STRAY VERSES

Love like heat and cold
  Pierces and passes soon,
Jealousy pierces too
  But stays in the marrow bone.



A young man at his father's fire
  Lords it and takes the best,
A old man at his son's fire
  Covers his knees with his breast.



'Tis unknown
Who will sleep with Edan Baun,
All that Edan Baun will own
Is that she never sleeps alone.



Conor the king
As little minds
Packing his poke
With Danish spoil
As in the woods
In autumn God
The russet apples
He lets fall.



'Tis my bitter grief the day doesn't last a year
  And boughs forever drop honey on teeming land
That light of heart I might sit on a bank again
  My boy at my side and a green bough in his hand.



The bird that shouts from the willow
Is a black and boisterous fellow,
A beak sharp and yellow,
A music wild and mellow.



A little bird
Has let one note
Fly from the tip
of his gold beak;
From the green bough
The blackbird now
Tosses his cry
Across the lake


Source: Lords and Commons, 1938, Cuala Press (reprint 1971), pp. 39-40