Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE STRANGERS, by NORA (CHESSON) HOPPER



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE STRANGERS, by             Poem Explanation         Poet's Biography
First Line: They bought her, not with irish knife
Last Line: That dwell in donegal.
Subject(s): Aliens; Birds; Strangers; Extraterrestrials


THEY bought her, not with Irish knife,
But with their Danish gold:
They brought her, from her father's hall,
From faces kind to faces cold
In her new lord's hold.
They laid strange hands on her joyous life,
And bade the bird in her breast to sing
An altered song with a folded wing:
And the Irish maid was a Danish wife
In the Strangers' Forts (and she heard, she heard
All night the cry of an alien bird
That sang with an alien call,
But would not sing for the Strangers
Who dwelt in Donegal).

They took her over running water,
And loosed our kindly chain:
And Danish son and Danish daughter
She bare unto her Dane.
She sang their songs, and in the singing
Her childish tunes forgot:
And she remembered not
The kindlier hearts that years were bringing
Joy and pain
That were none of hers, though deep the gladness
And keen the pain —
For she knew no grief but the near-hand sadness
That vexed the Dane:
And her joy was the joy of an outland lord,
And gay she sat at the outland board
In the highest hall,
(But it would not sing for a Danish call,
The bird in her breast
That must make its nest
In the Strangers' Forts, with the Strangers
That dwelt in Donegal).

She bore him three fair daughters,
And one tall son, whose name
The Danish minstrels lifted up,
Even as one lifts a golden cup
Filled to the lips with fame.
Then over the shadowy waters
She saw Hy-Brasail gleam —
And she laid her down on her carven bed,
Most white, and fair, and sweet to see
As a dream remembered piteously
When we grow too old to dream.
And "Being but dead" —
She said, "I bid you carry me
Like a maiden back to my own country,
Not like a wife long wed.
Take off my girdle and jewels all,
My shining keys, and my Irish knife:
Bid my maids go at my daughter's call,
And my heathen thrall
May serve my son,
For my toils are done,
And no other care
I have save this, that ye bare me back
On the homeward track,
With a straight blue gown for my only wear,
With folded fingers and unbound hair,
As I was ne'er a wife,
For I cannot sleep, being dead,
In the Strangers' Forts, with the Strangers
That dwelt in Donegal."
(And dead she lay, and above her bed
A bird's voice cried, till the light o'erhead
Grew dark to the evenfall.
And its cry was the cry of the Strangers
That dwelt in Donegal.)

Now, her alien kin, and her alien mate,
We held deep in hate:
We that were once her own,
We from whose griefs her heart had grown,
And whose joys, mavrone,
Passed by her door — and she had not known.
We that by cold hearths sat alone
When her threads were shorn
By envious hands of a Danish Norn.
And, mavrone, mavrone, but we liked it ill
That they did her dying will:
And bore her homewards as she had said
With empty hands and unveiled head,
Like a maiden still.
And we hated more when they raised no wail
Above her cairn,
Standing dumb and stern,
Drinking "Godspeed" in her burial-ale
While our women shrieked; and with faces pale
Stood and cursed our mountain ferne.
And now we are sad, for our hate is shed
Abroad on the wings of the wind, and dead
As Eivir, as Eivir. And home to his hall
Scathlessly goes the Dane.
And the cock we had reared, the cock that's red,
Crows not on his castle-wall.
(But the bird, the bird we loved best of all,
It sits and sings in his lonely hall,
Mavrone! for her bosom-bird
And its singing voice we have not heard
O'er her grave in the Holy Isle:
Nor yet in the dusk o'er her maiden bed,
In the hold where she was born,
It sings, by night or morn.
But it sings most sweet and clear
For her Danish kin to hear:
And its song is sad,
And its song is glad,
Like a sigh that grows to a smile.)

For she loved us both, but death turns love cold,
And they bring us back our dead to hold,
So they loved her best, the Strangers
That dwell in Donegal.





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