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The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry Page 12
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VII
And we came to the Isle of Fire: we were lured by the light from afar,
For the peak sent up one league of fire to the Northern Star;
Lured by the glare and the blare, but scarcely could stand upright,
For the whole isle shudder’d and shook like a man in a mortal affright;
We were giddy besides with the fruits we had gorged, and so crazed that at last
There were some leap’d into the fire; and away we sail’d, and we past
Over that undersea isle, where the water is clearer than air:
Down we look’d: what a garden! O bliss, what a Paradise there!
Towers of a happier time, low down in a rainbow deep
Silent palaces, quiet fields of eternal sleep!
And three of the gentlest and best of my people, whate’er I could say,
Plunged head down in the sea, and the Paradise trembled away.
VIII
And we came to the Bounteous Isle, where the heavens lean low on the land,
And ever at dawn from the cloud glitter’d o’er us a sunbright hand,
Then it open’d and dropt at the side of each man, as he rose from his rest,
Bread enough for his need till the labourless day dipt under the West;
And we wander’d about it and thro’ it. O never was time so good!
And we sang of the triumphs of Finn, and the boast of our ancient blood,
And we gazed at the wandering wave as we sat by the gurgle of springs,
And we chanted the songs of the Bards and the glories of fairy kings;
But at length we began to be weary, to sigh, and to stretch and yawn,
Till we hated the Bounteous Isle and the sunbright hand of the dawn,
For there was not an enemy near, but the whole green Isle was our own,
And we took to playing at ball, and we took to throwing the stone,
And we took to playing at battle, but that was a perilous play,
For the passion of battle was in us, we slew and we sail’d away.
IX
And we past to the Isle of Witches and heard their musical cry –
‘Come to us, O come, come’ in the stormy red of a sky
Dashing the fires and the shadows of dawn on the beautiful shapes,
For a wild witch naked as heaven stood on each of the loftiest capes,
And a hundred ranged on the rock like white seabirds in a row,
And a hundred gamboll’d and pranced on the wrecks in the sand below,
And a hundred splash’d from the ledges, and bosom’d the burst of the spray,
But I knew we should fall on each other, and hastily sail’d away.
X
And we came in an evil time to the Isle of the Double Towers,
One was of smooth-cut stone, one carved all over with flowers,
But an earthquake always moved in the hollows under the dells,
And they shock’d on each other and butted each other with clashing of bells,
And the daws flew out of the Towers and jangled and wrangled in vain,
And the clash and boom of the bells rang into the heart and the brain,
Till the passion of battle was on us, and all took sides with the Towers,
There were some for the clean-cut stone, there were more for the carven flowers,
And the wrathful thunder of God peal’d over us all the day,
For the one half slew the other, and after we sail’d away.
XI
And we came to the Isle of a Saint who had sail’d with St Brendan of yore,
He had lived ever since on the Isle and his winters were fifteen score,
And his voice was low as from other worlds, and his eyes were sweet,
And his white hair sank to his heels and his white beard fell to his feet,
And he spake to me, ‘O Maeldune, let be this purpose of thine!
Remember the words of the Lord when he told us “Vengeance is mine!”
His fathers have slain thy fathers in war or in single strife,
Thy fathers have slain his fathers, each taken a life for a life,
Thy father had slain his father, how long shall the murder last?
Go back to the Isle of Finn and suffer the Past to be Past.’
And we kiss’d the fringe of his beard and we pray’d as we heard him pray,
And the Holy man he assoil’d us, and sadly we sail’d away.
XII
And we came to the Isle we were blown from, and there on the shore was he,
The man that had slain my father. I saw him and let him be.
O weary was I of the travel, the trouble, the strife and the sin,
When I landed again, with a tithe of my men, on the Isle of Finn.
Alfred Tennyson
from The Vision of Mac Conglinne
A vision that appeared to me,
An apparition wonderful
I tell to all:
There was a coracle all of lard
Within a port of New-milk Lake
Upon the world’s smooth sea.
We went into that man-of-war,
’Twas warrior-like to take the road
O’er ocean’s heaving waves.
Our oar-strokes then we pulled
Across the level of the main,
Throwing the sea’s harvest up
Like honey, the sea-soil.
The fort we reached was beautiful,
With works of custards thick,
Beyond the lake.
Fresh butter was the bridge in front,
The rubble dyke was fair white wheat,
Bacon the palisade.
