Poets From Ireland

"Of the persistent mutilation by government soldiers, there can be no shadow of a doubt, should the system maintain forced labor on this scale, i believe the entire population will be extinct in thirty years."

"The Indians who actually prefer their forest freedom to the whip, the cepo, the bullet and the raping of their children are spoken of in terms of reprobation as lazy, idle and worthless - and this by men who never leave their hammocks all day, and whose only "work" is to work crime. They have not cultivated a square yard of ground or done one useful thing with their hands since they came here. Their only use - their sole purpose - is to terrorise and rob. And this is the function of the paid employees; the higher staff of a great English Company! Truly Mr Arana has planted a strange rubber tree on English soil!"

"Crippen is caught too! but what a farce it seems - a whole world shaken by the pursuit of a man who killed his wife - and here are lots and lots of gentlemen I meet daily at dinner who not only kill their wives, but burn other people's wives alive - or cut their arms and legs off and pull the babies from their breasts to throw in the river or leave to starve in the forest - or dash their brains out against trees. Why should civilisation stand aghast at the crime of a Crippen and turn wearily away when the poor Indians of the Putumayo, or the Bantu of the Congo, turn bloodstained, appalling hands and terrified eyes to those who alone can aid?"

"if you ever attempt to 'Sir Roger' me again I'll enter into an alliance with the Aranas and Pablo Zumaeta to cut you off someday in the woods of St. James' Park, and convert you into a rubber worker to our joint profit"

"In 1887 i spend several months on the upper Congo, and i traveled over some of the grounds i now revisit in the absence of 10 years, the country was thickly populated, frequent and populous towns, but many of the inhabitants have been killed by the government, man and woman."

"On Sunday evening, natives brought me a mutilated lad, who's right hand had been hacked of quite recently, the cold thread was a century of lalu longa, a Belgian trading society, when i asked why they had not appealed to their commissar, i heard from them, well it is the commissar, it is the Bula Matari, who does these things to us."

"Storytelling has always been the poor relation. You’ve Irish music, singing and dancing, but storytelling was never on the national airwaves have never done anything for it. Media in general has rarely done anything for it. Anytime I go abroad, I make that point absolutely clear, that if storytelling survives in this country, it’s by accident: I’m not in the least sentimental about that point."

"America has done more for Irish storytelling than Ireland, which is an awful thing to say, but Ireland has let storytelling down, so much so that I have been collecting and collecting, regardless. I have never had help, it has all come out of my own pocket, but now I have a collection, thousands and thousands of hours of recorded material. What will I do with it? I guarantee you it won’t go to an Irish institution anyway."

"Softly, O midnight hours! Move softly o'er the bowers Where lies in happy sleep a girl so fair: For ye have power, men say, Our hearts in sleep to sway And cage cold fancies in a moonlight snare."

"Look up! the proof is round you written large; Your Faith is in the balance wanting found; Your shipless seas confess it; bridgeless streams; Your wasted wealth of ore, and moor, and bay. Beneath the Upas shade of Faith depraved All things lie dead -- wealth, comfort, freedom, power."

"The warrior for the True, the Right, Fights in Love's name; The love that lures thee from that fight Lures thee to shame: That love which lifts the heart, yet leaves The spirit free,— That love, or none, is fit for one Man-shaped like thee."

"Memory, in widow's weeds, with naked feet stands on a tombstone."

"O Love-star of the unbeloved March, When cold and shrill, Forth flows beneath a low, dim-lighted arch The wind that beats sharp crag and barren hill, And keeps unfilmed the lately torpid rill!"

"There is no remedy for time misspent; No healing for the waste of idleness, Whose very languor is a punishment Heavier than active souls can feel or guess."

"How blue were Ariadne's eyes When, from the sea's horizon line, At eve, she raised them on the skies! My Psyche, bluer far are thine."

"Man should be ever better than he seems."

"When I was young, I said to Sorrow, "Come and I will play with thee!" He is near me now all day, And at night returns to say, "I will come again to-morrow— I will come and stay with thee.""

"Art thou a type of beauty, or of power, Of sweet enjoyment, or disastrous sin? For each thy name denoteth, Passion flower! O no! thy pure corolla's depth within We trace a holier symbol; yea, a sign 'Twixt God and man; a record of that hour When the expiatory act divine Cancelled that curse which was our mortal dower. It is the Cross!"

