Lyra Celtica: An Anthology of Representative Celtic Poetry

Lament for a Little Child 146 The Swimmer 148 The Dance 151 From “The Water-Nymph and the Boy” 152 A Casual Song 154 The Pity of it 155 The Old 157

Of recent years we have had many works of the greatest value in Celtic ethnology, philology, history, archæology, art, legendary ballads and romances, folk-lore, and literature....

The most marked Celtic national homogeneity is to be found in Wales. Wales has ever persisted, and still persists in her moat and her drawbridge. In the preservation of her lang...

“No other human tribe,” says Renan, “has carried so much mystery into love. No other has conceived with more delicacy the ideal of woman, nor been more dominated by her. It is a...

The sounds of the winds in the elms, like the strings of A harp being played, The note of the blackbird that claps with the wings of Delight in the glade.

He is returned with his fame. I feel the right hand of his wars. But I must rest beside the rock till my soul returns from my fear. O let the harp be near! Raise the song, ye da...

Brightly glitters the tops of the oak; incessant is the tempest; The bees are high in their flight, brittle is the charr’d brushwood, The wanton is apt to laugh too frequently.

Thy beauty! ah, the eyes that pierce him thro’ Then melt as in a dream; The voice that sings the mysteries of the blue And all that Be and Seem!

Rose o’ the world, they have words galore, For wide’s the swing of my mother’s door: And soft they speak of my darkened brain, But what do they know of my heart’s dear pain?

Who would linger idle, Dallying would lie, When wind and wave, a bridal Celebrating, fly? Let him plunge among them, Who hath wooed enough, Flirted with them, sung them, In the...

I have heard the curlew crying On a lonely moor and mere; And the sea-gull’s shriek in the gloaming Is a lonely sound in the ear: And I’ve heard the brown thrush mourning For he...

The stag is airy, brisk, and light, And no pomp has he; Though his garb’s the fashion quite, Never haughty he: Yet a mantle’s round him spread, Not soon threadbare, then shed, A...

“And my shriek was like the splitting of an ice-reef, And I sank among my hair, and all my palm Was moist and warm where the little hand had filled it.

O Thou that on the hills and wastes of Night art Shepherd, Whose folds are flameless moons and icy planets, Whose darkling way is gloomed with ancient sorrows: Whose breath lies...

In this shrill hush of quietude, The ear conceived a severing cry. Almost it let the sound elude, When chuckles three, a warble shy, From hazels of the garden came, Near by the...

“Oh, why didst thou stay so long, Juan? Five years I waited for thee.” “I vowed by our troth, that living or dead I should come back yet to thine arms and thy bed, And my vow I...

When the pilgrim of strange lore Haunts thy pale phantasmal shore, Dreams and absolution grant, Priestess thou and hierophant! Fold thy wings and come to me, Sleep! thou soul’s...

Holy Saint Patrick, father of our faith, Belov’d of God! Shield thy dear Church from the impending scaith, Or, if the rod Must scourge it yet again, inspire and raise To emprise...

“The swans are singing again,” said to one another the gods. And looking downwards, for my dreams had taken me to some fair and far Valhalla, I saw below me an iridescent bubble...

Every lover of Irish poetry is familiar with “The Fairies” of the late William Allingham. He is an Irish rather than distinctively a Celtic poet in the strict sense of the word;...

This prolific writer, often designated an Irish-American poet, through the accident of his enforced exile to, and long residence in, the United States, is inadequately represent...

The foremost Scoto-Celtic poet of our time, was born in Glasgow, 1841. It would be needless to give particulars concerning the life and work of so eminent a contemporary. Lovers...

This fine Manx ballad of “Graih my Chree” appeared this year in the first number of _London Home_, to the editor and proprietor of which, as well as to Mr Hall Caine, I am indeb...