Written in Winter
The green warl’sfn1 awa, but the white anefn2 can charm them
What skait on the burn,fn3 or wi’ settin’ dogs rin:
The hind’sfn4 dinlin’fn5 han’s, numb’t wi’ snaw-baws, to warm them,
He clapsfn6 on his hard sides, whase doubletsfn7 are thin.
How dark the hail show’r mak’s yon vale, aince sae pleasing!
How laighfn8 stoops the bush that’s ower-burden’tfn9 wi’ drift!
The icicles dreepfn10 at the half-thow’tfn11 house-easin’,fn12
When bluntfn13 the sun beams frae the verge o’ the lift.fn14
The hedge-hauntin’ blackbird, on ae fit whilesfn15 restin’,
Wad fainfn16 heat the titherfn17 in storm-rufflet wing;
The sillyfn18 sweel’tfn19 sheep, ayefn20 the stifflin’fn21 storm breastin’,
Are glad o’ green pilesfn22 at the side o’ the spring.
What cooffn23 fir’d that shot? were you no far to blame, man,
To pierce the poor Hare that was starvin’ before?
Gif she wham ye court were like ane I’ll no name, man,
Her fine han’ wad spurn ye, distin’tfn24 saefn25 wi’ gore.
The night wi’ the lass that I hope will be kin’ soon,
Wi’ Sylvia, wha charms me, a wee while I’ll stap:
He e’e is as clear as the ice the moon shines on,
As gentle her smile as the snaw-flakes that drap.
Perhaps she’s now plannin’, to pit a restriction
Upon my profusion on neistfn26 new-year’s night,
To help some poor fam’lie on bed’s o’ affliction,
Without food or fuel, attendants or light.
Perhaps, singin’ noo the dirge I tak’ pride in,
She thinks on the last storm, wi’ pity and dread –
How the spaitfn27 crush’t the cots, how Tam brak his leg slidin’
An’ herds in the muirfn28 fandfn29 the poor pedlar dead.
’Tis guidness mak’s beauty: the face ne’er was lo’esomefn30
That weepsna whaur woe is, and smilesna wi’ glee;
If Sympathy’s strange to the saft female bosom
It’s want’s no made up by a bright cheek, or e’e.
MARY TIGHE
(1772–1810)
from Psyche or The Legend of Love
from Canto I
Wrapped in a cloud unseen by mortal eye,
He sought the chamber of the royal maid;
There, lulled by careless soft security,
Of the impending mischief nought afraid,
Upon her purple couch was Psyche laid,
Her radiant eyes a downy slumber sealed;
In light transparent veil alone arrayed,
Her bosom’s opening charms were half revealed,
And scarce the lucid folds her polished limbs concealed.
A placid smile plays o’er each roseate lip,
Sweet severed lips, while thus your pearls disclose,
That slumbering thus unconscious she may sip
The cruel presage of her future woes!
Lightly, as fall the dews upon the rose,
Upon the coral gates of that sweet cell
The fatal drops he pours; nor yet he knows,
Nor, though a God, can he presaging tell
How he himself shall mourn the ills of that sad spell!
Nor yet content, he from his quiver drew,
Sharpened with skill divine, a shining dart:
No need had he for bow, since thus too true
His hand might wound her all-exposèd heart;
Yet her fair side he touched with gentlest art,
And half relenting on her beauties gazed;
Just then awaking with a sudden start
Her opening eye in humid lustre blazed,
Unseen he still remained, enchanted and amazed.
The dart which in his hand now trembling stood,
As o’er the couch he bent with ravished eye,
Drew with its daring point celestial blood
From his smooth neck’s unblemished ivory;
Heedless of this, but with a pitying sigh
The evil done now anxious to repair,
He shed in haste the balmy drops of joy
O’er all the silky ringlets of her hair;
Then stretched his plumes divine, and breathed celestial air.
THOMAS MOORE
(1779–1852)
from Corruption: An Epistle
Boast on, my friend – though stripped of all beside,
Thy struggling nation still retains her pride:
That pride, which once in genuine glory woke
When Marlborough fought, and brilliant St John spoke;
That pride which still, by time and shame unstung,
Outlives even Wh–tel–cke’s sword and H–wk–sb’ry’s tongue!
Boast on, my friend, while in this humbled isle
Where Honour mourns and Freedom fears to smile,
Where the bright light of England’s fame is known
But by the shadow o’er our fortunes thrown;
Where, doomed ourselves to nought but wrongs and slights,
We hear you boast of Britain’s glorious rights,
As wretched slaves, that under hatches lie,
Hear those on deck extol the sun and sky!
Boast on, while wandering through my native haunts,
I coldly listen to thy patriot vaunts;
And feel, though close our wedded countries twine,
More sorrow for my own than pride from thine.
