This Sunday, March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day!

To me, besides celebrating the life of an inspiring and courageous man (Saint Patrick), St. Patrick’s Day also reminds me of my Irish roots and admonishes me to continue my journey of discovering new things of my Irish heritage. This journey has been something I have been pursuing for about the past ten years.

As my writing has proliferated this year and last, especially my poetry, I feel it pertinent to explore various Irish poetic forms and famous Irish poets to grow my breadth of poetry form and style, and to expand my mind and soul to include some famous Irish poets in my spirit.

This endeavor is too ambitious to cover in just a weekend, so I will try to sprinkle these posts in throughout the next few weeks as I learn and grow more and more in my understanding and experience.

I want to explore some of the complex Irish poetic forms beyond the limerick like the “Ae Freislighe” form, the “Aisling” poem, and even the “Cethramtu Rannaigheacht Mor” form. I want to share information about the form, syllable, rhyming structure, lines per stanza, and then share a poem I made using the form or type. I encourage you as well to try and create a poem in that form and then link (pingback) to the post.

Some of the most famous Irish poets include: W.B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Patrick Kavanagh, and even Oscar Wilde’s own mother, Jane Wilde.

Adam’s Curse, W.B. Yeats (1904)

We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, “A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.”
And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, “To be born woman is to know—
Although they do not talk of it at school—
That we must labour to be beautiful.”
I said, “It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.”

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

(This poem is in the public domain.)

Do you have a favorite Irish poem you love? Share below in the comments.

– Jason