Your gratitude is such I’ll swear a cutpurse was your father.
And your mother the lady who tied eels.
Desert me, indeed? You windy bag of old words,
You wan wizened weasel with one worn tooth!
If I whistled tomorrow you’d hobble to me on your sores;
And that’s the truth.
RAFTERY
Whistle then!
THE WHISKEY
I’ll whistle when
I’m in the mood.
RAFTERY
Whistle! Whistle!
THE WHISKEY
Maybe when you’ve money and can spend,
When you’re a farmer slaughtering the poor thistle,
Stoning crows or coaxing cows,
Counting your corn grain by grain,
With thirteen bonhams to every one of your sows,
And you carrying a big purse at the fair.
RAFTERY
Goodbye for ever then!
THE WHISKEY
Goodbye Raftery.
RAFTERY
I’ll never be a farmer.
THE WHISKEY
And where is the need?
Poetry and whiskey have lived always on the country.
Why wouldn’t they indeed?
RAFTERY
You’re right. Why shouldn’t I tax the heavy farmer?
I give him wit. And you? You give him – what?
THE WHISKEY
No matter. We are two necessary luxuries.
RAFTERY
Listen! I’ll drink to that.
Padraic Fallon
JEREMIAH JOSEPH CALLANAN
(1795–1829)
The Outlaw of Loch Lene
O many a day have I made good ale in the glen,
That came not of stream, or malt, like the brewing of men.
My bed was the ground, my roof the greenwood above,
And the wealth that I sought – one far kind glance from my love.
Alas! on that night when the horses I drove from the field,
That I was not near from terror my angel to shield.
She stretched forth her arms – her mantle she flung to the wind,
And swam o’er Loch Lene, her outlawed lover to find.
O would that a freezing sleet-winged tempest did sweep,
And I and my love were alone far off on the deep!
I’d ask not a ship, or a bark, or pinnace to save, –
With her hand round my waist, I’d fear not the wind or the wave.
’Tis down by the lake where the wild tree fringes its sides,
The maid of my heart, the fair one of Heaven resides –
I think as at eve she wanders its mazes along,
The birds go to sleep by the sweet wild twist of her song.
Gougane Barra
There is a green island in lone Gougane Barra,
Where Allua of songs rushes forth as an arrow;
In deep-valleyed Desmond – a thousand wild fountains
Come down to that lake, from their home in the mountains.
There grows the wild ash, and a time-stricken willow
Looks chidingly down on the mirth of the billow;
As, like some gay child, that sad monitor scorning,
It lightly laughs back to the laugh of the morning.
And its zone of dark hills – oh! to see them all bright’ning.
When the tempest flings out its red banner of lightning;
And the waters rush down, ’mid the thunder’s deep rattle,
Like clans from their hills at the voice of the battle;
And brightly the fire-crested billows are gleaming,
And wildly from Mullagh the eagles are screaming.
Oh! where is the dwelling in valley, or highland,
So meet for a bard as this lone little island!
How oft when the summer sun rested on Clara,
And lit the dark heath on the hills of Ivera,
Have I sought thee, sweet spot, from my home by the ocean,
And trod all thy wilds with a minstrel’s devotion,
And thought of thy bards, when assembling together,
In the cleft of thy rocks, or the depth of thy heather,
They fled from the Saxon’s dark bondage and slaughter,
And waked their last song by the rush of thy water.
High sons of the lyre, oh! how proud was the feeling,
To think while alone through that solitude stealing,
Though loftier Minstrels green Erin can number,
I only awoke your wild harp from its slumber,
And mingled once more with the voice of those fountains
The songs even Echo forgot on her mountains;
And gleaned each grey legend, that darkly was sleeping
Where the mist and the rain o’er their beauty were creeping.
Least bard of the hills! were it mine to inherit
The fire of thy harp, and the wing of thy spirit,
With the wrongs which like thee to our country has bound me,
Did your mantle of song fling its radiance around me,
Still, still in those wilds may young Liberty rally,
And send her strong shout over mountain and valley,
The star of the west may yet rise in its glory,
And the land that was darkest be brighest in story.
I too shall be gone; – but my name shall be spoken
When Erin awakes, and her fetters are broken;
Some minstrel will come, in the summer eve’s gleaming,
When Freedom’s young light on his spirit is beaming,
And bend o’er my grave with a tear of emotion,
Where calm Avon Buee seeks the kisses of ocean,
Or plant a wild wreath, from the banks of that river,
The heart, and the harp, that are sleeping for ever.
