Joseph Campbell

“ And the thoughts that rise in my crazed head
When the cloud is low and the wind’s dead.
Where you see only clay and stones
I see swords and blanching bones. . . .
But I’ll leave you now—it’s gone six,
And the smoke is curling over the ricks.
And it’s hardly like that the land-shark
Will trouble the furrows after dark.
A CRADLE-SONG
Sleep, white love, sleep,
A cedarn cradle holds thee,
And twilight, like a silver-woven coverlid,
Enfolds thee. ”

“ On Mary’s white breast.
King, priest and prophet—
A child, and no more—
Adonai the Maker!
Come, let us adore.
THE SILENCE OF UNLABOURED FIELDS
The silence of unlaboured fields
Lies like a judgment on the air:
A human voice is never heard:
The sighing grass is everywhere—
The sighing grass, the shadowed sky,
The cattle crying wearily!
Where are the lowland people gone?
Where are the sun-dark faces now?
The love that kept the quiet hearth,
The strength that held the speeding plough?
Grasslands and lowing herds are good,
But better human flesh and blood! ”

“ MY LITTLE DARK LOVE
My little dark love is a wineberry,
As swarth and as sweet, I hold;
But as the dew on the wineberry
Her heart is a-cold.
I would her love were as warm as the light
That lives in her eye of grey,
And then my heart would know the peace
It dreams in the hills away. ”

“ Of Gall and Gael.
I have seen the spume
On the dead priest’s lips,
And the “holy fire”
On the spars of ships;
And the shooting stars
On Barthelmy’s Night,
Blanching the dark
With ghostly light;
And the corpse-candle
Of the seer’s dream,
Bigger in girth
Than a weaver’s beam;
And the shy hearth-fairies
About the grate,
Blowing the turves
To a whiter heat.
All things on earth
To me are known,
For I have the gift
Of the Murrain Stone!
WHO BUYS LAND
Who buys land buys many stones,
Who buys flesh buys many bones;
Who buys eggs buys many shells,
Who buys love buys nothing else. ”

“ Dark and fierce and true—
Wanderer of the mountain,
Winger of the blue!
A PROPHECY
“The loins of the Galldacht
Shall wither like grass”—
Strange words I heard said
At the Fair of Dun-eas.
“A bard shall be born
Of the seed of the folk,
To break with his singing
The bond and the yoke.
“A sword, white as ashes,
Shall fall from the sky,
To rise, red as blood,
On the charge and the cry.
“Stark pipers shall blow,
Stout drummers shall beat,
And the shout of the north
Shall be heard in the street.
“The strong shall go down,
And the weak shall prevail,
And a glory shall sit
On the sign of the Gaodhal. ”

“ 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 labouring at his rhymes,
The ewe in the lambing shed. ”

“ Kneeling down in the dark
She travailed without a cry,
And gave him the mothering kiss
Between the earth and the sky.
He licks cuckoo-spittle, they say,
And eats the dung of the roads,
Mocking the journeymen
As they pass by with their loads. ”

“ Laid the child upon the earth.
Then the dark-eyed rose did blow,
And rivers leaped from out the snow.
Earth grew lyrical: the grass,
As the light winds chanced to pass—
Than magian music more profound—
Murmured in a maze of sound. ”

“ And I would sing of the Christ
Who followed the paths thro’ the mountains
To eat at the people’s tryst.
He loved the sun-dark people
As the young man loves his bride,
And he moved among their thatches,
And for them he was crucified. ”

“ Living or dead?
The boys are loafing
Without game or caper;
And the dark piper
Is gone home with the birds.
EVERY SHUILER IS CHRIST
Every shuiler is Christ,
Then be not hard or cold:
The bit that goes for Christ
Will come a hundred-fold. ”

“ With that dark beauty given thee,
That thou must crush the rose
That blows
So rarely on the tree!
LAMENT OF PADRAIC MOR MAC CRUIMIN OVER HIS SONS
I am Padraic Mor mac Cruimin,
Son of Domhnall of the Shroud,
Piper, like my kind before me,
To the household of MacLeod.
Death is in the seed of Cruimin—
All my music is a wail;
Early graves await the poets
And the pipers of the Gael. ”

“ Westwards, a clump of firtrees silhouetted against a bank of blue cumulus cloud;
The June afterglow like a sea behind.
The mountain trail, white and clear where human feet have worn it, zigzagging higher and higher till it loses itself in the southern skyline.
A patch of young corn to my right hand, swaying and swaying continuously, tho’ hardly an air stirs. ”

“ Hills that were dark
At sparing-time last night
Now in the dawn-ring
Glimmer cold and white.
I AM THE GILLY OF CHRIST
I am the gilly of Christ,
The mate of Mary’s Son;
I run the roads at seeding time,
And when the harvest’s done.
I sleep among the hills,
The heather is my bed ”

“ The plough-hand is a hand of power,
Nobler than gold, brighter than day.
Then let the leper lift his head,
The cripple dance, the captive sing,
The beggar reap and eat his bread—
He is no baser than a king!
’TIS PRETTY TAE BE IN BAILE-LIOSAN
’Tis pretty tae be in Baile-liosan,
’Tis pretty tae be in green Magh-luan;
’Tis prettier tae be in Newtownbreda,
Beeking under the eaves in June.
The cummers are out wi’ their knitting and spinning,
The thrush sings frae his crib on the wa’,
And o’er the white road the clachan caddies
Play at their marlies and goaling-ba’. ”