Selected Poetry

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLIX, Issue 21, 1 June 1922, Page 24

Selected Poetry

Ireland : Invocation On your keening waters like gray eyes tear-misted, On your green fields that harvest the ruins of castles broken, rook-haunted, ’ On your thatched roofs pierced by steel rains of misfortune, Let there be peace, Ireland! By the centuries like furled unflung banners that wrapped you in sorrows, . - By your broad-shouldered sons and they ever-stooping to enter the black, holds of ships, By your strong-limbed, tall daughters and they ever waving farewell and turning back to the hovel. Let there be peace, slreland! X By the of your sterile hilltops and the green of your tired-dredges trailing the empty highways, By your whimsies that glint above heartache like butterflies over dead bodies. *• By the story that wings from the sound of the names Thurles, Ballynarra, Lrstowel, Let there be peace,. •, Ireland ! By the past and the strange miscasting that made you a hater,, By the present filled with a crying and no one to tell if a nation is born or is dying, By the future if lost to be chill with abasement, if won to be sad with attainment 0 let there be peace, Ireland! -Kathryn White Ryan, in the London Nation. * The Ninepenny Fiddle My father and mother were Irish, And I am Irish too; I bought a wee fiddle for ninepence, And it is Irish too. I’m up in the morning early To meet the dawn of day, And to the lintwhite’s piping The many’s the tune I play. One pleasant eve in June time I met a lochrie-man : His face and hands were weazen; His height was not a span. He boor’d mo for my fiddle, “\ou know,” says he, “like you. My father and mother were Irish, And I am Irish too!” He took my wee red fiddle, And such a tune he turned —• The Glaise in it whispered; The Lionan in it m’urned. Says he, “My lad, you’re lucky I wish’t I was like you; You’re lucky in your birth-star. And in your fiddle, too!” He gave me back my fiddle, My fiddle-stick also, ! And stepping like a mayboy. He jumped the Learguidh Knowe. I never saw him after,

Nor met his gentle kind; But, whiles, I think I hear him A-wheening in the wind! My father and mother were Irish, And I am Irish too; I bought a wee fiddle for ninepence, And it is Irish too; I’m up in the, morning early To meet the dawn of day; And to the lintwhite’s piping The many’s the tune I play. —From the Mountainy Singer, * Australia [With apology and compliments to Lena M. Stanley for her excellent poem on “Fair Erris in the West,’ 5 published in The Irish World, April 16, 1921.] Whence earnest thou, Lena, to sing so sweet Of Erris in the West? Thy name to me is quite unknown Tho’ knowing all the rest. Erris, home of the Firbolg As the Seanachy relates; A race of brave but guileless men Now filling up your States. Oft from “Belmullet’s little pier” I gazed along the bay And heard the ancient Gaelic songs By men from Inniskea. Oft have I travell’d by the coast From Annagh to Falmore; Whose bold headlands and lovely strands I never shall see more. At Abbey’s graves I’d pause awhile, Where our sires’ bones still rest, To wail my caoin in sad refrain For Erin’s sons oppressed. Oft have I climbed the tall sand hills Clad in emerald green, To hear the lark’s enchanting strain Whose self could not be seen. Or rambled through the dales below ■ Midst daisies and bluebells, And shamrocks green and dandelions, Whose fragrance far excels All else that this fair Sunny South Can boast of as its best Its waratah, its wattle gay, Its Christmas silvercrest. Oh, happy days of joyous youth And innocence sublime 1.When mirth went round the laughing crowd Immune from guilt or crime. Long have I roam’d o’er forty years Through regions called the best; But none to me can yet compare With Erris in the West. Adieu, fair Lena, till we meet ’Mong Erin’s saintly blest, To sing celestial canticles For Erris in the West. -Henry E Kelly, a native of Erris, now of Sydney, in the Irish World. 1 J