And it flows and it flows with a motion,_Lyra Celtica: An Anthology of Representative Celtic Poetry

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.

[Sidenote: ARTHUR O’SHAUGHNESSY]

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.

[Sidenote: 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.)

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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]

O, fair she is! O, rare she is! O, dearer still to me!

More welcome than the green leaf to winter-stricken tree,

More welcome than the blossom to the weary, dusty bee,

Is the coming of my true love--my own =Cáilin Donn=!

O Sycamore! O Sycamore! wave, wave your banners green--

Let all your pennons flutter, O Beech! before my queen!

Ye fleet and honied breezes, to kiss her hand ye run;

But my heart has passed before ye to my own =Cáilin Donn=!

O, fair she is! O, rare she is! O, dearer still to me!

Ring out, ring out, O Linden! your merry leafy bells!

Unveil your brilliant torches, O Chestnut! to the dells;

Strew, strew the glade with splendour, for morn it cometh on!

Oh, the morn of all delight to me--my own =Cáilin Donn=!

O, fair she is! O, rare she is! O, dearer still to me!

[Sidenote: GEORGE SIGERSON]

She is coming, where we parted, where she wanders every day;

There’s a gay surprise before her who thinks me far away;

O, like hearing bugles triumph when the fight of Freedom’s won,

Is the joy around your footsteps, my own =Cáilin Donn=!

O, fair she is! O, rare she is! O, dearer still to me!

More welcome than the green leaf to winter-stricken tree,

More welcome than the blossom to the weary, dusty bee,

Is your coming, O my true love--my own =Cáilin Donn=!

An Irish Love Song.

[Sidenote: JOHN TODHUNTER]

O, you plant the pain in my heart with your wistful eyes,

Girl of my choice, Maureen!

Will you drive me mad for the kisses your shy sweet mouth denies,

Maureen!

Like a walking ghost I am, and no words to woo,

White rose of the West, Maureen;

For it’s pale you are, and the fear that’s on you is over me too,

Maureen!

Sure it’s our complaint that’s on us, =asthore=, this day,

Bride of my dreams, Maureen;

The smart of the bee that stung us, his honey must cure, they say,

Maureen!

I’ll coax the light to your eyes, and the rose to your face,

=Mavourneen=, my own Maureen,

When I feel the warmth of your breast, and your nest is my arms’ embrace,

Maureen!

O where was the King o’ the World that day--only me,

My one true love, Maureen,

And you the Queen with me there, and your throne in my heart, =machree=,

Maureen!

The Sunburst.

[Sidenote: JOHN TODHUNTER]

Through the midnight of despair, I heard one making moan

For her dead, her victors fall’n to gain all battles but her own;

I heard the voice of Ireland, wailing for her dead

With wailing unavailing, and sobbing as she said:

“In vain in many a battle have my heroes fought and bled,

Like water, in vain slaughter, my sons’ best blood been shed,

For my house is desolate, discrowned my head!

“In vain my daughters bear their babes--babes with the mournful eyes

Of children without father that hear strange lullabies,

Rocked in their lonely cradles by mothers crooning low,

And weeping o’er their sleeping, sad songs of long ago;

Whose eyes, as they remember, while the wailing night-winds blow,

Their nation’s desolation, in their singing overflow

With the overflowing of an ancient woe!”

O Mother, mournful Mother, turn from wailing for thy dead,

Grey Sibyl, still unvanquished, lift up thy dauntless head,

O thou Swan among the nations, enchanted long, so long

That the story of thy glory is a half-forgotten song,

Lift thy voice and bless the living, thy sons who round thee throng!

In the hour of their power they shall right thine ancient wrong;

In thyself is thy salvation, let thy heart be strong!

The Leaf of many Sorrows, wet with thy tears for dew,

Emblem of thy long patience; that hearts, as brave and true

As those united hearts of green, through infamy and scorn,

Through the nation’s tribulations, like Saints the cross, have worn,

We’ll blazon with the Sunburst, star of thy destined morn,

Set in hope’s hue, our ancient blue on royal banners borne;

And green the Shamrock long shall shine, no more forlorn!

Song.

[Sidenote: JOHN TODHUNTER]

Bring from the craggy haunts of birch and pine.

Thou wild wind, bring

Keen forest odours from that realm of thine,

Upon thy wing!

O wind, O mighty, melancholy wind,

Blow through me, blow!

Thou blowest forgotten things into my mind,

From long ago.

Winter Sunset.

[Sidenote: KATHERINE TYNAN]

Roses in the sky,

Roses in the sea;

Bowers of scarlet sky-roses;

Take my heart and me.

God was good to make,

This December weather,

All this sky a rose-garden,

Rose and fire together.

To the East are burning

Roses in a garden,

Roses in a rosy field,

Hesper for their warden.

Yonder to the West

Roses all afire,

Mirror now some rare splendid

Rose of their desire.

