#1910 #IrishWriters #TheGreenHelmetAndOtherPoems
Sung by the people of Faery ov… We who are old, old and gay, O so old! Thousands of years, thousands of y… If all were told:
Fergus. This whole day have I fol… And you have changed and flowed fr… First as a raven on whose ancient… Scarcely a feather lingered, then… A weasel moving on from stone to s…
“Put off that mask of burning gold With emerald eyes.” “O no, my dear, you make so bold To find if hearts be wild and wise… And yet not cold.”
O but there is wisdom In what the sages said; But stretch that body for a while And lay down that head Till I have told the sages
Laughter not time destroyed my voi… And put that crack in it, And when the moon’s pot-bellied I get a laughing fit, For that old Madge comes down the…
Once, when midnight smote the air, Eunuchs ran through Hell and met On every crowded street to stare Upon great Juan riding by: Even like these to rail and sweat
HERE at right of the entrance th… Human, superhuman, a bird’s round… Everything else withered and mummy… What great tomb-haunter sweeps the… (Something may linger there though…
THIS great purple butterfly, In the prison of my hands, Has a learning in his eye Not a poor fool understands. Once he lived a schoolmaster
ONCE, when midnight smote the ai… Eunuchs ran through Hell and met On every crowded street to stare Upon great Juan riding by: Even like these to rail and sweat
THERE all the golden codgers lay… There the silver dew, And the great water sighed for lov… And the wind sighed too. Man-picker Niamh leant and sighed
I HAVE heard the pigeons of the… Make their faint thunder, and the… Hum in the lime-tree flowers; and… The unavailing outcries and the ol… That empty the heart. I have forg…
THE old brown thorn-trees break i… Under a bitter black wind that blo… Our courage breaks like an old tre… But we have hidden in our hearts t… Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houl…
The dews drop slowly and dreams ga… Suddenly hurtle before my dream-aw… And then the clash of fallen horse… Of unknown perishing armies beat a… We who still labour by the cromlec…
STRETCH towards the moonless mi… As though that hand could reach to… And they but famous old upholsteri… Delightful to the touch; tighten t… As though to draw them closer yet.
KNOW, that I would accounted be True brother of a company That sang, to sweeten Ireland’s w… Ballad and story, rann and song; Nor be I any less of them,