GEORGE DARLEY
(1795–1846)
from Nepenthe
from Canto I
Hurry me, Nymphs! O, hurry me
Far above the grovelling sea,
Which, with blind weakness and base roar
Casting his white age on the shore,
Wallows along that slimy floor;
With his widespread webbed hands
Seeking to climb the level sands,
But rejected still to rave
Alive in his uncovered grave.
Light-skirt dancers, blithe and boon
With high hosen and low shoon,
’Twixt sandal bordure and kirtle rim
Showing one pure wave of limb,
And frequent to the cestus fine
Lavish beauty’s undulous line,
Till like roses veiled in snow
Neath the gauze your blushes glow;
Nymphs, with tresses which the wind
Sleekly tosses to its mind,
More deliriously dishevelled
Than when the Naxian widow revelled
With her flush bridegroom on the ooze,
Hurry me, Sisters! where ye choose,
Up the meadowy mountains wild,
Aye by the broad sun oversmiled,
Up the rocky paths of gray
Shaded all my hawthorn way,
Past the very turban crown
Feathered with pine and aspen spray,
Darkening like a soldan’s down
O’er the mute stoopers to his sway,
Meek willows, daisies, brambles brown,
Grasses and reeds in green array,
Sighing what he in storm doth say –
Hurry me, hurry me, Nymphs, away!
Here on the mountain’s sunburnt side
Trip we round our steepy slide,
With tinsel moss, dry-woven pall,
Minist’ring many a frolic fall;
Now, sweet Nymphs, with ankle trim
Foot we around this fountain brim,
Where even the delicate lilies show
Transgressing bosoms in bright row
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(More lustrous-sweet than yours, I trow!)
Above their deep green bodices.
Shall you be charier still than these?
Garments are only good to inspire
Warmer, wantoner desire;
For those beauties make more riot
In our hearts, themselves at quiet
Under veils and vapoury lawns
Thro’ which their moon-cold lustre dawns,
And might perchance if full revealed
Seem less wondrous than concealed,
Greater defeat of Virtue made
When Love shoots from an ambuscade,
Than with naked front and fair.
Who the loose Grace in flowing hair
Hath ever sought with so much care,
As the crape-enshrouded nun
Scarce warmed by touches of the sun?
Nathless, whatsoe’er your tire,
Hurry me, sweet Nymphs, higher, higher!
Till the broad seas shrink to streams,
Or, beneath my lofty eye,
Ocean a broken mirror seems,
Whose fragments ’tween the lands do lie,
Glancing me from its hollow sky,
Till my cheated vision deems
My place in heaven twice as high!
from Canto II
Welcome! Before my bloodshot eyes,
Steed of the East, a camel stands,
Mourning his fallen lord that dies.
Now, as forth his spirit flies,
Ship of the Desert! bear me on,
O’er this wavy-bosomed lea,
That solid seemed and staid anon,
But now looks surging like a sea. –
On she bore me, as the blast
Whirling a leaf, to where in calm
A little fount poured dropping-fast
On dying Nature’s heart its balm.
Deep we sucked the spongy moss,
And cropt for dates the sheltering palm,
Then with fleetest amble cross
Like desert, fed upon like alm.
That most vital beverage still,
Tho’ near exhaust, preserved me till
Now the broad Barbaric shore
Spread its havens to my view,
And mine ear rung with ocean’s roar,
And mine eye glistened with its blue!
Till I found me once again
By the ever-murmuring main,
Listening across the distant foam
My native church bells ring me home.
Alas! why leave I not this toil
Thro’ stranger lands, for mine own soil?
Far from ambition’s worthless coil,
From all this wide world’s wearying moil, –
Why leave I not this busy broil,
For mine own clime, for mine own soil,
My calm, dear, humble, native soil!
There to lay me down at peace
In my own first nothingness?
JAMES HENRY
(1798–1876)
The Lord and Adam in the Garden of Eden
THE LORD
– For, dust thou art, and shalt to dust return.
ADAM
If dust I am, and shall to dust return,
All’s right. I shall return to what I am.
THE LORD
Thou’rt quite too literal; I love a trope.
ADAM
That’s more than I do. I must fairly own
I don’t like to have sand thrown in mine eyes.
Why make that harder still to understand,
Which, in itself, is hard? The plainest speech
Pleases me most.
