show of strife.
O the salt, refreshing air
Shrilly blowing in the hair!
A keen, healthful savour haunts
Sea-shell, sea-flower, and sea-plants.
Innocent billows on the strand
Leave a crystal over sand,
Whose thin ebbing soon is crossed
By a crystal foam-enmossed,
Variegating silver-grey
Shell-empetalled sand in play:
When from sand dries off the brine,
Vanishes swift shadow fine;
But a wet sand is a glass
Where the plumy cloudlets pass,
Floating islands of the blue,
Tender, shining, fair, and true.

Who would linger idle,
Dallying would lie,
When wind and wave, a bridal
Celebrating, fly?
Let him plunge among them,
Who hath wooed enough,
Flirted with them, sung them,
In the salt sea-trough
He may win them, onward
On a buoyant crest,
Far to seaward, sunward,
Ocean-borne to rest!
Wild wind will sing over him,
And the free foam cover him,
Swimming seaward, sunward,
On a blithe sea-breast!
On a blithe sea-bosom
Swims another too,
Swims a live sea-blossom,
A grey-winged sea-mew!
Grape-green all the waves are,
By whose hurrying line
Half of ships and caves are
Buried under brine;
Supple, shifting ranges
Lucent at the crest,
With pearly surface-changes
Never laid to rest:
Now a dipping gunwale
Momently he sees,
Now a fuming funnel,
Or red flag in the breeze;
Arms flung open wide,
Lip the laughing sea;
For playfellow, for bride,
Claim her impetuously!
Triumphantly exult with all the free,
Buoyant, bounding splendour of the sea!
And if while on the billow
Wearily he lay,
His awful wild playfellow
Filled his mouth with spray,
Reft him of his breath,
To some far realms away
He would float with Death;
Wild wind would sing over him,
And the free foam cover him,
Waft him sleeping onward,
Floating seaward, sunward,
All alone with Death;
In a realm of wondrous dreams,
And shadow-haunted ocean gleams!

The Dance.

RODEN NOEL

The dance! the dance!
Maidens advance
Your undulating charm!
A line deploys
Of gentle boys,
Waving the light arm,
Bronze, alive and warm;
Reed flute and drum
Sound as they come,
Under your eyelight warm!

Many a boy,
A dancing joy,
Many a mellow maid,
With fireflies in the shade,
Mingle and glide,
Appear and hide,
Here in a fairy glade:
Ebb and flow
To a music low,
Viol, and flute and lyre,
As melody mounts higher:
With a merry will,
They touch and thrill,
Beautiful limbs of fire!

Red berries, shells,
Over bosom-dells,
And girdles of light grass,
May never hide
The youthful pride
Of beauty, ere it pass:
Yet, ah! sweet boy and lass,
Refrain, retire!
Love is a fire!
Night will pass!

From “The Water-Nymph and the Boy.”

I flung me round him,
I drew him under;
I clung, I drowned him,
My own white wonder....

Father and mother,
Weeping and wild,
Came to the forest,
Calling the child,
Came from the palace,
Down to the pool,
Calling my darling,
My beautiful!

Under the water,
Cold and so pale!
Could it be love made
Beauty to fail?

Ah me! for mortals:
In a few moons,
If I had left him,
After some Junes
He would have faded,
Faded away,
He, the young monarch, whom
All would obey,
Fairer than day;
Alien to springtime,
Joyless and grey,
He would have faded,
Faded away,
Moving a mockery,
Scorned of the day!

Now I have taken him
All in his prime,
Saved from slow poisoning
Pitiless Time,
Filled with his happiness,
One with the prime,
Saved from the cruel
Dishonour of Time,
Laid him, my beautiful,
Laid him to rest,
Loving, adorable,
Softly to rest,
Here in my crystalline,
Here in my breast!

A Casual Song.

She sang of lovers met to play
“Under the may bloom, under the may,”
But when I sought her face so fair,
I found the set face of Despair.

She sang of woodland leaves in spring,
And joy of young love dallying;
But her young eyes were all one moan,
And Death weighed on her heart like stone.

I could not ask, I know not now,
The story of that mournful brow;
It haunts me as it haunted then,
A flash from fire of hell-bound men.

“The Pity of it.”

RODEN NOEL

If our love may fail, Lily,
If our love may fail,
What will mere life avail, Lily,
Mere life avail?

Seed that promised blossom,
Withered in the mould,
Pale petals overblowing,
Failing from the gold!

When the fervent fingers
Listlessly unclose,
May the life that lingers
Find repose, Lily,
Find repose!

Who may dream of all the music
Only a lover hears,
Hearkening to hearts triumphant
Bearing down the years?
Ah! may eternal anthems dwindle
To a low sound of tears?

Room in all the ages
For our love to grow,
Prayers of both demanded
A little while ago:

And now a few poor moments,
Between life and death,
May be proven all too ample
For love’s breath!

