The Wisdom of the Irish: A Concise Anthology

LOVE AND ROMANCE

Man is in love and loves what vanishes,

What more is there to say?

W. B. Yeats, ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’

Hatred is the destroyer of peace for men; love, of their integrity.

St Columbanus, addressed to Attala (trans. Eleanor Shipley Duckett)

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.

George Bernard Shaw as quoted by Des MacHale

Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the market-place. It may not be purchased of the merchants, nor can it be weighed out in the balance for gold.

Oscar Wilde, The Nightingale and the Rose

O, My Dark Rosaleen,

Do not sigh, do not weep!

The priests are on the ocean green,

They march along the Deep.

There’s wine from the royal Pope,

Upon the ocean green;

And Spanish ale shall give you hope,

My Dark Rosaleen!

My own Rosaleen!

Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope,

Shall give you health, and help, and hope,

My Dark Rosaleen!

Over hills, and through dales,

Have I roamed for your sake;

All yesterday I sailed with sails

On river and on lake.

The Erne, at its highest flood,

I dashed across unseen,

For there was lightning in my blood,

My Dark Rosaleen!

My own Rosaleen!

Oh! there was lightning in my blood,

Red lightning lightened through my blood,

My Dark Rosaleen!

All day long, in unrest,

To and fro, do I move.

The very soul within my breast

Is wasted for you, love!

The heart in my bosom faints

To think of you, my Queen,

My life of life, my saint of saints,

My Dark Rosaleen!

My own Rosaleen!

To hear your sweet and sad complaints,

My life, my love, my saint of saints,

My Dark Rosaleen!

James Clarence Mangan, ‘Dark Rosaleen’ (trans by the author)

I love my love in the morning,

For she like morn is fair –

Her blushing cheek, its crimson streak,

It clouds her golden hair.

Her glance, its beam, so soft and kind;

Her tears, its dewy showers;

And her voice, the tender whispering wind

That stirs the early bowers.

Gerald Griffin, ‘I Love My Love in the Morning’

There is one

On whom I should gladly gaze,

For whom I would give the bright world,

All of it, all of it, though it be an unequal bargain.

Anonymous, ‘The Glories of Colum Cille’ (trans. Gerard Murphy)

Death is friendlier than love.

From bardic poetry (trans. Eleanor Knott)

Two women loved him, shapes of Heaven,

Radiant as aught beneath the sky.

One gentle as the summer moon

One ardent as the golden noon;

And to the first his heart was given,

And to the last his vanity.

Thomas Caulfield Irwin, ‘Swift’

Sweetheart of my life! –

As then, so now; nay, dearer to me now,

Since love, that fills the soul, expands it too,

And thus it holds more love, and ever more, –

O sweetheart, helpmate, guardian, better self!

William Allingham, ‘George Levison or, The Schoolfellows’

“You gave me the key of your heart, my love;

Then why do you make me knock?”

“Oh, that was yesterday, Saints above!

And last night – I changed the lock!”

John Boyle O’Reilly, ‘Constancy’

O Edain, wilt thou come with me

To a wonderful palace that is mine?

White are the teeth there, and black the brows,

And crimson as the mead are the lips of the lovers.

O woman, if thou comest to my proud people,

’Tis a golden crown shall circle thy head,

Thou shalt dwell by the sweet streams of my land,

And drink of the mead and wine in the arms of thy lover.

Lady Wilde, ‘Edain the Queen’

Dry be that tear, my gentlest love,

Be hushed that struggling sigh:

Nor seasons, day, nor fate shall prove

More fixed, more true, than I:

Hushed be that sigh, be dry that tear,

Cease boding doubt, cease anxious fear –

Dry be that tear.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, ‘Dry Be That Tear’

It was not the grace of her queenly air,

Nor her cheek of the roses’ glow,

Nor her soft black eyes,

Nor her flowing hair,

Nor was it her lily-white brow.

’Twas the soul of truth

And of melting ruth,

And the smile of summer’s dawn,

That stole my heart away,

One mild summer day

In the valley near Slievenamon.

‘Slievenamon’, an Irish song

The sighing wind dies on the tree.

I cannot sigh: sigh thou for me.

The broken heart is sadly free.

Aubrey de Vere, ‘Lines’

From the storms of this world

How gladly I’d fly,

To the calm of that breast,

To the heaven of that eye!

How deeply I love thee

’Twere useless to tell;

Farewell, then, my dear one,

My Mary, farewell.

Jeremiah Joseph Callanan, ‘Serenade’

Unfair, alas, the sharing

that sorrow makes for lovers:

two hearts with but one owner,

and no heart with another.

Maghnas O Domhnaill, Untitled (trans. Eleanor Knott)

At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly

To the lone vale we lov’d, when life shone warm in thine eye;

And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air,

To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there,

And tell me our love is remember’d, even in the sky.

