Poems from Irish Poet Francis Ledwidge

 

Ireland

I called you by sweet names by wood and linn,

You answered not because my voice was new,

And you were listening for the hounds of Finn

And the long hosts of Lugh.

And so, I came unto a windy height

And cried my sorrow, but you heard no wind,

For you were listening to small ships in flight,

And the wail on hills behind.

And then I left you, wandering the war

Armed with will, from distant goal to goal,

To find you at the last free as of yore,

Or die to save your soul.

And then you called to us from far and near

To bring your crown from out the deeps of time,

It is my grief your voice I couldn't hear

In such a distant clime.

A Fairy Hunt

Who would hear the fairy horn

Calling all the hounds of Finn

Must be in a lark's nest born

When the moon is very thin.

I who have the gift can hear

Hounds and horn and tally ho,

And the tongue of Bran as clear

As Christmas bells across the snow.

And beside my secret place

Hurries by the fairy fox,

With the moonrise on his face,

Up and down the mossy rocks.

Then the music of a horn

And the flash of scarlet men,

Thick as poppies in the corn

All across the dusky glen.

Oh! the mad delight of chase!

Oh! the shouting and the cheer!

Many an owl doth leave his place

In the dusty tree to hear.

Fairies

Maiden-poet, come with me

To the heaped up cairn of Maeve,

And there we'll dance a fairy dance

Upon a fairy's grave.

In and out among the trees,

Filling all the night with sound,

The morning, strung upon her star,

Shall chase us round and round.

What are we but fairies too,

Living but in dreams alone,

Or, at the most, but children still,

Innocent and overgrown?

~Francis Ledwidge~

BIO: Francis Ledwidge was born in 1887 to a poor laboring family in Northern Ireland. In spite of their poverty, his mother encouraged him to stay in school until age thirteen. He loved to read Longfellow, Tennyson, Shakespeare, Shelley, and Keats, and finally began writing his own poetry. He become well-known in his local area and earned the support of Lord Dunsany, 18th Baron Dunsany. Ledwidge became a regular contributor to the Drogheda Independent newspaper. He enlisted in World War I in 1914 with Lord Dunsany as his captain. His first poetry collection was released in 1916 while still in the military. Instead of writing about the war, he wrote about his beloved Ireland. He died in Belgium in July 1917. Lord Dunsany compiled a collection of his works and published The Complete Poems of Francis Ledwidge in 1919.

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