A Walk In The Irish Rain


When the sun goes down o'er Dublin town
The colours last for hours, oh
The lights come on, the night's a song
And the streets all turn to gold.

A gentle mist all heaven kissed
Like teardrops off an angel's wing
Don't you know you'll cleanse your soul
With a walk in the Irish rain.

Chous
 Oh, Katherine, take my hand
I've got three pounds and change
And I'll sing you songs of love again
And when I get too drunk to sing
We'll walk in the Irish rain.

Forever more I've stepped ashore
My sailing days are over, oh
Through time and tide and by your side
Together we'll grow old.

I threw my sea bag in the bin
And brought these pretty flowers home
Kiss me Kate, we'll celebrate
Before the bloom is gone.

A tinker and a tailor and a drunken old sailor
They all get together and they start to play
Time stands still while they sing their fill
They'll shout 'til the break of day.

A sweet little lady with a glass of stout
Sippin' it down 'til the foam runs out
She'll help her old man home again
With a walk in the Irish rain.

S. Spurgin

A  Nation Once Again



When boyhood's fire was in my blood
I read of ancient freemen,
For Greece and Rome who bravely stood,
Three hundred men and three men;
And then I prayed I yet might see
Our fetters rent in twain,
And Ireland. long a province, be
A Nation once again!

Chorus:
A nation once again,
A nation once again,
And Ireland, long a province, be
A Nation once again!

And from that time, through wildest woe,
That hope has shown a far light,
Nor could love's brightest summer glow
Outshine that solemn starlight;
It seemed to watch above my head
In forum, field and fame,
Its angel voice sang round my bed,
A Nation once again.


It whisper'd too, that freedom's ark,
And service high and holy,
Would be profaned by feeling dark
And passions vain or lowly;
For, Freedom comes from God's right hand,
And needs a godly train;
And righteous men must make our land
A nation once again!

AWA' WHIGS AWA'


Our thrissles flourish'd fresh and fair,
And bonie bloom'd our roses;
But Whigs cam like a frost in June,
An wither'd a our posies.

CHORUS
Awa, Whigs, awa!
Awa, Whigs, awa!
Ye're but a pack o traitor louns,
Ye'll do nae guid at a'.

Our ancient crown's fa'n in the dust;
Deil blin' them wi the stoure o't,
An write their names in the black beuk
Wha gae the Whigs the power o't!

Our sad decay in church and state
Surpasses my descriving:
The Whig cam o'er us for a curse,
An we hae done wi thriving.

Grim Vengeance lang has taen a nap,
But we may see him waukin:
Gude help the day when Royal heads
Are hunted like a maukin!

Robert Burns

The Red Cross Nurses

OUT where the line of battle cleaves   
The horizon of woe   
And sightless warriors clutch the leaves   
The Red Cross nurses go.   
In where the cots of agony            
Mark death’s unmeasured tide—   
Bear up the battle’s harvestry—   
The Red Cross nurses glide.   

Look! Where the hell of steel has torn   
Its way through slumbering earth            
The orphaned urchins kneel forlorn   
And wonder at their birth.   
Until, above them, calm and wise   
With smile and guiding hand,   
God looking through their gentle eyes,            
The Red Cross nurses stand.

Thomas L. Masson

 The Island of Skyros
 

HERE, where we stood together, we three men,   
  Before the war had swept us to the East   
Three thousand miles away, I stand again   
  And hear the bells, and breathe, and go to feast.   
We trod the same path, to the selfsame place,            
  Yet here I stand, having beheld their graves,   
Skyros whose shadows the great seas erase,   
  And Seddul Bahr that ever more blood craves.   

So, since we communed here, our bones have been   
  Nearer, perhaps, than they again will be,            
Earth and the worldwide battle lie between,   
  Death lies between, and friend-destroying sea.   
Yet here, a year ago, we talked and stood   
As I stand now, with pulses beating blood.   

I saw her like a shadow on the sky            
  In the last light, a blur upon the sea,   
Then the gale’s darkness put the shadow by,   
  But from one grave that island talked to me;   
And, in the midnight, in the breaking storm,   
  I saw its blackness and a blinking light,            
And thought, “So death obscures your gentle form,   
  So memory strives to make the darkness bright;   
And, in that heap of rocks, your body lies,   
  Part of the island till the planet ends,   
My gentle comrade, beautiful and wise,            
  Part of this crag this bitter surge offends,   
While I, who pass, a little obscure thing,   
War with this force, and breathe, and am its king.”

