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Memory Eternal

Picture G.Willoughby

Memory Eternal

Courtesy of Thurles Author & Poet Tom Ryan ©

An embrace by Suir River,
One evening in time,
Young lovers together,
In love’s perfect rhyme.
Two young souls embracing,
As the evening stood still
In salute to the wonder,
Sweet haunting me still.
What mysterious other,
So charmed my young heart,
Its miraculous mystery,
That shall never depart,
Oh, hazel-eyed beauty,
Sweet mistress of charms,
Then, now and forever,
To dwell in my arms.
Oh dear heart of heaven,
My soul now on fire,
Enchantment your presence,
Oh wild, wild desire,
My hazel eyed darling,
My day and my night,
Enthralling and calling,
To dreams of delight.
A love that was born,
That time long ago,
By the banks of Suir River,
Where young lovers go.
Not now but forever,
Till love is no more,
Shall we be together,
As that time by sweet Suir.
Oh memory eternal,
Sweet love of our youth,
This is my abiding,
My magnificent truth!
Oh beautiful memory
That never shall go,
Sure as this love’s forever,
Sure as Suir waters must flow.

END.

Tom Ryan, “Iona”, Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.

Music Of The Nation

Music Of The Nation

Courtesy of Thurles Author & Poet Tom Ryan ©

Mysterious notes so charm my Celtic heart.
Sad, sombre, beautiful, merry, free.
Thoughts, sentiments of fellow Gaels that dart
Through my soul – fine melodic history.
The music makers – dead – still haunt with joy,
Kickham, Davis, Moore – that legion of repute
Whose notes of majesty will live for aye,
To make the cripple dance and dare the mute.
To nerve the shattered soldier – fast refrain.
To melt the hardened heart, a song of woe.
Such fire to stop a regiment in its train
And cause the flickering heart once more to glow.
The music of a nation strong and proud,
Fiery as flames and sombre as grey clouds.
END

From “Cherry Blossoms” by Tom Ryan, “Iona”, Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.

Perhaps You’d Like To Buy A Flower?

According to Ireland’s meteorology service, Met Éireann, our provisional weather data shows that the Autumn of 2021 was the warmest on record.
The temperature between the start of September and the end of November averaged at 12.02°; 1.8° degrees above average, making it the 11th consecutive year where Irish temperatures increased above our norm.
A bitterly cold northern breeze this afternoon has now changed all that, with temperatures reduced to 6.00°.

Meanwhile, poking about in the garden today, I find that the daffodils bulbs, while arriving a month later this year, are now rapidly emerging above ground.

Their arrival always reminds me of that wonderful poetry of American Poetess Emily Dickinson, (December 10th, 1830 – May 15th, 1886).
Emily, who choose to live much of her life in isolation, once stated that she was “a lunatic on bulbs”; same statement referring to her absolute passion for daffodils and other spring perennials, which she grew at her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.

American Poetess Ms Emily Dickinson

Her poem “Perhaps You’d Like To Buy A Flower?” shown hereunder, fully confirms her true love of gardening and flowers and possibly reveals, for the first time, the secret feelings of all passionate gardeners.

Perhaps You’d Like To Buy A Flower?

Perhaps you’d like to buy a flower?
But I could never sell.
If you would like to borrow
Until the daffodil
Unties her yellow bonnet
Beneath the village door,
Until the bees, from clover rows
Their Hock and Sherry draw,
Why, I will lend until just then,
But not an hour more!

END

The word ‘Hock’, contained in the poem above, refers to a British term for German white wine, made from an aromatic grape variety grown in the Rhine region.

Rural Rhapsody

Rural Rhapsody

Courtesy of Thurles Author & Poet Tom Ryan ©

I have learned to breathe with the earth,
In search of that elusiveness,
That other and beautiful birth,
Eternal happiness.

All my gruelling travail,
The sweat and the unshed tears
Are gone now, gone to the devil,
As are my life-long fears.

In a house by the trees and the fields,
Where the crows now ravish the barley.
Where the turf smoke upward soars
And late is always early.

I have shaped new–splendid dreams
And have loved an old–new vision.
The world is not what it seems
And I have learned a lesson.

We do not see for the sweat
That blurs the sight of the eye,
Fuming, forever we fret
Blind to that inward joy.

But in a home with a turf fire burning
And a woman to love the day,
I have no inward yearning
Nor any desire for the fray.

We have but a short, sweet hour
In a thought–feeling and more,
Then fade before the power
That was timeless long before.

A power so great and so awesome.
The heart can scarce withstand
Even a breath of its presence
That I have known in this land.

Where silence is still forever
And the world is a pithy thing,
Body from soul nigh sever
And strange is everything.

Fools that we worship the earth.
‘Tis but a path to home
And so, in sadness and mirth,
Go, journey, but not alone.

END

Tom Ryan, “Iona”, Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.

To Absent Ones At Christmas

To Absent Ones At Christmas.

Courtesy of Thurles Author & Poet Tom Ryan ©

We shall not in drawing up to the red-coaled fire,
In a profusion of spirits, in the hollied room
Your presence dishonour with forgetfulness,
But rather shall we in music and wine
And in the memory of another place and happy time,
Toast you, our absent ones.
Nor, as the Carols reach to the Christmas stars
In praise of the glorious grandeur of the world,
Nor, as childrens’ voices herald a new awakening,
Shall we forget the warmth,
Of a time of togetherness,
But in a quiet prayer, pure as snow crystals
Give thanks for what you were to our hearts,
For what you’ll ever be
Unto the last Yuletide.
So, in a good spirit,
Glad for the plenty and the peace,
Joyous for our family and our friends.
With all the people of the earth
And in our merriment and mirth
We do remember you, our dear and absent ones.

END.

Tom Ryan, “Iona”, Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.