(…)
See that smooth lord, whom nature’s plastic pains
Would seem to’ve fashion’d for those Eastern reigns
When eunuchs flourished, and such nerveless things
As men rejected were the chosen of kings; –
Even he, forsooth, (oh mockery accurst)
Dared to assume the patriot’s name at first –
Thus Pitt began, and thus begin his apes;
Thus devils, when first raised, take pleasing shapes.
But oh, poor Ireland! if revenge be sweet
For centuries of wrong, for dark deceit
And withering insult – for the Union thrown
Into thy bitter cup, when that alone
Of slavery’s draught was wanting – if for this
Revenge be sweet, thou hast that dæmon’s bliss;
For, oh, ’tis more than hell’s revenge to see
That England trusts the men who’ve ruined thee; –
That, in these awful days, when every hour
Creates some new or blasts some ancient power,
When proud Napoleon, like th’ enchanted shield
Whose light compelled each wondering foe to yield,
With baleful lustre blinds the brave and free,
And dazzles Europe into slavery –
That, in this hour, when patriot zeal should guide,
When Mind should rule, and – Fox should not have died,
All that devoted England can oppose
To enemies made friends and friends made foes,
Is the rank refuse, the despised remains
Of that unpitying power, whose whips and chains
Drove Ireland first, in wild and wicked trance,
Turn false to England – give her hand to France,
Those hacked and tainted tools, so foully fit
For the grand artisan of mischief, P–tt,
So useless ever but in vile employ,
So weak to save, so vigorous to destroy –
Such are the men that guard thy threatened shore,
Oh England! sinking England! boast no more.
from The Fudges in England
from Letter V: From Larry O’Branigan, in England, to his wife Judy, at Mullinafad
Dear Judy, I sind you this bit of a letther,
By mail-coach conveyance, – for want of a betther, –
/>
To tell you what luck in this world I have had
Since I left the sweet cabin, at Mullinafad.
Och, Judy, that night! – when the pig which we meant
To dry-nurse in the parlour to pay off the rent,
Julianna, the craythur, – that name was the death of her, –
Gave us the shlip and we saw the last breath of her!
And there were the childher, six innocent sowls,
For their nate little play-fellow tuning up howls;
While yourself, my dear Judy, (though grievin’s a folly),
Stud over Julianna’s remains, melancholy, –
Cryin’, half for the craythur, and half for the money,
‘Arrah, why did ye die till we’d sowld you, my honey?’
But God’s will be done! – and then, faith, sure enough,
As the pig was decaised, ’twas high time to be off.
So we gother’d up all the poor duds we could catch,
Locked the owld cabin-door, put the kay in the thatch,
Then tuk lave of each other’s sweet lips in the dark,
And set off, like the Chrishtians turn’d out of the Ark;
The six childher with you, my dear Judy, ochone!
And poor I wid myself, left condolin’ alone.
How I came to this England, o’er say and o’er lands,
And what cruel hard walkin’ I’ve had on my hands,
Is, at this present writin’, too tadious to speak,
So I’ll mintion it all in a postscript, next week: –
Only starved I was, surely, as thin as a lath,
Till I came to an up-and-down place they call Bath,
Where, as luck was, I managed to make a meal’s meat,
By dhraggin owld ladies all day through the street, –
Which their docthors, (who pocket, like fun, the pound starlins),
Have brought into fashion to plase the owld darlins.
Div’l a boy in all Bath, though I say it, could carry
The grannies up hill half so handy as Larry;
And the higher they lived, like owld crows, in the air,
The more I was wanted to lug them up there.
But luck has two handles, dear Judy, they say,
And mine has both handles put on the wrong way.
For, pondherin’, one morn, on a drame I’d just had
Of yourself and the babbies at Mullinafad,
Och, there came o’er my sinses so plasin’ a flutther,
That I spilt an owld Countess right clane in the gutther,
Muff, feathers and all! – the descint was most awful,
And – what was still worse, faith – I knew ’twas unlawful:
For, though, with mere women, no very great evil,
T’upset an owld Countess in Bath is the divil!
So, liftin’ the chair, with herself safe upon it,
(For nothin’ about her was kilt, but her bonnet,)
Without even mentionin’ ‘By your lave, ma’am,’
I tuk to my heels and – here, Judy, I am!
ANTOINE Ó RAIFTEIRÍ
(1784–1835)
Raftery’s Dialogue with the Whiskey
RAFTERY
If you shortened many a road and put a halo
On every thought that was growing in my head
Have I not been to you as the brown nut to the hazel?
Your fruit, O my comrade?
And in many a lonely bed have I not praised you
With sleepy words no virgin ever heard?
And after all this, O the spite of it, here in Kilcreest
You topple a tallow candle and burn my beard.