Thomas Moore, ‘At the Mid Hour of Night’

I cannot hear his footstep, but it falls on my heart; he is beyond my senses, but love, that heavenly essence, gives me a feeling finer than sense, and I know that my lover comes; ’tis the air he breathes that conveys his presence to me, as it flutters through my heart.

Dion Boucicault, Jessie Brown

Great love of a man from another land

Has come to me beyond all else:

It has taken my bloom, no colour is left,

It does not let me rest.

Anonymous, ‘The Song of Crede, Daughter of Guare’ (trans. Kuno Meyer)

You remember that evening

We spent both together,

’Neath the red-berried Rowan

In still snowy weather.

Your white throat was singing,

Your head on my shoulder –

Ne’er thought I, that evening,

That love could grow colder.

‘You Remember that Evening’, a peasant ballad (trans. George Sigerson)

Love is the sacrament of life; it sets

Virtue where virtue was not; cleanses men

Of all the vile pollutions of this world;

It is the fire which purges gold from dross,

It is the spring which in some wintry soil

Makes innocence to blossom like a rose.

Oscar Wilde, The Duchess of Padua

Put your head, darling, darling, darling,

Your darling black head my heart above;

Oh, mouth of honey, with the thyme for fragrance,

Who, with heart in breast, could deny you love?

Anonymous, ‘Dear Dark Head’ (trans. Samuel Ferguson)

I do not love you as I loved

The loves I have loved –

As I may love others:

I know you are not beautiful

As some I loved were beautiful –

As others may be:

I do not hold your counsel dear

As I’ve held others’

As I still hold some:

And yet

There is no truth but you

No beauty but you

No love but you –

And oh, there is no pain

But you and me.

Thomas MacGreevy, ‘Dechtire’

I through love have learned three things,

Sorrow, sin, and death it brings;

Yet day by day my heart within

Dares shame and sorrow, death and sin:

Maiden, you have aimed the dart

Rankling in my ruined heart:

Maiden, may the God above

Grant you grace to grant me love!

Anonymous, ‘The Fair-Haired Girl’ (trans. Samuel Ferguson)

Sure if I were one of these flowers, and you were to pass me by like that, I do believe that I’d pluck myself and walk after you on my stalk.

Dion Boucicault, The Shaughraun

I sat with one I love last night,

She sang to me an olden strain;

In former times it woke delight,

Last night – but pain.

Last night we saw the stars arise,

But clouds soon dimmed the ether blue;

And when we sought each other’s eyes

Tears dimmed them too!

We paced along our favorite walk,

But paced in silence broken-hearted:

Of old we used to smile and talk;

Last night – we parted.

George Darley, ‘Last Night’

The real genius for love lies not in getting into, but getting out of love.

George Moore as quoted by Des MacHale

I know not night from day,

Nor thrush from cuckoo gray,

Nor cloud from the sun that shines above thee –

Nor freezing cold from heat,

Nor friend – if friend I meet –

I but know – heart’s love! – I love thee.

Love that my Life began,

Love, that will close life’s span,

Love that grows ever by love-giving:

Love, from the first to last,

Love, till all life be passed,

Love that loves on after living!

Diarmad O’Curnain, ‘Love’s Despair’ (trans. George Sigerson)

I’d cross the salt sea with you,

Eivlin a rúin! [O secret treasure!]

And ne’er – ne’er I’d flee from you,

Eivlin a rúin!

What soft tales I’d tell to you,

I’d taste your lips’ sweetness, too,

I’d sing ’mid the falling dew,

“Eivlin a rúin!”

O! joy beyond life would bless, –

Eivlin a rúin!

Should I wed your loveliness,

Eivlin a rúin!

My fond arm would circle you,

My heart be your guardian true,

Ne’er maiden were loved like you,

Eivlin a rúin!

Anonymous, ‘Eivlin A Rúin’ (trans. George Sigerson)

She it is who stole my heart,

And left a void and aching smart,

But if she soften not her eye,

I know that life and I must part.

Anonymous, ‘My Love, Oh, She is My Love’ (trans. Douglas Hyde)

Canst thou be true to one alone,

True beyond all reproach –

Bound like the palmer to one goal,

Thrilled like the magnet by one pole –

Canst thou be such?

Charles Gavan Duffy, ‘Love Song’

The red rose whispers of passion,

And the white rose breathes of love;

Oh, the red rose is a falcon,

And the white rose is a dove.

But I send you a cream-white rosebud

With a flush on its petal tips;

For the love that is purest and sweetest

Has a kiss of desire on the lips.

John Boyle O’Reilly, ‘A White Rose’

Never give all the heart, for love

Will hardly seem worth thinking of

To passionate women if it seem

Certain, and they never dream

That it fades out from kiss to kiss;

For everything that’s lovely is

But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.

O never give the heart outright,

For they, for all smooth lips can say,

Have given their hearts up to the play.

And who could play it well enough

If deaf and dumb and blind with love?

He that made this knows all the cost,

For he gave all his heart and lost.

W. B. Yeats, ‘Never Give all the Heart’