"O words are lightly spoken," Said Pearse to Connolly, "Maybe a breath of politic words Has withered our Rose Tree; Or maybe but a wind that blows Across the bitter sea."...
Hunchback. Stand up and lift your hand and bless A man that finds great bitterness In thinking of his lost renown. A Roman Caesar is held down Under this hump.
Bald heads forgetful of their sins, Old, learned, respectable bald heads Edit and annotate the lines That young men, tossing on their beds, Rhymed out in love's despair To flatter beauty's ignorant ear....
These are the clouds about the fallen sun, The majesty that shuts his burning eye; The weak lay hand on what the strong has done, Till that be tumbled that was lifted high And discord follow upon unison,...
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere...
Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose, Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre, Or in the wine vat, dwell beyond the stir And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep...
i(The First.) My great-grandfather spoke to Edmund Burke In Grattan's house. i(The Second.) My great-grandfather shared A pot-house bench with Oliver Goldsmith once....
The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed; Grey Truth is now her painted toy; Yet still she turns her restless head:...
I Rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;...
I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing,...
The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves The brilliant moon and all the milky sky, And all that famous harmony of leaves, Had blotted out man's image and his cry.
Poetry, music, I have loved, and yet Because of those new dead That come into my soul and escape Confusion of the bed, Or those begotten or unbegotten Perning in a band, ...
You think it horrible that lust and rage Should dance attention upon my old age; They were not such a plague when I was young; What else have I to spur me into song?
I Lived among great houses, Riches drove out rank, Base drove out the better blood, And mind and body shrank. No Oscar ruled the table, But I'd a troop of friends That knowing better talk had gone...
Pythagoras planned it. Why did the people stare? His numbers, though they moved or seemed to move In marble or in bronze, lacked character. But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love...
Where dips the rocky highland Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island Where flapping herons wake The drowsy water-rats; There we've hid our faery vats, Full of berries...
'Though to my feathers in the wet, I have stood here from break of day, I have not found a thing to eat For only rubbish comes my way. Am I to live on lebeen-lone?' Muttered the old crane of Gort....
Said lady once to lover, "None can rely upon A love that lacks its proper food; And if your love were gone How could you sing those songs of love? I should be blamed, young man....