Seed that promised blossom,
Withered in the mould!
Pale petals overblowing,
Failing from the gold!

I well believe the fault lay
More with me than you,
But I feel the shadow closing
Cold about us two.

An hour may yet be yielded us,
Or a very little more—
Then a few tears, and silence
For evermore, Lily,
For evermore!

The Old.

RODEN NOEL

They are waiting on the shore
For the bark to take them home;
They will toil and grieve no more;
The hour for release hath come.

All their long life lies behind,
Like a dimly blending dream;
There is nothing left to bind
To the realms that only seem.

They are waiting for the boat,
There is nothing left to do;
What was near them grows remote,
Happy silence falls like dew;
Now the shadowy bark is come,
And the weary may go home.

By still water they would rest,
In the shadow of the tree;
After battle sleep is best,
After noise tranquillity.

Maura Du of Ballyshannon.

CHARLES P. O’CONOR

I.

Maura du[21] of Ballyshannon!
Maura du, my flower of flowers!
Can you hear me there out seaward,
Calling back the bygone hours?
Maura du, my own, my honey!
With wild passion still aglow,
I am singing you the old songs
That I sung you long ago.
And you mind, love, how it ran on—
“In your eyes asthore machree![22]
All my Heaven there I see,
And that’s true!
Maura du!
Maura du of Ballyshannon!”

II.

Maura du of Ballyshannon!
Maura du, my soul’s one queen!
Big with love my heart is flying,
Where the grass is growing green.
Maura du, my own, my honey!
That I love you, well you know,
And still sing for you the old song,
That I sung you long ago.
And you mind, love, how it ran on—
“In your eyes asthore machree!
All my Heaven there I see,
And that’s true!
Maura du!
Maura du of Ballyshannon!”

CHARLES P. O’CONOR

III.

Maura du of Ballyshannon,
Maura du, the day is drear!
Ah, the night is long and weary,
Far away from you, my dear!
Maura du, my own, my honey!
Still let winds blow high or low,
I must sing to you the old song,
That I sung you long ago,
And you mind, love, how it ran on—
“In your eyes asthore machree!
All my Heaven there I see,
And that’s true!
Maura du!
Maura du of Ballyshannon!”

IV.

Maura du of Ballyshannon!
Maura du, when winds blow south,
I will with the birds fly homeward,
There to kiss your Irish mouth.
Maura du, my own, my honey!
When time is no longer foe,
By your side I’ll sing the old song,
That I sung you long ago,
And you mind, love, how it ran on—
“In your eyes asthore machree!
All my Heaven there I see,
And that’s true!
Maura du!
Maura du of Ballyshannon!”

A Spinning Song.

JOHN FRANCIS O’DONNELL

My love to fight the Saxon goes,
And bravely shines his sword of steel,
A heron’s feather decks his brows,
And a spur on either heel;
His steed is blacker than a sloe,
And fleeter than the falling star;
Amid the surging ranks he’ll go
And shout for joy of war.

Twinkle, twinkle, pretty spindle, let the white wool drift and dwindle,
Oh! we weave a damask doublet for my love’s coat of steel.
Hark! the timid, turning treadle, crooning soft old-fashioned ditties
To the low, slow murmur of the brown, round wheel.

My love is pledged to Ireland’s fight;
My love would die for Ireland’s weal,
To win her back her ancient right,
And make her foemen reel.
Oh, close I’ll clasp him to my breast
When homeward from the war he comes;
The fires shall light the mountain’s crest,
The valley peal with drums.

Twinkle, twinkle, pretty spindle, let the white wool drift and dwindle,
Oh! we weave a damask doublet for my love’s coat of steel.
Hark! the timid, turning treadle, crooning soft old-fashioned ditties
To the low, slow murmur of the brown, round wheel.

A White Rose.

JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY

The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
Oh, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.

But I send you a cream-white rosebud
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.

The Fountain of Tears.

ARTHUR O’SHAUGHNESSY

If you go over desert and mountain,
Far into the country of Sorrow,
To-day and to-night and to-morrow,
And maybe for months and for years;
You shall come with a heart that is bursting
For trouble and toiling and thirsting,
You shall certainly come to the fountain
At length,—to the Fountain of Tears.

Very peaceful the place is, and solely
For piteous lamenting and sighing,
And those who come living or dying
Alike from their hopes and their fears;
Full of Cyprus-like shadows the place is,
And statues that cover their faces:
But out of the gloom springs the holy
And beautiful Fountain of Tears.

And it flows and it flows with a motion,
So gentle and lovely and listless,
And murmurs a tune so resistless
To him who hath suffered and hears—
You shall surely—without a word spoken,
Kneel down there and know your heart broken,
And yield to the long-curb’d emotion
That day by the Fountain of Tears.

