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100 favorite Irish poems

html by Jorn Barger April 2000 (updated Apr2001)

based on an Irish Times survey [article]

[] "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by W. B. Yeats (23yo)

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee


[] "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" by W. B. Yeats (33yo)

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams


[] "Mid-Term Break" by Seamus Heaney

A four foot box, a foot for every year


[] "The Song of Wandering Aengus" by W. B. Yeats (32yo)

It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair


[] "On Raglan Road" by Patrick Kavanagh

I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret signs


[] "Easter, 1916" by W. B. Yeats (51yo)

MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.


[] "When You are Old" by W.B. Yeats (25yo)

But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you


[] "Canal Bank Walk" by Patrick Kavanagh

Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat


[] "Stony Grey Soil" by Patrick Kavanagh

O stony grey soil of Monaghan


[] "The Stolen Child" by W. B. Yeats (21yo) [mirror]

Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.


[] "An Old Woman of the Roads" by Padraic Colum

To have a clock with weights and chains
And pendulum swinging up and down!


[] "In Memory of my Mother" by Patrick Kavanagh

You meet me and you say:
"Don't forget to see about the cattle--"


[] "Sailing to Byzantium" by W. B. Yeats (61yo)

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing


[] "The Wild Swans at Coole" by W. B. Yeats (52yo)

Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty Swans


[] "The Deserted Village" by Oliver Goldsmith

The bashful virgin's side-long looks of love;
The matron's glance, that would those looks reprove;
These were thy charms, sweet village


[] "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" by Oscar Wilde

Yet each man kills the thing he loves


[] "September, 1913" by W. B. Yeats (48yo)

But let them be, they're dead and gone,
They're with O'Leary in the grave


[] "Digging" by Seamus Heaney

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft against the inside
knee was levered firmly.


[] "A Christmas Childhood" by Patrick Kavanagh

Outside in the cow-house my mother
Made the music of milking;
The light of her stable-lamp was a star
And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.


[] "The Wayfarer" by Padraic Pearse

Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon would reap


[] "Advent" by Patrick Kavanagh

...we shall not ask for reason's payment,
The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges


[] "I See His Blood upon the Rose" by Joseph Mary Plunkett

The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice


"The Great Hunger" by Patrick Kavanagh

 

[] "Thomas McDonagh" by Francis Ledwidge

But when the Dark Cow leaves the moor


[] "The Mother" by Padraic Pearse

Lord, thou art hard on mothers


[] "The Planter's Daughter" by Austin Clarke

O she was the Sunday
In every week.


"Caoineadh Áirt Úi Laoghaire" by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill

 

[] "Among School Children" by W. B. Yeats (61yo)

And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me as a living child


[] "The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats (53yo)

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


[] "Inniskeen Road, July Evening" by Patrick Kavanagh

There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn to-night


[] "Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin, `Erected to the Memory of Mrs Dermot O'Brien'" by Patrick Kavanagh

Fantastic light looks through the eyes of bridges


[] "An Irish Airman Foresees his Death" by W. B. Yeats (53yo)

A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds


[part] "Clearances" by Seamus Heaney [more]

Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses


[] "Epic" by Patrick Kavanagh [mirror]

He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row.


[] "Another September" by Thomas Kinsella [mirror]

Ripe pear trees, brambles, windfall-sweetened soil,
Exhale rough sweetness against the starry slates


[] "The Lost Heifer" by Austin Clarke

And her voice coming softly over the meadow
Was the mist becoming rain


"A Disused Shed in Co Wexford" by Derek Mahon [extract]

"June" by Francis Ledwidge

 

[] "Snow" by Louis MacNeice

...I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.


[] "Personal Helicon" by Seamus Heaney [mirror]

I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing


[] "Mise Raifteirí an File" by Antoine Ó Raifteirí

Behold me now with my back to the wall.
Playing music to empty pockets


[] "Mirror in February" by Thomas Kinsella

In slow distaste
I fold my towel with what grace I can,
Not young and not renewable, but man.


[extract] "Cuírt an Mheán Óiche" by Brian Merriman [more]

Grant you he's no maiden's prayer
But all the essential bits are there.


"Cill Chais" by Aodhagán Ó Rathaille

 

[] "The Fiddler of Dooney" by W. B. Yeats (26yo)

And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With 'Here is the fiddler of Dooney!'
And dance like a wave of the sea.


[] "The Blackbird of Derrycairn" by Austin Clarke

But knowledge is found among the branches.
Listen! The song that shakes my feathers
Will thong the leather of your satchels.