"If we allow one of the finest and the richest languages in Europe, which, fifty years ago, was spoken by nearly four million Irishmen, to die out without a struggle, it will be an everlasting disgrace, and a blighting stigma upon our nationality."

"When we speak of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicising the Irish Nation', we mean it, not as a protest against imitating what is best in the English people, for that would be absurd, but rather to show the folly of neglecting what is Irish, and hastening to adopt, pell-mell, and indiscriminately, everything that is English, simply because it is English."

"The Gaelic League is founded not upon hatred of England, but upon love of Ireland. Hatred is a negative passion; it is powerful - a very powerful destroyer; but it is useless for building up. Love, on the other hand, is like faith; it can move mountains, and faith, we have mountains to move."

"My aim was to save the Irish language from death - it was dying then as fast as ever it could died - and that ambition did not lend itself to English writing except for propaganda purposes ..."

"I do not think there is much to add to what I have said here, except to observe that it is a national duty - I had almost said a moral one - for all those who speak Irish to speak it to their children also, and to take care that the growing generation shall know it as well as themselves: and in general, that it is the duty of all Irish-speakers to use their own language amongst themselves, and on all possible occasions, except where it will not run. For, if we allow one of the finest and richest languages in Europe, which, fifty years ago, was spoken by nearly four million Irishmen, to die out without a struggle, it will be an everlasting disgrace and a blighting stigma upon our nationality."

"Scant had he thus spoken: when that from mountenus hil toppe Al wee see the giaunt, with his hole flock lowbylyke hagling. Namde the shepeherd Polyphem, to the wel knowne sea syd aproching. A fowle fog monster, great swad, deprived of eyesight: His fists and stalcking are propt with trunck of a pynetree. His flock him doe folow, this charge him chieflye rejoyceth. In grief al his coomfort on neck his whistle is hanged. When that to the seasyde the swayne Longolius hobbled, Hee rinst in the water the drosse from his late bored eyelyd. His tusk grimly gnashing, in seas far waltred, he groyleth; Scantly doo the water surmounting reache to the shoulders. But we being feared, from that coast hastly remooved, And with us embarcked the Greekish suitur, as amply His due request merited, wee chopt off softly the cables. Swift wee sweepe the sea froth with nimble lustilad oare striefe. The noise he perceaved then he turning warily lifteth. But when he consider’d that wee prevented his handling, And that from foloing our ships the fluds hye revockt him, Loud the lowbie brayed with belling monsterous eccho; The water hee shaketh, with his out cryes Italie trembleth, And with a thick thundring the fyerde forge Aetna rebounded. Then runs from mountayns and woods the rowncival helswarme Of Cyclopan lurdens to the shoars in coompanie clustring. Far we se them distaunt, us grimly and vainely beholding. Up to the sky reatching, the breetherne swish swash of Aetna. A folck moaste fulsoom, for sight most fitlye resembling Trees of loftye cipers, with thickned multitud oak rowes; Or Joves great forest, or woods of mightye Diana. Feare thear us enforced with forcing speediness headlong To swap off our cables, and fal to the seas at aventure."

"Wee leave Creete Country; and our sayls unwrapped uphoysing, With woodden vessel thee rough seas deepelye we furrowe. When we fro land harbours too mayne seas gyddye dyd enter Voyded of al coast sight with wild fluds roundly bebayed, A watrye clowd gloomming, ful above mee clampred, apeered, A sharp storme menacing, from sight beams soonye rejecting: Thee flaws with rumbling, thee wroght fluds angrye doe jumble: Up swel thee surges, in chauffe sea plasshye we tumble: With the rayn, is daylight through darcknesse mostye bewrapped, And thundring lightbolts from torneclowds fyrye be flasshing. Wee doe mis oure passadge through fel fluds boysterus erring, Oure pilot eke, Palinure, through dymnesse clowdye bedusked In poinccts of coompasse dooth stray with palpabil erroure. Three dayes in darcknesse from bright beams soony repealed, And three nights parted from lightning starrye we wandered, The fourth day foloing thee shoare, neere setled, apeered And hils uppeaking; and smoak swift steamed to the skyward. Oure sayls are strucken, we roa Furth with speedines hastye, And the sea by our mariners with the oars cleene canted is harrowd On shoars of strophades from storme escaped I landed, For those plats Strophades in languadge Greekish ar highted, With the sea coucht Islands. Where foule bird foggye Celaeno And Harpy is nestled: sence franckling Phines his housroume From theym was sunderd, and fragments plentye remooved. No plage more perilous, no monster grislye more ouglye, No stigian vengaunce lyke too theese carmoran haggards. Theese fouls lyke maydens are pynde with phisnomye palish; With ramd cramd garbadge, thire gorges draftye be gulled, With tallants prowling, theire face wan withred in hunger, With famin upsoaken."