Pulsing deeper, deeper,

Waves of fire throb on,

Never were such red roses

At sunset or dawn.

Roses on the hills,

Roses in the hollow,

Roses on the wet hedges,

In the shining fallow.

West wind, blow and blow!

That has blown ajar

Gates of God’s great rose-garden,

Where His Angels are,

Gathering up the rose-leaves

For a shower of roses

On the night the Lord Babe

His sweet eye uncloses.

[Sidenote: KATHERINE TYNAN]

All the sky is scarlet

Flaming on the azure.

O, there’s fire in Heaven!

My heart aches with pleasure.

Leagues of rose and scarlet,

Roses red as blood:

All the world’s a rose-garden.

God is good, is good.

Shamrock Song.

O, the red rose may be fair,

And the lily statelier;

But my shamrock, one in three,

Takes the very heart of me!

Many a lover hath the rose

When June’s musk-wind breathes and blows:

And in many a bower is heard

Her sweet praise from bee and bird.

Through the gold hours dreameth she,

In her warm heart passionately,

Her fair face hung languid-wise:

O, her breath of honey and spice!

Like a fair saint virginal

Stands your lily, silver and tall;

Over all the flowers that be

Is my shamrock dear to me.

Shines the lily like the sun,

Crystal-pure, a cold, sweet nun;

With her austere lip she sings

To her heart of heavenly things.

Gazeth through a night of June

To her sister-saint, the moon;

With the stars communeth long

Of the angels and their song.

But when summer died last year

Rose and lily died with her;

Shamrock stayeth every day,

Be the winds or gold or grey.

Irish hills, as grey as the dove,

Know the little plant I love;

Warm and fair it mantles them

Stretching down from throat to hem.

[Sidenote: KATHERINE TYNAN]

And it laughs o’er many a vale,

Sheltered safe from storm and gale;

Sky and sun and stars thereof

Love the gentle plant I love.

Soft it clothes the ruined floor

Of many an abbey, grey and hoar,

And the still home of the dead

With its green is carpeted.

Roses for an hour of love,

With the joy and pain thereof:

Stand my lilies white to see

All for prayer and purity.

These are white as the harvest moon,

Roses flush like the heart of June;

But my shamrock, brave and gay,

Glads the tired eyes every day.

O, the red rose shineth rare,

And the lily saintly fair;

But my shamrock, one in three,

Takes the inmost heart of me!

Wild Geese.

(A Lament for the Irish Jacobites.)

[Sidenote: KATHERINE TYNAN]

I have heard the curlew crying

On a lonely moor and mere;

And the sea-gull’s shriek in the gloaming

Is a lonely sound in the ear:

And I’ve heard the brown thrush mourning

For her children stolen away;--

But it’s O for the homeless Wild Geese

That sailed ere the dawn of day!

For the curlew out on the moorland

Hath five fine eggs in the nest;

And the thrush will get her a new love

And sing her song with the best.

As the swallow flies to the Summer

Will the gull return to the sea:

But never the wings of the Wild Geese

Will flash over seas to me.

And ’tis ill to be roaming, roaming

With homesick heart in the breast!

And how long I’ve looked for your coming,

And my heart is the empty nest!

O sore in the land of the stranger

They’ll pine for the land far away!

But day of Aughrim, my sorrow,

It was you was the bitter day!

Dreams.

[Sidenote: CHARLES WEEKES]

I troubled in my dream. I knew

The silent gates and walls.

Around me out of shadow grew

The steady waterfalls.

Afar the raven spot-like flew

Where nothing wakes or calls.

I fell on deeper trance. I was

Where all the dead are hid.

They dreamed. They did not sleep, because

They saw with lifted lid.

They worked with neither word nor pause:

I knew not what they did.

I stood there with the dead in hell

Dreaming, and heard no moan.

The light died, and the darkness fell

About me like a stone.

I woke upon the midnight bell

In God’s dream here alone.

Poppies.

[Sidenote: CHARLES WEEKES]

The sudden night is here at once:

The lost lamb cries and runs and stands,

For all the poppy cups are hands

To seize and take him when he runs.

The dusky cups are blood colour;

And like a cup of blood this one

To drink, and be with Babylon,

And love and kiss the lips of her.--

=Thy sins as snow!=--just then it burned

The dark--a flaming face and bust;

And just beneath here in the dust

The Scarlet Woman laughed and turned.

They went forth to the Battle, but they always fell.

[Sidenote: W. B. YEATS]

Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World,

The tall thought-woven sails that flap unfurled

Above the tide of hours, rise on the air,

And God’s bell buoyed to be the waters’ care,

And pressing on, or lingering slow with fear,

The throngs with blown wet hair are gathering near

“Turn if ye may,” I call out to each one,

“From the grey ships and battles never won.

