Autumn in Dublin

At Notre Dame


So well I love these woods I half believe


There is an intimate fellowship we share;


So many years we breathed the same brave air,
_

Kept spring in common, and were one to grieve _


Summer’s undoing, saw the fall bereave


Us both of beauty, together learned to bear


The weight of winter. When I go other where —


An unreturning journey — I would leave


Some whisper of a song in these old oaks,


A footfall lingering till some distant summer


Another singer down these paths may stray —


The destined one a golden future cloaks —


And he may love them, too, this graced newcomer,


And may remember that I passed this way.


Rev. Charles L. O’Donnell, CSC

On Raglan Road   

On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew

That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;

I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,

And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day. 

On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge

Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion's pledge,

The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay –

O I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away.

I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that's known To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say.

With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May.

 

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow

That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay –

When the angel woos the clay he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day. 

Patrick Kavanagh