Much of it can be found in just about any anthology of Irish verse DONAGH MACDONAGH A Warning to Conquerors This is the country of the Norman tower The graceless keep, the bleak and slitted eye Where fear drove comfort out; straw on the floor Was price of conquering security. They came and won, and then for centuries Stood to their arms; the face grew bleak and lengthened In the night vigil, while their foes at ease Sang of the strangers and the towers they strengthened. Ragweed and thistle hold the Norman field And cows the hall where Gaelic never rang Melodiously to harp or spinning-wheel. Their songs are spent now with the voice that sang; And lost their conquest. This soft land quietly Engulfed them like the Saxon and the Dane But kept the jutted brow, the slitted eye- Only the faces and the names remain. The Hungry Grass Not: It is a common belief in Ireland that anyone who steps on a famine grave will have the strength sucked from their body by the hungry bones underneath Crossing the shallow holdings high above sea Where few birds nest, the luckless foot may pass From the bright safety of experience Into the terror of the hungry grass. Here in a year when poison from the air First withered in despair the growth of spring Some skull-faced wretch whom nettle could not save Crept on four bones to his last scattering, Crept, and the shrivelled heart which drove his thought Towards platters brought in hospitality Burst as the wizened eyes measured the miles Like dizzy walls forbidding him the city. Little the earth reclaimed from that poor body And yet remembering him the place has grown Bewitched and the thin grass he nourishes Racks with his famine, sucks marrow from the bone. Dublin Made Me DUBLIN made me and no little town With the country closing in on its streets The cattle walking proudly on its pavements The jobbers, the gombeenmen and the cheats Devouring the fair-day between them A public-house to half a hundred men And the teacher, the solicitor and the bank-clerk In the hotel bar drinking for ten. Dublin made me, not the secret poteen still The raw and hungry hills of the West The lean road flung over profitless bog Where only a snipe could nest Where the sea takes its tithe of every boat. Bawneen and currach have no allegiance of mine, Nor the cute self-deceiving talkers of the South Who look to the East for a sign. The soft and dreary midlands with their tame canals Wallow between sea and sea, remote from adventure And Northward a far and fortified province Crouches under the lash of arid censure. I disclaim all fertile meadows, all tilled land The evil that grows from it and the good, But the Dublin of old statutes, this arrogant city Stirs proudly and secretly in my blood. Going to Mass Last Steady Tune: The Lowlands of Holland) GOING to Mass last Sunday my true love passed me by, I knew her mind was altered by the rolling of her eye; And when I stood in God's dark light my tongue could word no prayer Knowing my saint had fled and left her reliquary bare. Sweet faces smiled from holy glass, demure in saintly love, Sweet voices ripe with Latin grace rolled from the choir above; But brown eyes under Sunday wear were all my liturgy; How can she hope for heaven who has so deluded me ? When daffodils were altar gold her lips were light on mine And when the hawthorn blame was bright we drank the year's new wine; The nights seemed stained-glass windows lit with love that paled the sky, But love's last ember perishes in the winter of her eye. Drape every downcast day now in purple cloth of Lent, Smudge every forehead now with ash, that she may yet repent, Who going to Mass last Sunday could pass so proudly by And show her mind was altered by the rolling of an eye. On the Bridge of Athlone: A Prophecy I SEE them a mother and daughter At dusk in a grass-grown lane An old road from nowhere to nowhere Where time has been slain A mother and daughter ragged And brown as a bird on a tree Hair tangled and coarse as the bushes Eye clear as the sea And the land is a sea all about them A green sea of grasses and trees A pole like the mast of a wrecked ship Trails its wires in the breeze And the only things living are insects And rabbits grown strong again And the women haggard as madmen From hunger and rain And the daughter comes running and crying I saw on the Bridge of Athlone A man O mother a man there And he's passed and is gone again. And men are so few now in Ireland That mother and daughter cry As one might mourn the last angel A kingfisher gone by And they weep for the land that is desolate Green and empty that once was hard won Lot's daughters with no Lot and no wine-cup To get them a son. Love in an Herb Garden Under September's temperate Westering sun The garden slumbers and is overrun Where the sun was bright as goldenrod We found that love's the only garden God. I was the scarlet runner who ran down Your columbine, no sage was I but clown, A common fennel, wild in a wild thyme, Who comfrey found to salsify his prime. You were my lovage - sweet as coriander You were my applemint and my pomander; Your maidenhair unshorn, your aspect calm And to my catmint stare your eyes were balm. Alas, a black horehound was on our track Wormwood and baneberry launched their attack My love lay bleeding then and turned to rue And where the basil shone, the mugwort grew. The celandine deflowered and shrivelled up Elder and bitter bane were in my cup Angelica whose colours had been fine Turned nicotine - as did my columbine. And yet when Spring with customary rain Wakens the herbs, I know we will love again And in the middle of the brick lined town The God of gardens turn us upside down. THE LOVE SICK GIRL Now sorrow has my heart Captured in every part. Now let my lips forget Love's alphabet. Memory forget his face Arms his embrace. Beat heart more coldly, Stir blood more slowly, Eyes learn to weep And to keep Secret and stern. Now all my senses learn New touch, new sight, new sound upon the ear, New taste-and a new scent, the scent of fear. All clocks will run slow Or else cease to go, The night be haunted by Memory. From dawn, when chanticleer Rouses the torpid ear Until the night will be A century. Farewell to happiness, Gentleness, The smile reflected by A smiling eye. Now winter has my heart, and bitterness Freezes the foolish bloom of faithfulness. Now I must walk In nunnery and talk Purely And demurely, Learn saints' names, Light candle-flames; And I must repent Merriment, Banish laughter Hanker after Martyrdom, Kingdom Come, Forget the coloured world and its brave sights, Live but for heaven and its pale delights.