Poem for St. Patrick’s Day
posted in Special Messages |This is the poem I read during the show on St. Patrick’s Day.
SEA-ICHOR
By Ella Young (1867-1956), Irish poet, mystic, storyteller, Gaelic scholar and political activist. From her book, “Marzilian,” 1938.
Climbing, curving, falling.
the green shore-wave is,
Lost, and begun,
Done and undone:
High in air a hawk is calling,
Calling me
Out of the wilds of the sea,
to the track of the sun.
Sea-hawk, and sea-wave, I run
With the running wave,
going back,
(Light-foot where sea-spume hisses
And coils by the mer-folk’s lisses,)
Back, through plumed abysses,
To move, slow-moving with the tide,
Through caves where fanged beasts hide,
Alert and lone,
In dim recesses,
While to its clangorous goal
The tide-marge presses:
And pale sea-maidens, in the foam,
Lean and comb
Long langorous tresses.
From that dusk under ground,
Striving, where light is found, and salty air,
To rise and dare,
The glinting sky to dare,
A wave I would be
Moon-hound of the sea
With a myriad comrades fair:
White hound, white hound to leap
From perilous steep to steep,
To gather strength and choose At utmost surge to lose,
Shuddering back to the deep
Without a sound:
To sleep.
To sleep, and awake new born
At the mouth of night or of morn,
Hound of the stars and the sun,
Hound of the moon, to run
In the glittering moon-leash bound.