Poems by Padraic Colum

All Poems Original Poems Translations

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Branding The Foals

WHY do I look for fire to brand these foals?

What do I need, when all within is fire?

And lo, she comes, carrying the lighted coals

And branding tool—she who is my desire!

What need have I for what is in her hands,

If I lay hand upon a hide it brands,

And grass, and trees, and shadows, all are fire!

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Padraic Colum

Crows

THEN, suddenly, I was aware indeed

Of what he said, and was revolving it:

How, in the night, crows often take to wing,

Rising from off the tree-tops in Drumbarr,

And flying on: I pictured what he told.

The crows that shake the night-damp off their wings

Upon the stones out yonder in the fields,

The first live things that we see in the mornings;

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Padraic Colum

An Drinaun Donn

A HUNDRED men think I am theirs when with them I

drink ale,

But their presence fades away from me and their high spirits fail

When I think upon your converse kind by the meadow

and the linn,

And your form smoother than the silk on the Mountain of O'Flynn.

Oh, Paddy, is it pain to you that I'm wasting night and day,

And, Paddy, is it grief to you that I'll soon be in the clay?

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Bird Of Paradise

WITH sapphire for her crown,

And with the Libyan wine

For lustre of her eyes;

With azure on her feet

As though she trod the skies;

Then iris for her vest,

Rose, ebony, and flame

(The bird that Camoens

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Padraic Colum

A Connachtman

IT'S my fear that my wake won't be quiet,

Nor my wake house a silent place :

For who would keep back the hundreds

Who would touch my breast and my face?

For the good men were always my friends,

From Galway back into Clare;

In strength, in sport, and in spending,

I was foremost at the fair;

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Padraic Colum

A Seer

"BELOW there are white-faced throngs,

Their march is a tide coming Higher;

Below there are white-faced throngs,

Their faith is a banner flung higher;

Below there are white-faced throngs,

White swords they have yet, but red songs;

Place and lot they have lost hear you not?

For a dream you once dreamed and forgot!"

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Padraic Colum

Arab Songs

I. THE PARROT AND THE FALCON

MY Afghan poet-friend

With this made his message end,

"The scroll around my wall shows two the poets have known

The parrot and falcon they

The parrot hangs on his spray,

And silent the falcon sits with brooding and baleful eyes.

Men come to me : one says

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Padraic Colum

Ave Atque Vale

THOROUGH waters, thorough nations I have come

To lay last offerings at your low abode,

Brother, and to appeal

To ashes that were you.

Since that which none can check has borne you

From my regard, poor brother, these gifts take

The tokens that are due

To ancient pieties;

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Padraic Colum

A Saint

THE stir of children with fresh dresses on,

And men who meet and say unguarded words,

And women from the coops

Of drudgeries released;

And standing at their doors to watch go by

Small pomps with pennons and with first spring-flowers,

And, lifted over them,

Your name that sanctifies.

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Padraic Colum

Before The Fair

"Lost," "lost," the beeves and the bullocks,

The cattle men sell and buy,

Crowded upon the fair green,

Low to the lightless sky.

"Live," "live," and "Here," "here," the blackbird

From the top of the bare ash-tree,

Over the acres whistles

With beak of yellow blee.

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Padraic Colum

Achill Girl's Song

FROM THE IRISH

I’d bring you these for dowry

A field from heather free,

White sheep upon the mountain,

And calves that follow me.

I saw you by the well-side

Upon Saint Finnian's Day;

I thought you'd come and ask for me

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Padraic Colum

A Rann Of Exile

NOR right, nor left, nor any road I see a comrade face,

Nor word to lift the heart in me I hear in any place;

They leave me, who pass by me, to my loneliness and

care,

Without a house to draw my step nor a fire that I might share!

Ochone, before our people knew the scatt'ring of the

dearth,

Before they saw potatoes rot and melt black in the earth,

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