Troy in its tall sticks never burned with a blaze
As bright as Raftery’s hairs when that evil spark
Leaped on his skull and from that holy rooftree
Pitchforked his spluttering thatch;
Shame on you! not even Mercury who rose
Out of the cradle to fall on evil ways,
Stealing cattle, would hobble my wits and roast them
Hide and hair like that in the fire of my face.
O I was the sight then and the great commotion;
Wells running dry and poor people peeling their legs
With barrels and pails, and the fish flying down to the ocean;
And look at me now! a mere plaster of white of eggs!
Look at me! a bonfire to folly! but no man
Was ever saint till he was a sinner first;
And I’ll break with you now though it cost me the mannerly company
Of the gay talkers who follow a thirst.
So I dismiss you. Here! Take your mouth from my mouth!
I have weighed you, O creature of air, and the weighman cries,
‘Here’s nothing will balance a holding of land in the south,
Beef on the hoof there and grass climbing up to the skies;
What’s whiskey to hanging bacon?
To a glittering hearth and blue delphware?
Will it put a Sunday coat on any man,
I ask you, or leave him to walk bare?’
Ah, sweet whisperer, my dear wanton, I
Have followed you, shawled in your warmth, since I left the breast
Been toady for you and pet bully
And a woeful heartscald to the parish priest;
And look! If I took the mint by storm and spent it,
Heaping on you in one wild night the dazzle of a king’s whore,
And returned next morning with no money for a curer,
Your Publican would throw me out of the door.
THE WHISKEY
You blow hot and cold, grumbling,
The privilege of the woman and the poet.
Now let me advise you, Man of fancy stomach,
Carry a can and milk a nanny goat!
Drink milk! for I am not for you – as I am not indeed
For your brother the miser; but, ah, when the miser’s heir
Grows into manhood and squanders I’ll walk through the company
And call that man my dear.
I grow too heady now for your grey blood;
And you do little good to my reputation
With your knock-knees and tremulous jowls – for God’s sake
Pay the tailor to press your pelt and tuck it in!
What can I be to you now but a young wife to an old man?
Leave me to the roarers in the great universities,
The masters of Latin with the big ferrules
Who know what use strong whiskey is!
Hush, now! I’ll speak or burst. You have no pith,
And I pity the botch of a carpenter who planed you down.
You are maudlin at table ere the company is lit,
And among clowns, the heaviest clown.
I have given you pleasure, yet you round on me like a lackey
Who will swear he was overworked and underpaid;
And tomorrow, O most grievous insult of all, you’ll repent of me
That the priest may help you into a holy grave.
RAFTERY
Ah, that tongue was sharpened in many a bad house
Where candles are hooded on the black quays of the world;
Many is the sailor it stripped to the bleak hose
And the Light Dragoon with his feather furled;
I hear it now and I pray that a great bishop
Will rise with a golden crook and rout you out of the land
Yourself and the rising family of your sins,
As Patrick drove the worms out of Ireland.
You’re an illness, a cancer, a canker, a poison,
Galloping consumption, broken breath,
Indiaman’s liver, thin diseases of the person,
Cholera Morbus and the yellow death;
You’re the two sour women who wait here by my mattress
With Christian charity and broken hen-eggs
To mess my only features, but if I live t
o denounce you
I’ll empty every tavern when I get upon my legs.
THE WHISKEY
If hard words broke bones every sad rascal
With a bleached tongue who turns on me of a morning
Would have done for me long ago, yet I rise again like the pasch
Quietly, brightly, in their minds and they return.
RAFTERY
Who returns but the shiftless drifters, the moon’s men?
Stray calves who’d suck at any udder?
Waifs, bagmen, beggars, and an odd fool of a lord
Crazy enough not to know better?
THE WHISKEY
Men of merriment, the wide girthed men
Whose eyes pen cattle, and slender men who hold
The curves of a filly together with one finger
While the other strips an heiress of her gold;
Equal those, O Fiddler, men of the great gay world
Who can dance a stately figure or bow prettily to a queen
And keep fine manners though the blood be rearing
Like a red stallion on the fair green.
RAFTERY
Blackguards, rakes, who rise up from cards
Only when the sun is trumped there on the table
Like the red ace of hearts, take them, the gamblers
Who wouldn’t pay their debts were they able;
Dicers, procurers, who’ll give you an I.O.U.
On the honour or dishonour of a wife or daughter,
Take them, the lot of them, hog, devil, or dog,
And drown them in a bucket of bog water.
THE WHISKEY
Poets and musicians –
RAFTERY
and absentee landlords,
Militiamen on hayfeet-strawfeet who burn
Brightly as red lamps in a lanewife’s back parlour,
Taking, as always, the wrong turn;
I leave you to them and to the landlord’s agent
Who shivers beside you day-in day-out
Walled in by the hostile murmurs of the rainy grasslands
In an old windy house.
THE WHISKEY
For a homespun poet whose pride I nursed
When doors were shut on him and dogs barked at his heels,
The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry Page 41