"A wind fane changabil huf puffe Always is a woomman."

"Now manhood and garbroyls I chaunt, and martial horror. I blaze thee captayne first from Troy cittye repairing, Lyke wandring pilgrim too famosed Italie trudging, And coast of Lavyn: soust wyth tempestuus hurlwynd, On land and sayling, bi Gods predestinat order: But chiefe through Junoes long fostred deadlye revengment. Martyred in battayls, ere towne could statelye be buylded, Or Gods theare setled: thence flitted thee Latin ofspring, Thee mote of old Alban: thence was Rome peereles inhaunced. My muse shew the reason, what grudge or what furye kendled Of Gods thee Princesse, through so cursd mischevus hatred, Wyth sharp sundrye perils too tugge so famus a captayne. Such festred rancoure doo Sayncts celestial harbour? A long buylt citty theare stood, Carthago so named, From the mouth of Tybris, from land eke of Italye seaverd, Possest wyth Tyrians, in streingh and ritches abounding. Theare Juno, thee Princes her Empyre wholye reposed, Her Samos owtcasting, heere shee dyd her armonye settle, And warlick chariots, heere chiefly her joylitye raigned. This towne shee labored too make thee gorgeus empresse, Of towns and regions, her drift yf destenye furthred. But this her hole meaning a southsayd mysterie letted That from thee Troians should branch a lineal ofspring, Which would thee Tyrian turrets quite batter a sunder, And Libye land likewise wyth warlick victorye conquoure."

"Poetry's only crucial attribute is rhythm. This is its heartbeat.This makes it memorable. If the rhythm falters , then the poem dies of heart failure."

"What good poetry and good prose have in common is vitality of rhythm ."

"By definition , if prose is a river, poetry is a fountain."

"If I knew where poems come from . I'd go there."

"Does Ms Battersby look at the photograph of Dermot Healy and say: This is an old man's effort not fashionable like Neil Jordan's so I'll disembowel him because that's how I feel today? We were all privileged to read Ms Battersby's ghost story in The Irish Times Magazine a few months ago. It was a revelation. Sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, it was the worst piece of creative writing I have ever read in a long life of reading. Truly. Stunningly bad. I have used it in a workshop as an example of how to avoid writing “Shite and onions”. That this person has the temerity to sit in negative judgment on one of the great masters of Irish writing should not pass without comment."

"He plays a game of his own, where different rules apply, and yet he commands his place. When you read his work, you have to adjust the straight line of the hierarchy just to fit him in."

"The heir of Patrick Kavanagh"

"I like the idea of stopping mid-sentence, like Graham Greene."

"Ireland's finest living novelist"

"Without the reader there would be no writer."

"There isn't any distinction between a reader and a writer – reading is so much a part of it."

"I'm no good at dinner parties. I feel very uneasy at them."

"The writer's writer"

"I often find poems hand written in old abandoned notebooks."

"I'm always fascinated by etymology."

"There is something of the eternally mischievous child about Healy, though he approaches the art of writing with all the seriousness of a religious vocation."

"I know writing is what I do but I still don't see myself as one."

"A Celtic Hemingway"

"Probably the finest memoir … written in Ireland in the last 50 years"

"I rang up this publisher and they asked me what I was doing at the time. I told them I was a house-painter, so first of all they had me come round and paint the place. Only later did they consider my work and Banished Misfortune was published."

"It is a costly thing living here to fight the erosion. The sea is constantly threatening to cut into the coastline and sweep all this away. Every year we have to haul stones up here to repair the damage and plug the holes. It's a full-time job."

"[Kafka] taught me a lot about the normal and the abnormal, and the distance between them. [...] He's out there by himself. You get the jump in the feet when you read certain passages by him. That's the mark of truly great writing. It gives you the jump in the feet."

"The Bible has entered much of my work as have Latin and Greek mythology and verse."