Stately, pleasantly it sat,
A compact house and strong.
Then I went in:
The door of it was hung beef,
The threshold was dry bread,
Cheese-curds the walls.
Smooth pillars of old cheese
And sappy bacon props
Alternate ranged;
Stately beams of mellow cream,
White posts of real curds
Kept up the house.
Behind it was a well of wine,
Beer and bragget in streams,
Each full pool to the taste.
Malt in smooth wavy sea
Over a lard-spring’s brink
Flowed through the floor.
A lake of juicy pottage
Under a cream of oozy lard
Lay ’twixt it and the sea.
Hedges of butter fenced it round,
Under a crest of white-mantled lard
Around the wall outside.
A row of fragrant apple-trees,
An orchard in its pink-tipped bloom,
Between it and the hill.
A forest tall of real leeks,
Of onions and of carrots, stood
Behind the house.
Within, a household generous,
A welcome of red, firm-fed men,
Around the fire:
Seven bead-strings and necklets seven
Of cheeses and of bits of tripe
Round each man’s neck.
The Chief in cloak of beefy fat
Beside his noble wife and fair
I then beheld.
Below the lofty caldron’s spit
Then the Dispenser I beheld,
His fleshfork on his back.
Wheatlet son of Milklet,
Son of juicy Bacon,
Is mine own name.
Honeyed Butter-roll
Is the man’s name
That bears my bag.
Haunch of Mutton
Is my dog’s name,
Of lovely leaps.
Lard, my wife,
Sweetly smiles
Across the brose.
Cheese-curds, my daughter,
Goes round the spit,
Fair is her fame.
Corned Beef is my son,
Who beams over a cloak,<
br />
Enormous, of fat.
Savour of Savours
Is the name of my wife’s maid:
Morning-early
Across New-milk Lake she went.
Beef-lard, my steed,
An excellent stallion
That increases studs;
A guard against toil
Is the saddle of cheese
Upon his back.
A large necklace of delicious cheese-curds
Around his back;
His halter and his traces all
Of fresh butter.
Kuno Meyer
Ireland’s Women, and Her Men
ANONYMOUS
Créide’s Lament for Dínerteach
These spears that pierce the night
with jags of poisoned light
are cast by the memory
of him from near Royny.
Wild love for that great stranger,
that scorner of all danger,
shrivels heart in breast
and robs each night of rest.
Hosannas lifted to our Lord
are not as fine as his kind word;
no fabled warrior ever
matched in grace my slender lover.
Once, a child, I was pure:
chastity does not endure;
an adult now, passion’s slave
I grieve and rave.
Here in Aidne’s pleasant land
all voices in one sorrow blend
for on Guaire’s bloody plain
our hero Dínerteach is slain.
O Christ most chaste, that early death
lays me helpless out beneath
these spears that pierce the night
with jags of poisoned light.
PC
The Lament of Baoi, the Nun of Beare Island
Ebbing always, unlike the sea
Whose ebb will flood tomorrow,
My life, with no tide’s turn,
Runs down the strand in sorrow.
I am Baoi, the Nun of Beare;
The plushest gowns I used to wear
Who now am wizened, chaste and thin
– Threadbare habit, mottled skin.
When we lived
It was people we loved
But people today
Care for riches only.
The women and men of these plains
Were a fabled, noble race
Who treated us with courtesy:
Their graces matched our grace.
Much talk today of demanding one’s due,
No time for old hospitality;
No talk today of paying one’s debts,
Much time for boasting of charity.
Swift coursers then, swift war cars
Winning every prize;
Swifter still the years
Racing past these eyes.
My bitter, dried-up body
Plods towards its last abode –
Called in by the Son of God,
All debts must be repaid.
To think these arms of mine
Now bony and thin
Were draped sumptuously
Round the shoulders of kings!
To think of these arms of mine
So bony and thin
Raised in love’s service
Over handsome young men!
When girl-blood stirs for the Maytide
My blood thickens with cold;
Sad though it is to be sapless
It is far sadder to be old.
Sweet honey-breath long since soured
(The wedding lamb escaped the kill!)
Hair lank now and grey and sparse,
My head hangs ready for the veil.
It is no shame to want to hide
Such a head in the white of a veil;
The colours that bedecked that head
The years I sat down to the ale!
To all the old I bear good will
Except wide-pastured Feven
Whose mane though as old as mine
Is sunbright still and golden.
