An Craoibhin Complains Because He Is A Poet

It's my grief that I am not a little white duck,
And I'd swim over the sea to France or to Spain;
I would not stay in Ireland for one week only,
To be without eating, without drinking, without a full jug.

Without a full jug, without eating, without drinking,
Without a feast to get, without wine, without meat,
Without high dances, without a big name, without music;
There is hunger on me, and I astray this long time.

It's my grief that I am not an old crow,
I would sit for awhile up on the old branch,
I could satisfy my hunger, and I not as I am
With a grain of oats or a white potato

It's my grief that I am not a red fox,
Leaping strong and swift on the mountains,
Eating cocks and hens without pity,
Taking ducks and geese as a conquerer.

It's my grief that I am not a bright salmon,
Going through the strong full water,
Catching the mayflies by my craft,
Swimming at my choice, and swimming with the stream

It's my grief that I am of the race of the poets;
It would be better for me to be a high rock,
Or a stone or a tree or an herb or a flower
Or anything at all but the thing that I am!

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory was an Irish dramatist, folklorist, and theatre manager. She co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre and wrote numerous short works for both companies. She was a central figure in the Irish Literary Revival and notably a mentor and friend to prominent Irish writers such as W. B. Yeats. Her collected writings include plays, folklore collections, and many translations of Irish language dramas. Her works remain significant in the context of early 20th-century Irish literature.

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory

A Sleepy Song That Grania Used To Be Singing Over Diarmuid The Time They Were Wandering And Hiding From Finn

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory, Simple Poetry

Oisin's Vision

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory, Simple Poetry

The Deer's Cry

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory, Simple Poetry

A Blessing On Patrick Sarsfield

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Grief Of A Girl's Heart

O Donall og, if you go across the sea, bring myself with you and do not forget    it; and you will have a sweetheart for fair days and market days, and the daughter of the King of Greece beside you at night. It is late last night the dog was speaking of you; the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh. It is you are the lonely bird through the woods; and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me, that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked; I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you, and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

You promised me a thing that was hard for you, a ship of gold under a silver mast; twelve towns with a market in all of them, and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

You promised me a thing that is not p...

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory

A Poem Written In Time Of Trouble By An Irish Priest Who Had Taken Orders In France

My thoughts, my grief! are without strength
My spirit is journeying towards death
My eyes are as a frozen sea
My tears my daily food;
There is nothing in life but only misery.
My poor heart is torn
And my thoughts are sharp wounds within me,
Mourning the miserable state of Ireland.

Misfortune has come upon us all together
The poor, the rich, the weak and the strong
The great lord by whom hundreds were maintained
The powerful strong man, and the man that holds the plough;
And the cross laid on the bare shoulder of every man.

Our feasts are without any voice of priests
And none at them but women lamenting
Tearing their hair with troubled minds
Keening miserably after the Fenians.

The pipes of our organs are broken
Our harps have lost ...

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory

Skim-Milk

    A small part only of my grief I write;
        And if I do not give you all the tale
    It is because my gloom gets some respite
        By just a small bewailing: I bewail
    That I with sly and stupid folk must bide
    Who steal my food and ruin my inside.

    Once I had books, each book beyond compare,
        But now no book at all is left to me,
    And I am spied and peeped on everywhere,
        And my old head, stuffed with latinity,
    And with the poet's load of grave and gay
    Will not get me skim-milk for half a day.

    Wild horse or quiet, not a horse have I,
        But to the forest every day I go
    Bending beneath a load of wood, that high!
        Which raises on my back a sorry row
    Of raw, red blisters; so I cry, ...

James Stephens

Oisin After The Fenians

Now my strength is gone from me, I that was adviser to the Fenians, my whole body is tired to-night, my hands, my feet, and my head; tired, tired, tired.

It is bad the way I am after Finn of the Fenians; since he is gone away, every good is behind me.

Without great people, without mannerly ways; it is sorrowful I am after our king that is gone.

I am a shaking tree, my leaves gone from me; an empty nut, a horse without a bridle; a people without a dwelling-place, I Oisin, son of Finn.

It is long the clouds are over me to-night! it is long last night was; although this day is long, yesterday was longer again to me; every day that comes is long to me.

That is not the way I used to be, without fighting, without battles, without learning feats, without young girls, without music, without h...

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory

A Sorrowful Lament For Ireland

The Irish poem I give this translation of was printed in the Revue Celtique some years ago, and lately in An Fior Clairseach na h-Eireann, where a note tells us it was taken from a manuscript in the Gottingen Library, and was written by an Irish priest, Shemus Cartan, who had taken orders in France; but its date is not given. I like it for its own beauty, and because its writer does not, as so many Irish writers have done, attribute the many griefs of Ireland only to 'the horsemen of the Gall,' but also to the faults and shortcomings to which the people of a country broken up by conquest are perhaps more liable than the people of a country that has kept its own settled rule.


A SORROWFUL LAMENT FOR IRELAND.

My thoughts, alas! are without strength;
My spirit is journeying towards death;
My...

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory

Coole Park and Ballylee

I meditate upon a swallow's flight,
Upon a aged woman and her house,
A sycamore and lime-tree lost in night
Although that western cloud is luminous,
Great works constructed there in nature's spite
For scholars and for poets after us,
Thoughts long knitted into a single thought,
A dance-like glory that those walls begot.
There Hyde before he had beaten into prose
That noble blade the Muses buckled on,
There one that ruffled in a manly pose
For all his timid heart, there that slow man,
That meditative man, John Synge, and those
Impetuous men, Shawe-Taylor and Hugh Lane,
Found pride established in humility,
A scene well Set and excellent company.
They came like swallows and like swallows went,
And yet a woman's powerful character
Could keep a Swallow to...

William Butler Yeats