Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, IRELAND: INVOCATION, by KATHRYN WHITE RYAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

IRELAND: INVOCATION, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: On your keening waters like gray eyes tear-misted
Last Line: Ireland!
Subject(s): Ireland; Irish


On your keening waters like gray eyes tear-misted,
On your green fields that harvest the ruins of castles broken, rook-haunted,
On your thatched roofs pierced by steel rains of misfortune,
Let there be peace,
Ireland!

By the centuries like furled unflung banners that wrapped you in sorrows,
By your broad-shouldered sons and they ever stooping to enter the black holds of
ships,
By your strong-limbed tall daughters and they ever waving farewell and turning
back to the hovel,
Let there be peace,
Ireland!

By the green of your sterile hilltops and the green of your tired hedges
trailing the empty highways,
By your whimsies that glint above heartache like butterflies over dead bodies,
By the story that wings from the sound of the names Thurles, Ballynarra,
Listowel,
Let there be peace,
Ireland!

By the past and the strange miscasting that made you a hater,
By the present filled with a crying and no one to tell if a nation is born or is
dying,
By the future -- if lost to be chill with abasement, if won to be sad with
attainment --
O let there be peace,
Ireland!





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