For it grows and it grows, as though leaping
Up higher the more one is thinking;
And even its tunes go on sinking
More poignantly into the ears:
Yea, so blessèd and good seems that fountain,
Reached after dry desert and mountain,
You shall fall down at length in your weeping
And bathe your sad face in the tears.

Then, alas! while you lie there a season,
And sob between living and dying,
And give up the land you were trying
To find ’mid your hopes and your fears;
—O the world shall come up and pass o’er you,
Strong men shall not stay to care for you,
Nor wonder indeed for what reason
Your way should seem harder than theirs.

But perhaps, while you lie, never lifting
Your cheek from the wet leaves it presses,
Nor caring to raise your wet tresses
And look how the cold world appears,—
O perhaps the mere silences round you
All things in that place grief hath found you,
Yea, e’en to the clouds o’er you drifting
May soothe you somewhat through your tears.

You may feel, when a falling leaf brushes
Your face, as though someone had kissed you;
Or think at least some one who missed you
Hath sent you a thought,—if that cheers;
Or a bird’s little song faint and broken,
May pass for a tender word spoken:
—Enough, while around you there rushes
That life-drowning torrent of tears.

And the tears shall flow faster and faster,
Brim over, and baffle resistance,
And roll down bleared roads to each distance
Of past desolation and years;
Till they cover the place of each sorrow,
And leave you no Past and no Morrow:
For what man is able to master
And stem the great Fountain of Tears?

But the floods of the tears meet and gather;
The sound of them all grows like thunder:
—O into what bosom, I wonder,
Is poured the whole sorrow of years?
For Eternity only seems keeping
Account of the great human weeping:
May God then, the Maker and Father—
May he find a place for the tears!

After Death.

FANNY PARNELL

Shall mine eyes behold thy glory, O my country? Shall mine eyes behold thy glory?
Or shall the darkness close around them, ere the sun-blaze break at last upon thy story?

When the nations ope for thee their queenly circle, as a sweet new sister hail thee,
Shall these lips be sealed in callous death and silence, that have known but to bewail thee?

Shall the ear be deaf that only loved thy praises, when all men their tribute bring thee?
Shall the mouth be clay that sang thee in thy squalor, when all poets’ mouths shall sing thee?

Ah! the harpings and the salvos and the shouting of thy exiled sons returning!
I should hear, tho’ dead and mouldered, and the grave-damps should not chill my bosom’s burning.

Ah! the tramp of feet victorious! I should hear them ’mid the shamrocks and the mosses,
And my heart should toss within the shroud and quiver as a captive dreamer tosses.

I should turn and rend the cere-clothes round me, giant sinews I should borrow—
Crying, “O my brothers, I have also loved her in her loneliness and sorrow.

“Let me join with you the jubilant procession: let me chant with you her story;
Then contented I shall go back to the shamrocks, now mine eyes have seen her glory!”

The Dead at Clonmacnois.
(From the Irish of Enoch o’ Gillan.)

T. W. ROLLESTON

In a quiet watered land, a land of roses,
Stands Saint Kieran’s City fair;
And the warriors of Erin in their famous generations
Slumber there.

There beneath the dewy hillside sleep the noblest of the
Clan of Conn,
Each below his stone with name in branching Ogham
And the sacred knot thereon.

There they laid to rest the seven Kings of Tara,
There the sons of Cairbrè sleep—
Battle banners of the Gael, that in Kieran’s plain of crosses
Now their final posting keep.

And in Clonmacnois they laid the men of Teffia,
And right many a lord of Breagh;
Deep the sod above Clan Creidè and Clan Conaill,
Kind in hall and fierce in fray.

Many and many a son of Conn the Hundred-Fighter
In the red earth lies at rest;
Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers,
Many a swan-white breast.

Unknown Ideal.

DORA SIGERSON

Whose is the voice that will not let me rest?
I hear it speak.
Where is the shore will gratify my quest,
Show what I seek?
Not yours, weak Muse, to mimic that far voice,
With halting tongue;
No peace, sweet land, to bid my heart rejoice
Your groves among.

Whose is the loveliness I know is by,
Yet cannot place?
Is it perfection of the sea or sky,
Or human face?
Not yours, my pencil, to delineate
The splendid smile!
Blind in the sun, we struggle on with Fate
That glows the while.

Whose are the feet that pass me, echoing
On unknown ways?
Whose are the lips that only part to sing
Through all my days?
Not yours, fond youth, to fill mine eager eyes
That still adore
Beauty that tarries not, nor satisfies
For evermore.

Mo Cáilin Donn.

GEORGE SIGERSON

The blush is on the flower, and the bloom is on the tree,
And the bonnie, bonnie sweet birds are carolling their glee;
And the dews upon the grass are made diamonds by the sun,
All to deck a path of glory for my own Cáilin Donn![23]