Prayer at Dawn

After the great early religious poetry, most religious poetry in Irish
seems to me conventional and pietistic. This strikes me as having the
real passion of early Irish religion behind it.

I was taught prayer as a child, to bend the knee,
And beat the breast, asking his peace of Christ;
To wake with delight at the first sweet call of the bird
In praise of the Lord God punished and crucified.

Woe for this sleep on me now and my bed not readied at
	dawn!
And I no longer in haste to praise the might of the King,
Beating my breast and bowing my knees with grief
When the first wind wakes the first bird to sing.

When the cock starts suddenly up with a cry,
And fish rise from the bottom to the water’s height,
And buried sparks ascend in the morning fire—
Woe, woe for this slumber of yours, O senseless soul!—

O senseless soul! Great is the folly of sleep
When sparks rise from the hoarded flame at dawn,
And boughs are stirred, and leaves are stirred in the wind
And even the birds are singing the Lord God’s praise!


          Diarmuid O’Shea


Source: O'Connor, Frank (tr); Kings, Lords, & Commons: An Anthology
from the Irish; 1962; London; Macmillan & Co; p.126