John Masefield

The Sign


WE are here in a wood of little beeches:   
And the leaves are like black lace   
Against a sky of nacre.   

One bough of clear promise   
Across the moon.            

It is in this wise that God speaketh unto me.   
He layeth hands of healing upon my flesh,   
Stilling it in an eternal peace,   
Until my soul reaches out myriad and infinite hands   
Toward him,           
And is eased of its hunger.   

And I know that this passes:   
This implacable fury and torment of men,   
As a thing insensate and vain:   
And the stillness hath said unto me,            
Over the tumult of sounds and shaken flame,   
Out of the terrible beauty of wrath,   
I alone am eternal.   

One bough of clear promise   
Across the moon.


Frederic Manning

To a Soldier in Hospital


COURAGE came to you with your boyhood’s grace   
    Of ardent life and limb.   
Each day new dangers steeled you to the test,   
    To ride, to climb, to swim.   
Your hot blood taught you carelessness of death            
        With every breath.   

So when you went to play another game   
    You could not but be brave:   
An Empire’s team, a rougher football field,   
    The end—perhaps your grave.            
What matter? On the winning of a goal   
        You staked your soul.   

Yes, you wore courage as you wore your youth   
    With carelessness and joy.   
But in what Spartan school of discipline            
    Did you get patience, boy?   
How did you learn to bear this long-drawn pain   
        And not complain?   

Restless with throbbing hopes, with thwarted aims,   
    Impulsive as a colt,            
How do you lie here month by weary month   
    Helpless, and not revolt?   
What joy can these monotonous days afford   
        Here in a ward?   

Yet you are merry as the birds in spring,            
    Or feign the gaiety,   
Lest those who dress and tend your wound each day   
    Should guess the agony.   
Lest they should suffer—this the only fear   
        You let draw near.            

Greybeard philosophy has sought in books   
    And argument this truth,   
That man is greater than his pain, but you   
    Have learnt it in your youth.   
You know the wisdom taught by Calvary            
        At twenty-three.   

Death would have found you brave, but braver still   
    You face each lagging day,   
A merry Stoic, patient, chivalrous,   
    Divinely kind and gay.            
You bear your knowledge lightly, graduate   
        Of unkind Fate.   

Careless philosopher, the first to laugh,   
    The latest to complain,   
Unmindful that you teach, you taught me this            
    In your long fight with pain:   
Since God made man so good—here stands my creed—   
        God’s good indeed.   


Winifred M. Letts
 

Sir Humphrey Gilbert


Southward with fleet of ice
Sailed the corsair Death;
Wild and gast blew the blast,
And the east-wind was his breath.

His lordly ships of ice
Glisten in the sun;
On each side, like pennons wide,
Flashing crystal streamlets run.

His sails of white sea-mist
Dripped with silver rain;
But where he passed there were cast
Leaden shadows o'er the main.

Eastward from Campobello
Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed;
Three days or more seaward he bore,
Then, alas! the land-wind failed.

Alas! the land-wind failed,
And ice-cold grew the night;
And nevermore, on sea or shore,
Should Sir Humphrey see the light.

He sat upon the deck,
The Book was in his hand;
"Do not fear! Heaven is as near,"
He said, "by water as by land!"

In the first watch of the night,
Without a signal's sound,
Out of the sea, mysteriously,
The fleet of Death rose all around.

The moon and the evening star
Were hanging in the shrouds;
Every mast, as it passed,
Seemed to rake the passing clouds.

They grappled with their prize,
At midnight black and cold!
As of a rock was the shock;
Heavily the ground-swell rolled.

Southward through day and dark,
They drift in cold embrace,
With mist and rain, o'er the open main;
Yet there seems no change of place.

Southward, forever southward,
They drift through dark and day;
And like a dream, in the Gulf-Stream
Sinking, vanish all away.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

ELDORADO


Gaily bedight,
   A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,  
   Had journeyed long,  
   Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

   But he grew old—
   This knight so bold—  
And o’er his heart a shadow—  
   Fell as he found
   No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

   And, as his strength  
   Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow—  
   ‘Shadow,’ said he,  
   ‘Where can it be—
This land of Eldorado?’

   ‘Over the Mountains
   Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,  
   Ride, boldly ride,’
   The shade replied,—
‘If you seek for Eldorado!’


Edgar Allan Poe

If We Must Die


If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honour us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!


Claude McKay