Feven’s Stone of the Kings has been battered
By winter’s storms time out of mind
But like the Fort of Ronan’s in Bregon
Its face is youthful, still unlined.
How great the turmoil of the sea
Stirred up by winter’s whips of spray!
Neither nobleman nor bondsman’s son
Will cross the strait to me today.
For I know their inclination:
If they row, they row away.
Deeply men sleep among the reeds of Alma
Where water is colder than coldest clay.
Across the wide surface of the sea
Of youth and folly I sail no longer;
The years of beauty I wasted,
The years of my ugliness linger.
And the cold lingers also,
No matter how sultry the weather
I still crave a shawl for my shoulders:
Old age and cold go together.
How swiftly the high summer of youth
To sad autumn descended!
But the winter that now grips my heart
Is a season without ending.
I squandered my youth, yet
– Had I been sober and staid –
Would the cloak of my life not likewise
Have ended up tattered, frayed?
The cloak of my King, though, is seamless
And its green drapes every hill;
The worker who plumps out such cloth
Is the master who never is idle.
But I am a useless poor wretch,
A queen shrivelled, a drone;
After candles and bright laughter at table
The dark oratory here on my own!
Golden mead and rarest red wine
Were our toasts when I feasted with kings;
These nights I feed in a circle of hags
With watery whey for our pledgings.
If I could quaff the whey like ale,
Calling all that pains me the will of God,
I would beseech Him night and day
To quell the anguish in my blood.
This cloak of age wrapped loose about me
Is greying, flaccid, stranger’s skin:
Thus an ancient tree prepares for dying,
Its bark all blotched with moss and lichen.
My once sparkling right eye has been taken
As deposit on a small stretch of land
And my left one too has been borrowed
To secure that same patch of ground.
Three floods threaten the fort at Ardree:
A floodhost of men darkening the plain,
A floodherd of horses with hooves thundering,
A floodpack of dogs running, baying.
Flood’s wave fills to fullness,
Ebb’s drain empties all;
What the rising tide gives you
It takes in its fall.
(Tide’s giving
Then taking
Has been
my Unmaking.)
Flood’s wave:
Silence of the flooded cellar
Where all who ever visited me
Lie silent under water.
How soundly beneath my roof
Sleeps great Mary’s Son!
(I have kept my house always
Open to everyone.)
I pity that creature,
The most wretched of all,
Who watches tide’s rising
But misses its fall.
Blessed is the island offshore
That waits for the turn of the tide;
Cursed is the lonely old woman
Whose ebbing will abide.
No face, no house, no feature
She remembers from the past;
Gone is the great flood tide:
Ebb is all at last.
PC
Liadan
Gain without
gladness
Is in the bargain I have struck;
One that I loved I wrought to madness.
Mad beyond measure
But for God’s fear that numbed her heart
She that would not do his pleasure.
Was it so great
My treason? Was I not always kind?
Why should it turn his love to hate?
Liadan,
That is my name, and Curithir
The man I loved; you know my sin.
Alas too fleet!
Too brief my pleasure at his side;
With him the passionate hours were sweet.
Woods woke
About us for a lullaby,
And the blue waves in music spoke.
And now too late
More than for all my sins I grieve
That I turned his love to hate.
Why should I hide
That he is still my heart’s desire
More than all the world beside?
A furnace blast
Of love has melted down my heart,
Without his love it cannot last.
Frank O’Connor
The Wooing of Etain
Fair lady, will you travel
To the marvellous land of stars?
Pale as snow the body there,
Under a primrose crown of hair.
No one speaks of property
In that glittering community:
White teeth shining, eyebrows black,
The foxglove hue on every cheek.
The landscape bright and speckled
As a wild bird’s eggs –
However fair Ireland’s Plain,
It is sad after the Great Plain!
Warm, sweet streams water the earth,
And after the choicest of wine and mead,
Those fine and flawless people
Without sin, without guilt, couple.
We can see everyone
Without being seen ourselves:
It is the cloud of Adam’s transgression
Conceals us from mortal reckoning.
O woman if you join my strong clan,
Your head will hold a golden crown.
Fresh killed pork, new milk and beer,
We shall share, O Lady Fair!
John Montague
Advice to Lovers
The way to get on with a girl
Is to drift like a man in a mist,
Happy enough to be caught,
Happy to be dismissed.
Glad to be out of her way,
Glad to rejoin her in bed,
Equally grieved or gay
To learn that she’s living or dead.