THE LORD
He’ll not make a bad Quaker. [aside]
– And for thy sake the serpent too is cursed,
Shall on his belly go, and eat the dust.
ADAM
That’s a trope too, no doubt.
THE LORD
Why, half and half;
Trope, he shall eat the dust; but literal
And matter of fact, he shall go on his belly.
ADAM
Excuse me – on his back; for on his belly
He goes at present and has always gone.
THE LORD
Belly or back, ’s small difference in a serpent;
From either he’ll know how to bruise thy heel.
ADAM
But I’ll go in a carriage, ride on horseback,
Or, if I go on foot, wear leather boots.
THE LORD
Literal again! It would have saved some trouble,
To have put a few grains more of poetry
Into the dull prose of thy composition.
ADAM
It can’t be helped now; but next time you’re making
A thing, like me, with an immortal soul
– For I’m none of your dust, I’m bold to tell you,
But an ethereal spirit in a case –
’Twere well you’d make him with sufficient wit
To understand your flights of poetry,
Or, if not, that you’d talk to him in prose.
‘Another and another and another …’
Another and another and another
And still another sunset and sunrise,
The same yet different, different yet the same,
Seen by me now in my declining years
As in my early childhood, youth and manhood;
And by my parents and my parents’ parents,
And by the parents of my parents’ parents,
And by their parents counted back for ever,
Seen, all their lives long, even as now by me;
And by my children and my children’s children
And by the children of my children’s children
And by their children counted on for ever
Still to be seen as even now seen by me;
Clear and bright sometimes, sometimes dark and clouded
But still the same sunsetting and sunrise;
The same for ever to the never ending
Line of observers, to the same observer
Through all the changes of his life the same:
Sunsetting and sunrising and sunsetting,
And then again sunrising and sunsetting,
Sunrising and sunsetting evermore.
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN
(1803–49)
The Young Parson’s Dream
In the lone stillness of the new-year’s night,
A Bishop at his window stood, and turned
His dim eyes to the firmament, where bright
And pure a million rolling planets burned,
And then upon the earth all cold and white, –
And felt that moment that, of all who mourned
And groaned upon its bosom, none there were
With his hypocrisy and great despair.
For near him lay his grave; concealed from view,
Not by the flowers of youth, but by the snows
Of age alone: in torturing thought he flew
Over the past, and on his memory rose
That picture of his life which memory drew
With all its fruits, diseases, sins, and woes:
A ruined frame, a blighted soul, dark years
Of agony, remorse, and withering fears!
Like spectres now his days of youth came back,
And that cross-road of life where, when a boy,
His father placed him first; its right hand track
Leads to a land of glory, peace and joy,
Its left to wilderness, waste and black,
Where snakes and plagues and poisonous blasts destroy.
Where was he now? alas! the serpents hung
Coiled round his heart, their venom on his tongue.
Choaked with unutterable grief, he cried –
‘Restore to me my youth! oh Heaven! restore
My morn of life! oh father! be my guide,
And let me, let me choose
my path once more!’
But on the wide waste air his ravings died
Away, and all was silent as before.
His youth had glided by, swift as the wave;
His father came not; he was in his grave.
Wild lights went flickering by; a star was falling;
Down to the miry marsh he saw it rush.
‘Myself,’ he said, and oh! the thought was galling,
And hot and heart-wrung tears began to gush:
Sleepwalkers crossed his glance in shapes appalling,
Huge windmills lifted up their arms to crush,
And death-like faces started from the dim
Depths of the charnel-house and glared on him.
Amid these overboiling bursts of feeling,
Rich music, heralding the young year’s birth,
Flowed from a distant STEEPLE, like the pealing
Of some celestial organ o’er the earth.
Milder emotions over him came stealing;
He felt the spirit’s awful, priceless worth –
‘Return’ – again he cried imploringly,
‘Oh my lost youth! return, return to me!’
And youth returned, and age withdrew his terrors,
Still was he young, for he had dreamed the whole:
But faithful is the picture conscience mirrors,
Whenever parson avarice gluts the soul.
Alas! too real were his sins and errors.
Too truly had he made the earth his goal:
He wept and blessed his God that with the will
He had the power to choose the right path still.
Here, youthful curate, ponder – and if thou,
Like him, art reeling over the abyss
Of church hypocrisy and mammon, now,
This ghastly dream may be thy guide to bliss.
The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry Page 42