Poems by Padraic Colum

All Poems Original Poems Translations

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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;

by Padraic Colum

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!

by Padraic Colum

At Cashel

ABOVE me stand, worn from their ancient use,

The King's, the Bishop's, and the Warrior's house,

Quiet as folds upon a grassy knoll:

Stark-grey they stand, wall joined to ancient wall,

Chapel, and Castle, and Cathedral.

It is not they are old, but stone by stone

Into another lifetime they have grown,

The life of memories an old man has:

by Padraic Colum

An Idyll

You stay for a while beside me with your beauty young and rare,

Though your light limbs are as limber as the foal's that follows the mare;

Brow fair and young and tender where thought has scarce begun,

Hair bright as the breast of the eagle when he strains up to the sun!

In the space of a broken castle I found you on a day

When the call of the new-come cuckoo went with me all the way,

You stood by un-mortised stones that were rough and black with age,

The fawn beloved of the hunter in the panther's broken cage!

by Padraic Colum

A Mountaineer

ERE Beowulf's song

Was heard from the ships,

Ere Roland had set

The horn to his lips:

In Ogham strokes

A name was writ:

That name his name

Lives in yet.

by Padraic Colum

Breffne Caoinc

NOT as a woman of the English weeping over a lord of the

English

Do I weep—

A cry that scarcely stirs the heart!

I lament as it is in my blood to lament—

Castle and stronghold are broken,

And the sovereign of the land beside the lake lies dead

Mahon O'Reilly!

by Padraic Colum

Condors

I. CONDORS FLYING

WE watched the Condors winging towards the Moon,

A Moon that glimmered in the blue daylight;

Around us were the Andes, and beyond

Andes, the Ocean, empty like the Moon.

I heard you speak in Atahualpa's tongue:

Then distances grew present; all the range

Of Condors' wings between my thought, your thought:

by Padraic Colum

An Old Song Re-sung

As I went down through Dublin city

At the hour of twelve of the night,

Who did I see but a Spanish lady

Washing her feet by candle light.

First she washed them,

Then she dried them,

All by a fire of amber coals,

In all my life I never did see

by Padraic Colum

Blades

SOJOURNER, set down

Your skimming wheel;

Nothing is sharp

That we have of steel:

Nothing has edge:

Oh, whirl around

Your wheel of stone

Till our blades be ground!

by Padraic Colum

A Poor Scholar Of The 'Forties

MY eyelids red and heavy arc

With bending o'er the smold'ring peat.

I know the Aeneid now by heart,

My Virgil read in cold and heat,

In loneliness and hunger smart.

And I know Homer, too, I ween,

As Munster poets know Ossian.

And I must walk this road that winds

by Padraic Colum

Bison

How great a front is thine

A lake of majesty!

Assyria knew the sign

The god-incarnate king!

A lake of majesty

The lion's drowns in it!

And thy placidity

A moon within that lake!

by Padraic Colum

Crane

I KNOW you, Crane:

I, too, have waited,

Waited until my heart

Melted to little pools around my feet!

Comer in the morning ere the crows,

Shunner,

Searcher

Something find for me!

by Padraic Colum