Bist du bei mir

Bist du bei mir, geh’ ich mit Freuden
zum Sterben und zu meiner Ruh’.
Ach, wie vergnügt wär’ so mein Ende,
es drückten deine lieben schönen Hände
mir die getreuen Augen zu!

If you are with me, then I will gladly go
to my death and to my rest.
Ah, how pleasant would my end be,
if your dear, fair hands shut
my faithful eyes!

On A Warm Sunny Day

Oh to be a cat
and stalk the undegrowth,
prowl the hedgerows,
and then home, to nap.

— Anon

The Fields of Athenry

By a lonely prison wall
I heard a sweet voice calling,
‘Oh Danny, they have taken you away.
For you stole Travelian’s corn,
That your babes might see the dawn,
Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay.’

Fair lie the fields of Athenry
Where we stood to watch the small freebirds fly.
Our love grew with the spring,
We had dreams and songs to sing
As we wandered through the fields of Athenry.

I heard a young man calling
‘Nothing matters, Jenny, when your’e free
‘Gainst the famine and the crown,
I rebelled, they ran me down,
Now you must raise our children without me.’

On the windswept harbour wall,
She watched the last star rising
As the prison ship sailed out accross the sky
But she will watch and hope and pray,
For her love in Botany bay
whilst she is lonely in the fields of Athenry

Liadan Laments Cuirithir

Joyless
         what I have done:
         to torment my darling one?

         But for fear
         of the Lord of Heaven
         he would lie with me here.

         Not vain,
         it seemed, our choice,
         to seek Paradise through pain.

         I am Liadan,
         I loved Cuirithir
         as truly as they say.

         The short time
         I passed with him
         how sweet his company!

         The forest trees
         sighed music for us;
         and the flaring blue of seas.

         What folly
         to turn him against me
         who had treated me most gently

         No whim
         or scruple of mine
         should have come between

         Us, for above
         all others, without shame
         I declare him my heart’s love.

         A roaring flame
         has consumed my heart;
         I will not live without him.


circa 7th century, trans. by John Montague

The Silver Swan

The silver swan, who living had no note,
When death approached unlocked her silent throat,
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sung her first and last and sung no more:
Farewell all joys, O death come close mine eyes,
More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.

Anon (c. 1600)