Irish Poet Quotes

Ah! my heart is weary waiting,
Waiting for the May:
Waiting for the pleasant rambles
Where the fragrant hawthorn brambles,
Where the woodbine alternating,
Scent the dewy way;
Ah! my heart is weary, waiting,
Waiting for the May.

The reporter told us how
The cross woman's peasant origins
Came out at the last, shouting
At her executioners 'I have been
A mother to you and this is how
You thank me for it.'

Women and birds are able to see without turning their heads, and that is indeed a necessary provision for they are both surrounded by enemies.

A man is original when he speaks the truth that has always been known to all good men.

Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh
Didn't I seize the fire of ideas and make them leap, tear, fly, sing

A man who keeps a diary pays, Due toll to many tedious days; But life becomes eventful—then, His busy hand forgets the pen. Most books, indeed, are records less Of fulness than of emptiness.

William Allingham
William Allingham
A man should never boast of his courage, nor a woman of her virtue, lest their doing so should be the cause of calling their possession of them into question.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
I was most incorrigibly devoted to versifying, and all my spouse's wholesome admonitions had no manner of effect on me; in short, I believe this scribbling itch is an incurable disease...

When the clouds shake their hyssops, and the rain
Like holy water falls upon the plain,
'Tis sweet to gaze upon the springing grain
And see your harvest born.
And sweet the little breeze of melody
The blackbord puffs upon the budding tree,
While the wild poppy lights upon the lea
And blazes 'mid the corn.

Francis Ledwidge
Francis Ledwidge
Human nature is a mystic duality, half animal, half angel; a worm, a God; and the contrast and strife between the two natures is never so marked as in the gifted.

The wild geese—the wild geese,—'tis long since they flew,
O'er the billowy ocean's bright bosom of blue.

But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.

Charles Wolfe
Charles Wolfe
What is it our mammas bewitches
To plague us little boys with breeches?

To grow
a second tongue, as
harsh a humiliation
as twice to be born.

Whatsoever contradicts my sense,
I hate to see, and never can believe.

Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon
Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon
Love, I thought to myself abstractedly. Not 'This is love' or 'Is this love?' Not a sentence, not a certainty, not a thought with moving parts or direction. Just love, all of it, as it is. Whether it's enough or not. Wthether it's real or we're making it up. However shoddy it gets, or bent out of shape. It's still extraordinary. However foolish, however vain. However badly it ends. Love.

Some of us made it
To the forest edge, but many of us did not
Make it, although their unborn children did—
Such as you whom the camp commandant branded
Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. Jesus, break his fall:
There—but for the clutch of luck—go we all.

It is only the happy who are hard, Gilles. I think perhaps it is better for the world if - if one has a broken heart. One is quick to recognise it, elsewhere. And one has time to think about other people, if there is nothing left to hope for any more.

The country wears their going like a scar,
Today their relatives save to support and
Send others in planes for the new diaspora.

It won't be long before we'll be deafened by the screeches of whistles being blown by whistle-blowers blowing the whistle on themselves.

Joseph O'Neill (writer)
Joseph O'Neill (writer)
For the future I cease, Death approaches with little delay,
Since the dragons of Laune and Lane and Lee are destroyed;
I'll follow the heroes far from the light of day,
The princes my ancestors followed before Christ died.

There has been no lack of courage in Ireland; there never is, but even our courage has a fatal quality.

I love the sweet linnet, the lark, and the thrush, And the gold-throated blackbird with a song in each bush ; The finch and the robin, I love everyone, But not the pied magpie that's walking alone.