The Old Woman

AS a white candle

In a holy place,

So is the beauty

Of an aged face.

As the spent radience

Of the winter sun,

So is a woman

With her travail done.

Her brood gone from her,

And her thoughts as still

As the waters

Under a ruined mill.

Joseph Campbell (Seosamh MacCathmhaoil)

I Am the Mountainy Singer

I AM the mountainy singer--

The voice of the peasant's dream,

The cry of the wind on the wooded hill,

The leap of the fish in the stream.

Quiet and love I sing--

The carn on the mountain crest,

The cailin in her lover's arms,

The child at its mother's breast.

Beauty and peace I sing--

The fire on the open hearth,

The cailleach spinning at her wheel,

The plough in the broken earth.

Travail and pain I sing--

The bride on the childing bed,

The dark man laboring at his rhymes,

The ewe in the lambing shed.

Sorrow and death I sing--

The canker come on the corn,

The fisher lost in the mountain loch,

The cry at the mouth of morn.

No other life I sing,

For I am sprung of the stock

That broke the hilly land for bread,

And built the nest in the rock!

Joseph Campbell (Seosamh MacCathmhaoil)