The Dark Palace - Alice Milligan

There beams no light from thy hall to-night,

                                     Oh, House of Fame;

No mead-vat seethes and no smoke upwreathes

                                     O’er the hearth’s red flame;

No high bard sings for the joy of thy kings,

                                     And no harpers play;

No hostage moans as thy dungeon rings

                                     As in Muircherteach’s day.

Fallen! fallen! to ruin all in

                                     The covering mould;

The painted yew, and the curtains blue,

                                     And the cups of gold;

The linen, yellow as the corn when mellow,

                                     That the princes wore;

And the mirrors brazen for your queens to gaze in,

                                     They are here no more.

The sea-bird’s pinion thatched Gormlai’s grinnan;

                                     And through windows clear,

Without crystal pane, in her Ard-righ’s reign

                                     She looked from here

There were quilts of eider on her couch of cedar;

                                     And her silken shoon

Were as green and soft as the leaves aloft

                                     On a bough in June.

Ah, woe unbounded where the harp once sounded

                                     The wind now sings;

The grey grass shivers where the mead in rivers

                                     Was outpoured for kings;

The min and the mether are lost together

                                     With the spoil of the spears;

The strong dun only has stood dark and lonely

                                     Through a thousand years.

But I’m not in woe for the wine-cup’s flow,

                                     For the banquet’s cheer,

For tall princesses with their trailing tresses

                                     And their broidered gear;

My grief and my trouble for this palace noble

                                     With no chief to lead

’Gainst the Saxon stranger on the day of danger

                                     Out of Aileach Neid.

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Alice Letitia Milligan [Iris Olkyrn] (1865 - 1953) Ireland

Source: Anthology of Irish verse, ed. with an introduction by Padraic Colum, Boni and Liveright, 1922