The Sea Bird To The Wave
On and on,
O white brother!
Thunder does not daunt thee!
How thou movest!
By thine impulse
With no wing!
Fairest thing
The wide sea shows me!
On and on
O white brother!
Art thou gone!
poem by Padraic Colum
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
No Child
I HEARD in the night the pigeons
Stirring within their nest:
The wild pigeons' stir was tender,
Like a child's hand at the breast.
I cried 'O stir no more!
(My breast was touched with tears).
O pigeons, make no stir
A childless woman hears.'
poem by Padraic Colum
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Swallow
HE knows Queen Lab, her isle,
And black, enormous Kaf,
The Swallow, and 'Allah'
He cries
As into Giaour lands
With Dervish faith and rite,
Hueless, a Saracen,
He flies.
Like scimitars his wings,
And, all unluminous,
Black, like a genie's thought,
His eyes.
poem by Padraic Colum
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Fourth Station
Jesus His Mother meets:
She looks on Him and sees
The Savior in Her Son:
The Angel's word comes back:
Within her heart she says,
"Unto me let this be done!"
Still is she full of grace.
By us, too be it one,
That grace that brings us revelation!
poem by Padraic Colum
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
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!
As if thou still dost own
A world, thou takest breath
Earth-shape and strength of stone,
A Titan-sultan's child!
poem by Padraic Colum
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
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!
poem by Padraic Colum
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Bird Of Paradise
WITH sapphire for her crown,
And with the Libyan wine
For lustre of her eyes;
With azure on her feet
As though she trod the skies;
Then iris for her vest,
Rose, ebony, and flame
(The bird that Camoens
Won for his golden lay),
She lives a thing enthralled.
In forests that are old,
As old as is the Moon.
poem by Padraic Colum
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
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.
The strokes on the edge
Of the stone might count
The acres he has
On this bare mount;
But he remembers
The pillar-stone,
And knows that he is
Of the seed of Eoin.
poem by Padraic Colum
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Humming-Bird
UP from the navel of the world,
Where Cuzco has her founts of fire,
The passer of the Gulf he comes.
He lives in air, a bird of fire,
Charted by flowers still he comes
Through spaces that are half the world.
With glows of suns and seas he comes;
A life within our shadowed world
That's bloom, and gem, and kiss of fire!
poem by Padraic Colum
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Men On Islands
CAN it be that never more
Men will grow on Islands?
Ithaka and Eriskey,
Iceland and Tahiti!
Must the engines he has forged
Raven so for spaces
That the Islands dwindle down,
Dwindle down!
Pots that shelve the tap-root's growth?
Must it be that never more
Men will flower on Islands?
Crete and Corsica, Mitylene,
Aran and lona!
poem by Padraic Colum
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!