Famous Gaelic Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Gaelic poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous gaelic poems. These examples illustrate what a famous gaelic poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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..., speaking of James Simmons’ death,
My anguish at the year long silence from his last letter
To the Christmas card in Gaelic Nollaig Shona -
With the message “Jimmy’s doing better than expected.”
The difficulty I had in finding his publisher’s address -
Salmon Press, Cliffs of Moher, County Clare -
Then a soft sad Irish woman’s voice explained
“Jimmy’s had a massive stroke, phone Janice
At The Poet’s House.”
I looked at the letter I would never end or send.
“You...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...h our chargers' neighing proud
Already has the host dismayed.
Spur, horsemen, spur! the charge resounds!
On Gaelic spear the Northman bounds!
Through helmet plumes the arrows flit,
And plated breasts the pikeheads split.
The double-axe fells human oaks,
And like the thistles in the field
See bristling up (where none must yield!)
The points hewn off by sweeping strokes!
We, heroes all, our wounds disdain;
Dismounted now, our horses slain,...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...aillights burn
so dimly, as if caked with dirt,
three or four hundred yards along the boreen
(a diminutive form of the Gaelic bóthar, "a road,"
from bó, "a cow," and thar
meaning, in this case, something like "athwart,"
"boreen" has entered English "through the air"
despite the protestations of the O.E.D.):
why, though, should one taillight flash and flare
then flicker-fade
to an afterimage of tourmaline
set in a dark part-jet, part-jasper or -jade?
That smoker's cough ag...Read more of this...
by
Muldoon, Paul
...sixty seven.
The meeting he proposed in his second letter
Could never happen: a few days later
A Christmas card in Gaelic - Nollaig Shona -
Then silence, an unbearable chasm
Of wondering if I’d inadvertently offended.
A year later a second card explained the silence:
I joined the queue of mourners:
It was August when I saw the Guardian obituary
Behind glass in the Poetry Library.
How astonishing the colour photo,
The mane of white hair,
The proud mien, the w...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...se you thought this was a gentle art
follow this man on a moonless night
to the wretched bed he will have to make:
The Gaelic world stretches out under a hawthorn tree
and burns in the rain. This is its home,
its last frail shelter. All of it—
Limerick, the Wild Geese and what went before—
falters into cadence before he sleeps:
He shuts his eyes. Darkness falls on it....Read more of this...
by
Boland, Eavan
...A Gaelic bard they praise who in fourteen adjectives
Named the one indivisible soul of his glen;
For what are the bens and the glens but manifold qualities,
Immeasurable complexities of soul?
What are these isles but a song sung by island voices?
The herdsman sings ancestral memories
And the song makes the singer wise,
But only while he sings
Songs that were o...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...he corn-land reaper
And plaided mountaineer, -
To the cottage and the castle
The piper's song is dear.
Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch
O'er mountain, glen, and glade;
But the sweetest of all music
The pipes at Lucknow played!...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...l," leafy seat.
12. Noth: business; German, "Noth," necessity.
13. Bathe: both; Scottice, "baith."
14. Capel: horse; Gaelic, "capall;" French, "cheval;" Italian,
"cavallo," from Latin, "caballus."
15. Make a clerkes beard: cheat a scholar; French, "faire la
barbe;" and Boccaccio uses the proverb in the same sense.
16. "Gar" is Scotch for "cause;" some editions read, however,
"get us some".
17. Chalons: blankets, coverlets, made at Chalons in France.
18. Crock: pitcher,...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...dding, identifies the owners
(I gather M-bar was mourned by thousands of head).
It has its roots in meadows deeper than Gaelic,
my uncle's knowledge. Farmers longest in heaven
share slyly with him in my aunt's grave mischievous smile
that shines out of every object in my sight
in these loved timber rooms at the threshold of grass.
The depth in this marriage will heal the twentieth century....Read more of this...
by
Murray, Les
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