Danger no refuge holds, and war no peace,

For him who hears Love sing and never cease

Beside her clean swept hearth, her quiet shade;

But gather all for whom no Love hath made

A woven silence, or but came to cast

A song into the air, and singing past

To smile upon her stars; and gather you,

Who have sought more than is in rain or dew,

Or in the sun and moon, or on the earth,

Or sighs amid the wandering, starry mirth,

Or comes in laughter from the sea’s sad lips,

And wage God’s battles in the long grey ships.

The sad, the lonely, the insatiable,

To these Old Night shall all her mystery tell,

God’s bell has claimed them by the little cry

Of their sad hearts that may not live nor die.”

Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World,

You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled

Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring

The bell that calls us on--the sweet far thing.

Beauty grown sad with its eternity,

Made you of us and of the dim grey sea.

Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait,

For God has bid them share an equal fate;

And when at last defeated in His wars,

They have gone down under the same white stars,

We shall no longer hear the little cry

Of our sad hearts that may not live nor die.

The White Birds.

[Sidenote: W. B. YEATS]

I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea,

We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can pass by and flee;

And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the

rim of the sky,

Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that never may die.

A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew dabbled, the lily and rose,

Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,

Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall

of the dew:

For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering

foam--I and you.

I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,

Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more,

Soon far from the rose and the lily, and the fret of the

flames would we be,

Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea.

The Lake of Innisfree.

[Sidenote: W. B. YEATS]

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway or on the pavements gray,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

SCOTO-CELTIC

(Middle Period)

From the “Sean Dana.”

Prologue to Gaul.

[Sidenote: LATER GAELIC]

How mournful is the silence of Night

When she pours her dark clouds over the valleys!

Sleep has overcome the youth of the chase:

He slumbers on the heath, and his dog at his knee.

The children of the mountain he pursues

In his dream, while sleep forsakes him.

Slumber, ye children of fatigue;

Star after star is now ascending the height.

Slumber! thou swift dog and nimble,--

Ossian will arouse thee not from thy repose.

Lonely I keep watch,--

And dear to me is the gloom of night

When I travel from glen to glen,

With no hope to behold a morning or brightness.

Spare thy light, O Sun!

Waste not thy lamps so fast.

Generous is thy soul, as the King of Morven’s:

But thy renown shall yet fade;--

Spare thy lamps of a thousand flames

In thy blue hall, when thou retirest

Under thy dark-blue gates to sleep,

Beneath the dark embraces of the storm.

Spare them, ere thou art forsaken for ever,

As I am, without one whom I may love!

Spare them,--for there is not a hero now

To behold the blue flame of the beautiful lamps!

Ah, Cona of the precious lights,

Thy lamps burn dimly now:

Thou art like a blasted oak:

Thy dwellings and thy people are gone

East or west, on the face of thy mountain,

There shall no more be found of them but the trace!

In Selma, Tara, or Temora

There is not a song, a shell, or a harp;

They have all become green mounds;

Their stones have fallen into their own meadows;

The stranger from the deep or the desert

Will never behold them rise above the clouds.

And, O Selma! home of my delight,

Is this heap my ruin,

Where grows the thistle, the heather, and the wild grass?

In Hebrid Seas.

[Sidenote: LATER GAELIC]

We turned her prow into the sea,

Her stern into the shore,

And first we raised the tall tough masts,

And then the canvas hoar;

Fast filled our towering cloud-like sails,

For the wind came from the land,

And such a wind as we might choose

Were the winds at our command:

A breeze that rushing down the hill

Would strip the blooming heather,

Or, rustling through the green-clad grove,

Would whirl its leaves together.

But when it seized the aged saugh,

With the light locks of grey,

It tore away its ancient root,

And there the old trunk lay!

It raised the thatch too from the roof,

And scattered it along;

Then tossed and whirled it through the air,

Singing a pleasant song.

It heaped the ruins on the land:

Though sire and son stood by

They could no help afford, but gaze

With wan and troubled eye!

A flap, a flash, the green roll dashed,

And laughed against the red;

Upon our boards, now here, now there,

It knocked its foamy head.

The dun bowed whelk in the abyss,

As on the galley bore,

Gave a tap upon her gunwale

And a slap upon her floor.

She could have split a slender straw--

So clean and well she went--

As still obedient to the helm

Her stately course she bent.

We watched the big beast eat the small--

The small beast nimbly fly,

And listened to the plunging eels--

The sea-gull’s clang on high.

We had no other music

To cheer us on our way:

Till round those sheltering hills we passed

And anchored in this bay.

Cumha Ghriogair Mhic Griogair.

(The Lament of Gregor MacGregor.)

[Sidenote: LATER GAELIC]

Early on a Lammas morning,

With my husband was I gay;

But my heart got sorely wounded

Ere the middle of the day.

Ochan, ochan, ochan uiri

Though I cry, my child, with thee--

Ochan, ochan, ochan uiri,

Now he hears not thee nor me!

Malison on judge and kindred,

They have wrought me mickle woe;

With deceit they came about us,--

Through deceit they laid him low.