Hugh Maguire

We have seen in the poem on Carroll’s sword, court poetry as it was in
the ninth century. This is court poetry as it was about the beginning
of the seventeenth. Maguire, one of the lieutenants of Hugh O’Neill,
the great Earl of Tyrone, was lord of Fermanagh about the year
1600. This was written when he was on a winter campaign in Cork.


Too cold this night for Hugh Maguire,
I tremble at the pounding rain;
  Alas that venomous cold
  Is my companion’s lot.

It is an anguish to my heart
To see the fiery torrents fall;
  He and the spiky frost,
  A horror to the mind.

The floodgates of the heavens yawn
Above the bosom of the clouds,
  And every pool a sea
  And murder in the air.

One thinks of the hare that haunts the wood
And of the salmon in the bay,
  Even the wild bird, one grieves
  To think they are abroad.

Then one remembers Hugh Maguire
Abroad in a strange land tonight
  Under the lightning’s glare
  And clouds with fury filled.

He in West Munster braves his doom
And without shelter strides between
  The drenched and shivering grass
  And the impetuous sky.

Cold on that tender blushing cheek
The fury of the springtime gales
  That toss the stormy rays
  Of stars about his head.

I can scarce bear to conjure up
The contour of his body crushed
  This rough and gloomy night
  In its cold iron suit.

The gentle and war-mastering hand
To the slim shaft of his cold spear
  By icy weather pinned—
  Cold is this night for Hugh.

The low banks of the swollen streams
Are flooded where the soldiers pass,
  The meadows stiff with ice,
  The horses cannot feed.

And yet as though to bring him warmth
And coax the brightness to his face
  Each wall that he attacks
  Sinks in a wave of fire.

The fury of the fire dissolves
The frost that sheaths the tranquil eye,
  And from his wrists the flame
  Thaws manacles of ice.

          Eochy O’Hussey


Source: O'Connor, Frank (tr); Kings, Lords, & Commons: An Anthology
from the Irish; 1962; London; Macmillan & Co; p.82