Poets and Dreamers Part 7

Here is another, in which the storm outside and the storm within answer to one another:--

'The heavy clouds are threatening, And it's little but they'll take the roof off the house; The heavy thunder is answering To every flash of the yellow fire.

I, by myself, within in my room, That is narrow, small, warm, am sitting, I look at the surly skies, And I listen to the wind.

'I was light, airy, lively, On the young morning of yesterday; But when the evening came, I was like a dead man!

I have not one jot of hope But for a bed in the clay; Death is the same as life to me From this out, from a word I heard yesterday.'

The next is very simple, and puts into more homely words the feeling of 'lonesomeness' that is looked upon as almost the worst of evils by the Irish countryman, as we see by his proverb: 'It is better to be quarreling than to be lonesome.' 'I would be lonesome in it,' is often the reason given for a refusal to go from bog or mountain cabin to some crowded place 'where there is not heed for one or love.'

'Oh! if there were in this world Any nice little place, To be my own, my own for ever, My own only, I would have great joy--great ease-- Beyond what I have, Without a place in the world where I can say: "This is my own."

It's a pity for a man to know, And it's a pain, That there is no place in the world Where there is heed for him or love; That there is not in the world for him A heart or a hand To give help to him To the mering of the next world.

'It is hard and it is bitter, And a sharp grief, It is woe and it is pity, To be by oneself.

It is nothing the way you are, To anyone at all.

It is nothing the way you are, To yourself at last!'

I suppose the following may be called a political poem, from its elusive reference to Home Rule. I was not sure on the point myself; for I thought the wearer of the 'blue cloak and birds' feathers,' must be a fine lady, perhaps laying enchantment on the fields. But I heard some one ask the _Craoibhin_ who he meant, and his answer was: 'I suppose I was thinking of an aide-de-camp':--

'I am looking at my cows walking, What are you that would put me out of my luck?

Can I not walk, can I not walk, can I not walk in my own fields?

'I will not always be turned backwards.

If there is need to be humble to you, great is my grief, If I cannot walk, if I cannot walk, if I cannot walk in my own fields.

'It's little my respect, and it's little my desire, For your blue cloak, and your birds' feathers.

Can I not walk, can I not walk, can I not walk in my own fields?

'The day is coming as it's easy to see, When there shall not be among us the ugly like of you.

And each one shall be walking, and each one shall be walking, Wherever shall be his will and his own desire.'

There are some love songs in the little volume. But their writer has had, in his beautiful translations of the 'Love Songs of Connacht,' to put such intensity of pa.s.sion into English, that he must despair of putting any new wings to pa.s.sion, or any new exaggeration into lovers'

words. In one of these Connacht songs, the lover says: 'Blacker is the sun when setting than your features, Mary!' And she answers back: 'Neither star nor sun shows one-third much light as your shadow!'

Another lover says of the woman he desires: 'I will write largely of her, because of the thousands who hoped for her, and who have been lost; and a hundred men of these who still live, are in pain and under locks through love. And I myself am not free, but am a bondsman in bonds.' And another boasts of 'a love without littleness, without weakness; love from age till death, love from folly growing, love that shall send me close beneath the clay, love without a hope of the world, love without envy of fortune, love that left me outside in captivity, love of my heart beyond women.' Douglas Hyde's own love songs are quiet and staid in contrast to these; but nevertheless they have a sober charm. Here are the last verses of one of them:--

'Will you be as hard, Colleen, as you are quiet?

Will you be without pity On me for ever?

'Listen to me, Noireen, Listen, aroon; Put healing on me From your quiet mouth.

'I am in the little road That is dark and narrow, The little road that has led Thousands to sleep.'

In his preface to the 'Love Songs of Connacht' he says he finds in them 'more of grief and trouble, more of melancholy and contrition of heart, than of gaiety or hope'; and he writes: 'Not careless and light-hearted alone is the Gaelic nature; there is also beneath the loudest mirth a melancholy spirit; and if they let on to be without heed for anything but sport and revelry, there is nothing in it but letting on.' There is grief and trouble, as I have shown, in many of his own songs, which the people have taken to their hearts so quickly; but there is also a touch of hope, of glad belief that, in spite of heavy days of change, all things are working for good at the last.

Here are some verses from a poem called 'There is a Change coming':--

'When that time comes it will come heavily; He will grow fat that was lean; He will grow lean that was fat, Without shelter for the head, without mirth, without help.

'The low will be raised up, says the poet; The thing that was high will be thrown down again; The world will be changed from end to end: When that time comes it will come heavily.

'If you yourself see this thing coming, And the country without luck, without law, without authority, Swept with the storm, without knowledge, without strength, Remember my words, and don't let your heart break.

'This life is like a tree; The top green, branches soft, the bark smooth and s.h.i.+ning; But there is a little worm shut up in it Sucking at the sap all through the day.

'But from this old, cold, withered tree, A new plant will grow up; The old world will die without pity, But the young world will grow up on its grave.'

Here is a fine vision of a battle-field:--

'The time I think of the cause of Ireland My heart is torn within me.

'The time I think of the death of the people Who protected Ireland bravely and faithfully.

'They are stretched on the side of the mountain Very low, one with another.

'Hidden under gra.s.s, or under tall herbs, Far from friends or help or friends.h.i.+p.

'Not a child or a wife near them; Not a priest to be found there or a friar;

'But the mountain eagle and the white eagle Moving overhead across the skies.

'Without a defence against the sun in the daytime; Without a shelter against the skies at night.

'It's many a good soldier, joyful and pleasant, That has had his laughing mouth closed there.

'There is many a young breast with a hole through it; The little black hole that is death to a man.

'There is many a brave man stripped there, His body naked, without vest or s.h.i.+rt.

'The young man that was proud and beautiful yesterday, When the woman he loved left a kiss on his mouth.

'There is many a married woman, with the child at her breast, Without her comrade, without a father for her child to-night.

'There's many a castle without a lord, and many a lord without a house; And little forsaken cabins with no one in them.

'I saw a fox leaving its den Asking for a body to feed its hunger.

'There's a fierce wolf at Carrig O'Neill; There is blood on his tongue and blood on his mouth.

'I saw them, and I heard the cries Of kites and of black crows.

'Ochone! Is not the only Son of G.o.d angry; Ochone! The red blood that was poured out yesterday!'

I do not know who the following poem was written about, or if it is about anyone in particular; but one line of it puts into words the emotion of many an Irish 'felon.' 'It is with the people I was; it is not with the law I was.' For the Irish crime, treason-felony, is only looked on as a crime in the eyes of the law, not in the eyes of the people:--

'I am lying in prison, I am in bonds; To-morrow I will be hanged, Who am to-night so quiet, So quiet; Who am to-night so quiet.

'I am in prison, My heart is cold and heavy; To-morrow I will be hanged, And there is no help for me, My grief; Och! there is no help for me.

'I am in prison, And I did no wrong; I only did the work Was just, was right, was good, I did, Oh, I did the thing was good.