Works

'What ails you that you look so pale,
O fisher of the sea?'
''Tis for a mournful tale I own,
Fair maiden Marjorie.'

'What is the dreary tale to tell,
O toiler of the sea?'...

At the grey dawn, amongst the felling leaves,
A little bird outside my window swung,
High on a topmost branch he trilled his song,
And 'Ireland! Ireland! Ireland!' ever sung.
...

Who has room for a friend
Who has money to spend,
And a goblet of gold
For your fingers to hold,
At the wave of whose hand
Leap the salmon to land,
Drop the birds of the air,...

A little dog disturbed my trust in Heaven.
I praised most faithfully
All the great things that be,
Man's pain and pleasure even,
I said though hard this weighing
Of pains and tears and praying...

I cried all night to you,
I called till day was here;
Perhaps you could not come,
Or were too tir'd, dear.

Your chair I set by mine,
I made the dim hearth glow,
I whispered, 'When he comes...

Here's a meadow full of sunshine
Ripe grasses lush and high;
There's a reaper on the roadway,
And a lark hangs in the sky.

There's a nest of love enclosing
Three little beaks that cry;...

I saw an Eastern God to-day;
My comrades laughed; lest I betray
My secret thoughts, I mocked him too.
His many hands (he had no few,
This God of gifts and charity),
The marble race, that smiled on me,...

Let there be an end
And all be done;
Pass over, fair eclipse,
That hides the sun.

Dear face that shades the light
And shadows me,
Begone, and give me peace,
And set me free.

Behold! a new white world!
The falling snow
Has cloaked the last old year
And bid him go.

To-morrow! cries the oak-tree
To his heart,
My seal'd buds shall fling
Their leaves apart.
...

They crowded weeping from the teacher's house,
Crying aloud their fear at what he taught,
Old men and young men, wives and maids unwed,
And children screaming in the crowds unsought:...

This is my brave singer,
With his beak of gold;
Now my heart's a captive
In his song's sweet hold.

O, the lark's a rover,
Seeking fields above:
But my serenader
Hath a human love.
...

For that old love I once adored
I decked my halls and spread my board
At Christmas time.
With all the winter's flowers that grow
I wreathed my room, and mistletoe
Hung in the gloom of my doorway,...

O to be a woman! to be left to pique and pine,
When the winds are out and calling to this vagrant heart of mine.
Whisht! it whistles at the windows, and how can I be still?...

Why love! I thought you were gay and fair,
Merry of mien and debonair.
What then means this brow so black,
Whose sullen gloom twin eyes give back,
Poor little god in tears, alack!
...

Banagher Rhue of Donegal,
(Holy Mary, how slow the dawn!)
This is the hour of your loss or gain:
Is go d-tigheadh do, mh'irn'n slan! {21}

Banagher Rhue, but the hour was ill...

I closed my hands upon a moth
And when I drew my palms apart,
Instead of dusty, broken wings
I found a bleeding human heart.

I crushed my foot upon a worm
That had my garden for its goal,...

Cean duv deelish, beside the sea
I stand and stretch my hands to thee
Across the world.
The riderless horses race to shore
With thundering hoofs and shuddering, hoar,
Blown manes uncurled.
...

I come from a burial;
Hush! let me be:
I have put away my love,
Fair exceedingly.

Ah! the little gold curls
Soft about his face;
Now my heart is sorrowful
For his sleeping-place.
...

Gormlaith, wife of Niall Glendu,
Happy was your dream that night,
Dreamt you woke in sudden fright,
Niall of Ulster stood by you.

Niall of Ulster, dead and gone,
Many a year had come again,...

I left my home for travelling;
Because I heard the strange birds sing
In foreign skies, and felt their wing

Brush past my soul impatiently;
I saw the bloom on flower and tree...