Irish Internet Radio and TV from Dublin, Ireland.
Beautiful Irish Poem
Song
by Thomas Moore
the greatest Irish lyrist
born Dublin, 1779 - died 1852
Have you not seen the timid tear
Steal trembling from mine eye?
Have you not mark'd the flush of fear,
Or caught the murmur'd sigh?
And can you think my love is chill,
Nor fix'd on you alone?
And can you rend, by doubting still,
A heart so much your own?
To you my soul's affections move
Devoutly, warmly, true:
My life has been a task of love,
One long, long thought of you.
If all your tender faith is o'er,
If still my truth you'll try;
Alas! I know but one proof more -
I'll bless your name, and die!
by Thomas Moore
the greatest Irish lyrist
born Dublin, 1779 - died 1852
Have you not seen the timid tear
Steal trembling from mine eye?
Have you not mark'd the flush of fear,
Or caught the murmur'd sigh?
And can you think my love is chill,
Nor fix'd on you alone?
And can you rend, by doubting still,
A heart so much your own?
To you my soul's affections move
Devoutly, warmly, true:
My life has been a task of love,
One long, long thought of you.
If all your tender faith is o'er,
If still my truth you'll try;
Alas! I know but one proof more -
I'll bless your name, and die!
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by WAYNE BATTE on -
I love the poetry but I am also captivated by your post at Christmas i beleive you are a born again Christian So am I Blessings to you Wayne
-
Permalink Reply by Frank Daub on -
Now here is a little Yeats poem dedicated to the studio Ladies of LI.
THE LIVING BEAUTY
I BADE, because the wick and oil are spent
And frozen are the channels of the blood,
My discontented heart to draw content
From beauty that is cast out of a mould
In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,
Appears, but when we have gone is gone again,
Being more indifferent to our solitude
Than 'twere an apparition. O heart, we are old;
The living beauty is for younger men:
We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.
-
Permalink Reply by Frank Daub on
-
For our poetry lovers, here are the lyrics to a really beautiful Irish song about one of the 1916 heroes, Joseph Plunkett. Hours before his execution by firing squad at the age of 28, he was married in the prison chapel to his sweetheart Grace Gifford, a Protestant convert to Catholicism. I have been in that little chapel.
Grace
As we gathered in the chapel here, in old Kilmainham Jail
I think about these last few weeks, oh will they say we've failed
From our school days they have taught us, we must yearn for liberty
But all I want in this dark place is to have you here with me
Oh Grace just hold me in your arms and let this moment linger
They take me out at dawn and I will die
With all my love I'll place this wedding ring upon your finger
There won't be time to share our love, for we must say good-bye
Though I know it's hard for you my love, to ever understand,
The love I feel for this great man, my love for this dear land,
But when Padraig called me to his side down at the GPO,
I had to leave my own sick bed, to him I had to go
Now as the dawn is breaking, my heart is breaking to,
On this May morn, as I walk out my thoughts will be of you,
And I'll write some words upon the wall so everyone will know,
I loved so much, that I could see His blood upon the Rose
-
Permalink Reply by Frank Daub on
-
Deragon
The title of this song is, simply, Grace. Paddy Reilly did a recording of this song. I'll ask Simon to play it today.
-
Permalink Reply by Alexandre Boulet on -
Hi everyone, i said earlier that I would post the secret rose poem from Yeats. here it is.
I very disturbing poem for a very disturbed book also called the secret rose.
I about that rose that the templar knight was fighting for her to keep her pure and virgin.
Here in Canada, we had a taste for that kind of books, about the templar knight and the cruisade of the christian church. It during the past summer of 2007 that i have read that book. ( in french)
FAR-OFF, most secret, and inviolate Rose,
Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those
Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,
Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir
And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep
Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep
Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold
The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold
Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes
Saw the pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise
In Druid vapour and make the torches dim;
Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him
Who met Fand walking among flaming dew
By a grey shore where the wind never blew,
And lost the world and Emer for a kiss;
And him who drove the gods out of their liss,
And till a hundred moms had flowered red
Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead;
And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown
And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown
Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods:
And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods,
And sought through lands and islands numberless years,
Until he found, with laughter and with tears,
A woman of so shining loveliness
That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
A little stolen tress. I, too, await
The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?
-
Permalink Reply by Alexandre Boulet on
-
Hum thank you Pierre for this comment. Since it in english and he's Irish I have a little bit of difficulty understanding everything that he as written. I would like to have many peoples comment on that poem because it a really nice one i think.
Alexandre
-
Permalink Reply by Alexandre Boulet on
-
Merci Pierre, je voulais partager ce poème avec d'autres personnes, car il m'a beaucoup boulversé.
Slan !
-
Permalink Reply by Frank Daub on
-
St. Patrick's day is coming. A cause for joy and great craic. Easter is coming, too, and for Christians a wondrous promise of new life -- the Resurrection. Easter is a little more special, maybe, for the Irish. In 1916, on Easter Monday, an incredible group of Irish patriots made a stand that the whole world wondered at. About freedom. Allow me to share another poem by Yeats that recalls what happened when just a few Irish men and women took on the greatest army known at that time.
Easter, 1916
By W. B. Yeats
I have met them at the close of the day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I know him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute,
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it in a verse --
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.
September 25, 1916
-
Permalink Reply by Walter on -
Frank,
One of my favourite Yeats’ poems. Great of you to put it on display for all of us to read again. ‘A terrible beauty is born’ . . . one wonders if Yeats could have ever forseen the real significance of this line (at the time) in the long troubled ‘history’ that was to follow.
Walter . . .
-
Permalink Reply by Frank Daub on
-
Deregon
You are far too kind and so much a gentleman. I will continue to share yeats with LI until they bloody stop me. And you have one of the greatest gifts a person can have -- a love for poetry -- the language of the heart.
SLAN. SLAN AGAT!!!
-
Permalink Reply by Frank Daub on
-
My friend!
Good to hear from you.
Isn't it beautiful, that he could talk of the ridicule that many had for these men and women, and yet truly understand what they had started? And everything turned out to be a true national beauty in the long run (until the , uh, Ulster ? is settled). I was troubled, during my two stays in Dublin w/my cousin, to find that this wondrous Irish struggle for such an abstract as freedom was seldom given thought. Of all the peoples of the world, the Irish have embodied the fire of freedom's light.
I am so damned proud of my Irish ancestry, American though I am.
Take Care, Walt "Whitman".
liveIreland Shop
Plated Claddagh Ring €18
liveIreland News
© 2013
