Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DEIRDRE IS DEAD, by WILLIAM SHARP


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DEIRDRE IS DEAD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The grey wind weeps, the grey wind weeps, the grey wind weeps
Last Line: Dust on her breast, dust on her eyes, the grey wind weeps!
Alternate Author Name(s): Macleod, Fiona
Subject(s): Brigid Of Ireland, Saint (453-523); Death; Deirdre; Drowning; Grief; Wind; Bridget, Saint; Brigit Of Kildare, Saint; Dead, The; Sorrow; Sadness


The grey wind weeps, the grey wind weeps, the grey wind weeps:
Dust on her breast, dust on her eyes, the grey wind weeps!

Cold, cold it is under the brown sod, and cold under the grey grass;
Here only the wet wind and the flittermice and the plovers pass:

I wonder if the wailing birds, and the soft hair-covered things
Of the air, and the grey wind hear what sighing song she sings

Down in the quiet hollow where the coiled twilights of hair
Are gathered into the darkness that broods on her bosom bare?

It is said that the dead sing, though we have no ears to hear,
And that whoso lists is lickt up of the Shadow, too, because of fear—

But this would give me no fear, that I heard a sighing song from her lips:
No, but as the green heart of an upthrust towering billow slips

Down into the green hollow of the ingathering wave,
So would I slip, and sink, and drown, in her grassy grave.

For is not my desire there, hidden away under the cloudy night
Of her long hair that was my valley of whispers and delight—

And in her two white hands, like still swans on a frozen lake,
Hath she not my heart that I have hidden there for dear love's sake?

Alas, there is no sighing song, no breath in the silence there:
Not even the white moth that loves death flits through her hair

As the bird of Brigid, made of foam and the pale moonwhite wine
Of dreams, flits under the sombre windless plumes of the pine.

I hear a voice crying, crying, crying: is it the wind
I hear, crying its old weary cry time out of mind?

The grey wind weeps, the grey wind weeps, the grey wind weeps:
Dust on her breast, dust on her eyes, the grey wind weeps!





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