[] "Blackberry-Picking" by Seamus Heaney

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it


[] "Spraying the Potatoes" by Patrick Kavanagh

A wasp was floating
Dead on a sunken briar leaf
Over a copper-poisoned ocean.


[] "A Pint of Plain is Your Only Man" by Flann O'Brien

When doctors say you need a change...


[Gaelic] "Anois Teacht an Earraigh" by Antoine Ó Raifteirí [partial trans]

After the Feast of St. Brigid I'll hoist my sails


[] "The Circus Animals' Desertion" by W. B. Yeats (73yo)

Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of


[] "The Fisherman" by W. B. Yeats (49yo)

'Before I am old
I shall have written him one
Poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.'


[] "Ecce Puer" by James Joyce (50yo)

A child is sleeping:
An old man gone


"Incantata" by Paul Muldoon [others]

 

[] "Cúl an Tí" by Seán Ó Ríordáin

Here the tinkers come uncouth


[] "To a Child Dancing in the Wind" by W. B. Yeats (47yo)

Being young you have not known
The fool's triumph


[] "The Tower" by W. B. Yeats (60yo)

...if walked she there,
Farmers jostled at the fair
So great a glory did the song confer.


[] "Night Feed" by Eavan Boland

Worms turn.
Stars go in.
Even the moon is losing face.
Poplars stilt for dawn
And we begin
The long fall from grace.


[] "She Moved Through the Fair" by Padraic Colum

She put her arms 'round me; these words she did say:
It will not be long, love, 'til our wedding day!


[] "Death of a Naturalist" by Seamus Heaney

But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks.


[] "Requiem for the Croppies" by Seamus Heaney

They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August the barley grew up out of the grave.


"Autumn Journal" by Louis MacNeice [extract]

Spiritual sloth
Creeps like lichen or ivy over the hinges
Of the doors which never move


[] "Dublin" by Louis MacNeice

And the bare bones of a fanlight
Over a hungry door
And the air soft on the cheek
And porter running from the taps
With a head of yellow cream


[] "Dark Rosaleen" by James Clarence Mangan

Oh! there was lightning in my blood,
Red lightning lightened through my blood


[scroll down] "The Meeting of the Waters" by Thomas Moore [midi]

...the best charms of Nature improve
When we see them reflected from looks that we love


"Bean Sléibhe ag Caoineadh a Mhac" by Pádraig Mac Piarais

 

[] "The Ballad of Father Gilligan" by W. B. Yeats (25yo)

'When you were gone, he turned and died
As merry as a bird.'


[] "Red Hanrahan's Song about Ireland" by W. B. Yeats (29yo)

The old brown thorn-trees break in two high over Cummen Strand,
Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand


[] "The Faeries" by William Allingham

Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather.


"Pangur Bán" by anonymous

 

[unformatted] "Follower" by Seamus Heaney

I wanted to grow up and plow, to close one eye, stiffen my arm.


"Padraig Ó Conaire, Gaelic Storyteller" by F.R. Higgins [quote]

 

[] "To My Darling Daughter Betty" by Tom Kettle

In wiser days, my darling rosebud, blown
To beauty proud as was your mother's prime,
In that desired, delayed, incredible time,
You'll ask why I abandoned you, my own...


[] "The Fool" by Padraic Pearse

What if the dream come true? and if millions unborn shall dwell
In the house that I shaped in my heart, the noble house of my thought?


[] "The Splendour of God" by Joseph Mary Plunkett

I have burst the grape
Of the world, and let its powerful blood escape


[] "Sheep and Lambs" by Katharine Tynan

The sheep with their little lambs
Pass'd me by on the road


[] "Broken Dreams" by W. B. Yeats (50yo)

...that peace you make
By merely walking in a room


[] "Down by the Sally Gardens" by W. B. Yeats (23yo)

She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs


[] "Under Ben Bulben" by W. B. Yeats (73yo)

No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!


"Valparaiso" by Pádraig de Brún

 

[] "A Cradle Song" by Padraic Colum

O men from the fields
Soft, softly come thro'
Mary puts round him
Her mantle of blue.


[scroll down] "A Drover" by Padraic Colum

Then the wet, winding roads,
Brown bogs with black water,
And my thoughts on white ships
And the King o' Spain's daughter.


"Woodman" by Patrick Deeley

 

[excerpts] "Christmas Day" by Paul Durcan

Why do computer programmers always answer
When asked in questionnaires
In Sunday newspapers
What is your idea of Heaven? -
Snorkelling in Acapulco.


[] "Going Home to Mayo" by Paul Durcan

And in the evenings
I walked with my father in the high grass down by the river
Talking with him - an unheard-of thing in the city.


