FROM GUGAN OF THE SAINTS

"My house is so silent!
  So silent you enter!"
"From Gugan of the Saints
  I am called and I answer.

"Your eyes are bright as berries,
  Your lips and your breast,
Have wakened the island
  This night from its rest."

"Ghost of the island,
  What brought you to me
And whose are the drowsy
  Cold brows that I see?"

"I am old as the race
  That my hauntings attend.
And this night I shall sleep
  For my task's at an end.

"The old gods when they fled
  From the conquering races
Built huts in the wilds,
  In the mountainy places.

"And their hands turned the sods
  And the thought faded then
Of they that were gods
  And the rest that were men.

"And their hands as they thickened
  With their days at the plough
Drew fire from the lips
  And delight from the brow.

"But the girls in their beauty,
  In love and in prayer,
Remembered the gods
  In the peace they had there.

"Yet they gave to the stranger
  That came from the West
Their eyes bright as berries,
  Their lips and their breast.

"They went to the stranger---
  The night is near gone,
The last one shall wed
  And my waking be done."

"Be quiet grey ghost
  With the moss on your brow:
I have wept long enough,
  It is time to cease now.

"I have lived with the gods.
  I have looked in my glass,
And seen in my eyes
  The things that must pass

"When I gave to the stranger
  That came from the west
My eyes bright as berries,
  My lips and my breast."

FRANK O'CONNOR

Source: The Irish Independent, 1928-04-21, p.128