'I Am the Mountainy Singer' by Joseph Campbell

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I Am the Mountainy Singer
Joseph Campbell (Seosamh MacCathmhaoil)


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!

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_ananda_/]

Very beautiful. Thank you.

[comir.livejournal.com]

Oh, well! Thank you very much!

[jesuslovesbono.livejournal.com]

i like it...this isn't the same Joseph Campbell that wrote all the mythology stuff, is it?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty it isn't - this one was Irish, and died in 1944.

[sgrios.livejournal.com]

Did he write any poetry in Irish? I always love coming across Gaelic poetry.