[] "Death of an Irishwoman" by Michael Hartnett

she knew the things that moved
all night were neither dogs or cats


[] "Postscript" by Seamus Heaney

As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.


[extract] "Station Island" by Seamus Heaney

We are earthworms of the earth, and all that
has gone through us is what will be our trace.


[] "Father and Son" by F.R. Higgins

I went unmanly with grief, knowing how my father,
Happy though captive in years, walked last with me there.


[] "For Rita With Love" by Pat Ingoldsby

You love everybody
so much that it's not safe
to let you out alone.


"Pegasus" by Patrick Kavanagh

"An Bonnán Buí" by Cathal Buí Mac Giolla Ghunna

 

[] "'Tis the last rose of summer" by Thomas Moore

Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o'er the bed


"An tEarrach Thiar" by Máirtín Ó Direáin

"Oíche Nollag na mBan" by Seán Ó Ríordáin

 

[] "Mise Éire" by Pádraig Mac Piarais

Great my shame:
My own children that sold their mother


[] "The Host of the Air" by W. B. Yeats (27yo)

O'Driscoll scattered the cards
And out of his dream awoke


[] "Leda and the Swan" by W. B. Yeats (58yo)

And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?


[] "A Prayer for my Daughter" by W. B. Yeats (54yo)

...that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-legged smith for man


[] "All Legendary Obstacles" by John Montague

All day I waited, shifting
Nervously from station to bar



many

Yeats onepage

selection

Kavanagh bio/book


James Joyce: main : fast portal : portal
major: FW : Pomes : U : PoA : Ex : Dub : SH : CM : CM05 : CM04
minor: Burner : [Defoe] : [Office] : PoA04 : Epiph : Mang : Rab
bio: timeline : 1898-1904 : [Trieste] : eyesight : schools : Augusta
vocation: reading : tastes : publishers : craft : symmetry
people: 1898-1904 gossip : 1881 gossip : Nora : Lucia : Gogarty : Byrne : friends : siblings : Stannie
maps: Dublin : Leinster : Ireland : Europe : Paris : Ulysses
images: directory : [Ruch]
motifs: ontology : waves : lies : Church : wanking : MonaLisa : murder
Irish lit: timeline : 100poems : Ireland : newspapers : gossip : Yeats : MaudG : AE : the Household : Theosophy : Eglinton : Ideals
classics: Shakespeare : Dante : Pre-Raphaelites : Homer : Patrick
industry: Bloomsday : [movies] : Ellmann : Rose : genetics : NewGame
website: account : theory : early : old links : slow-portal fast-portal

Ulysses:
chapters: summary : anchors : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12a 12b 13 14a 14b 15a 15b 15c 15d 16a 16b 17a 17b 18a 18b
notes: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
reference: Bloom : clocktime : prices : schemata : Tower : riddles : errors : Homeric parallels : [B-L Odyssey] : Eolus tropes : parable : Oxen : Circe : 1904 : Thom's : Gold Cup : Seaside Girls : M'appari : acatalectic : search
riddles: overview : Rudy : condom : Gerty : Hades : Strand : murder : Eccles
maps: Ulysses : WRocks : Strand : VR tour : aerial tour : Dublin : Leinster : Ireland : Europe
editing: etexts : lapses : Gabler : capitals : commas : compounds : deletes : punct : typists
drafts: prequel : Proteus : Cyclops : Circe
closereadings: notes : Oxen : Circe

Finnegans Wake:
txt: [I.1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 II.1 2 3 4 III.1 2 3 4 IV] : [HTML]
shorter: main : I.1-4 : 5-8 : II.1-2 : 3-4 : III.1-2 : 3 : 4 : IV
reference: thunder : Quinet : waves : [MP3 ALP] : FrALP : ItalALP : ch4 digest : Finn's Hotel : JAJquotes : search
drafts: NewGame : ROC : Kev : B&P : T&I : HCE : Mmlj : Cad : Rev : Pacata
closereadings: notes : ROC : T&S : Kev : B&P : T&I : HCE : Mmlj : Cad
theory: AI : archetypes : WakeOS : notes : origin : Scribble

Portrait:
ref: main : ch1 : ch1 notes : ch2 : 3 : 4 : 5a : 5b : Pinamonti : [notes] : [Cave] : [Gabler]

SHero: outline : quotes : PoA04

Dubliners:
etexts: Sis : Sis04 : Sis05 : Enc : Araby : Evel : After : 2Gall : Board : LitCl : Cntr : Clay : Pain : Ivy : Moth : Grace : Dead
guides: main : [Cave] : [Peng]

Other:
Exiles: Ex1 : 2 : 3

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