#1910 #IrishWriters #TheGreenHelmetAndOtherPoems
(Song from an Unfinished Play) My mother dandled me and sang, ‘How young it is, how young!’ And made a golden cradle That on a willow swung.
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,
A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness
I HAVE no happiness in dreaming… Nor Avalon the grass-green hollow… Where one found Lancelot crazed a… Nor Uladh, when Naoise had thrown… Nor lands that seem too dim to be…
Shepherd. That cry’s from the fir… I wished before it ceased. Goatherd. Nor bird nor beast Could make me wish for anything th… Being old, but that the old alone…
I whispered, “I am too young,” And then, “I am old enough”; Wherefore I threw a penny To find out if I might love. “Go and love, go and love, young m…
Scene: A circle of Druidic sto… First Fairy: Afar from our lawn a… O sister of sorrowful gaze! Where the roses in scarlet are hea… And dream of the end of their days…
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…
GOD guard me from those thoughts… In the mind alone; He that sings a lasting song Thinks in a marrow-bone; From all that makes a wise old man
IF you have revisited the town, t… Whether to look upon your monument (I wonder if the builder has been… Or happier-thoughted when the day… To drink of that salt breath out o…
WHAT’S riches to him That has made a great peacock With the pride of his eye? The wind-beaten, stone-grey, And desolate Three Rock
OTHERS because you did not keep That deep-sworn vow have been frie… Yet always when I look death in t… When I clamber to the heights of… Or when I grow excited with wine,
Come play with me; Why should you run Through the shaking tree As though I’d a gun To strike you dead?
That is no country for old men. T… In one another’s arms, birds in th… —Those dying generations—at their… The salmon—falls, the mackerel—cro… Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all…