Rose o' the world, they have words galore,
And wide's the swing of my mother's door:
But soft they speak of my darkened eyes,
But what do they know, who are all so wise?
Rose o' the world, the pain you give
Is worth all days that a man may live:
Worth all shy prayers that the colleens say
On the night that darkens the wedding day.
Rose o' the world, what man would wed
When he might dream of your face instead?
Might go to his grave with the blessed pain
Of hungering after your face again?
Rose o' the world, they may talk their fill,
For dreams are good, and my life stands still
While their lives' red ashes the gossips stir,
But my fiddle knows: and I talk to her.
Nora Hopper
THE FAIRY FIDDLER
'Tis I go fiddling, fiddling,
By weedy ways forlorn:
I make the blackbird's music
Ere in his breast 'tis born:
The sleeping larks I waken
Twixt the midnight and the morn.
No man alive has seen me,
But women hear me play
Sometimes at door or window,
Fiddling the souls away,—
The child's soul and the colleen's
Out of the covering clay.
None of my fairy kinsmen
Make music with me now:
Alone the raths I wander
Or ride the whitethorn bough;
But the wild swans they know me,
And the horse that draws the plough.
Nora Hopper