How Well for the Birds

This version of “How Well for the Birds” was collected by a friend
of mine who offered a prize of sixpence to some school-children for
the best poem they could collect in their own homes. This won the
sixpence!

How well for the birds that can rise in their flight
And settle together on the one bough at night,
It is not so with me and the boy of my heart,
Each morning the sun finds us rising apart.

How well for the flowers when my sweetheart goes walking,
How well for the house. when he sits in it talking,
How well for the woman with whom he’ll be sleeping,
Her morning star and her star of evening.

As white as the sloebush in spring is my darling,
As bright as the seabirds from wave to wave swarming,
As the sun fills the ocean all day with its gleaming,
Rising and setting he fills all my dreaming.


Source: O'Connor, Frank (tr); Kings, Lords, & Commons: An
Anthology from the Irish; 1962; London; Macmillan & Co; p.131