John Millington Synge
Selected poems by John Millington Synge
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- We heard the thrushes by the shore and sea,
And saw the golden stars' nativity,
Then round we went the lane by Thomas Flynn,
Across the church where bones lie out and in;
And there I asked beneath a lonely cloud
Of strange delight, with one bird singing loud,
What change you'd wrought in graveyard, rock and sea,
This new wild paradise to wake for me...
Yet knew no more than knew those merry sins
Had built this stack of thigh-bones, jaws and shins. p.14 - With Fifteen-ninety or Sixteen-sixteen
We end Cervantes, Marot, Nashe or Green;
Then Sixteen-thirteen till two score and nine,
Is Crashaw's niche, that honey-lipped divine.
And so when all my little work is done
They'll say I came in Eighteen-seventy-one,
And died in Dublin ... What year will they write
For my poor passage to the stall of night? p.15 - My arms are round you, and I lean
Against you, while the lark
Sings over us, and golden lights, and green
Shadows are on your bark. - There'll come a season when you'll stretch
Black boards to cover me;
Then in Mount Jerome I will lie, poorwretch,
With worms eternally. p.18 - Thrush, linnet, stare and wren,
Brown lark beside the sun,
Take thought of kestril, sparrow-hawk,
Birdlime and roving gun. - You great-great-grandchildren
Of birds I've listened to,
I think I robbed your ancestors
When I was young as you. p.19 - I've thirty months, and that's my pride,
Before my age's a double score,
Though many lively men have died
At twenty-nine or little more. - I've left a long and famous set
Behind some seven years or three,
But there are millions I'd forget
Will have their laugh at passing me. - There's snow in every street
Where I go up and down,
And there's no woman man or dog
That knows me in the town. - I know each shop, and all
These Jews and Russian Poles,
For I go walking night and noon
To spare my sack of coals. p.25 - Lord, confound this surly sister,
Blight her brow with blotch and blister,
Cramp her larynx, lung, and liver,
In her guts a galling give her. - Let her live to earn her dinners
In Mountjoy with seedy sinners:
Lord, this judgment quickly bring,
And I'm your servant, J. M. Synge.
1. In Kerry
p.32. On an Anniversary
After reading the dates in a book of Lyrics
3. To the Oaks of Glencree
4. In Glencullen
5. I've Thirty Months
25, ix, 1908. p.24
6. Winter
With little money in a great city
7. The Curse
To the sister of an enemy of the author's who disapproved of The Playboy of the Western World
Document details
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Title statement
Title (uniform): Selected poems by John Millington Synge
Author: John Millington Synge
Responsibility statement
Electronic edition compiled and proof-read by: Benjamin Hazard
Funded by: University College, Cork and The Higher Education Authority via the CELT Project.
Edition statement
2. Second draft.
Extent: 1230 words
Publication statement
Publisher: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College Cork.
Address: College Road, Cork, Ireland—http://www.ucc.ie/celt
Date: 2004
Date: 2008
Distributor: CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland.
CELT document ID: E900010-001
Availability: Available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of academic research and teaching only.
Source description
Editions
- John Millington Synge, Poems and translations (Dublin 1920).
Literature
- John Millington Synge, The Playboy of the Western World, a comedy in three acts (Boston 1911).
- Augusta Gregory, Our Irish theatre (London 1914).
- William Butler Yeats, The death of Synge, and other passages from an old diary (Dublin 1928).
- Daniel Corkery, Synge and Anglo-Irish literature: a study (Cork 1931).
- Robin Skelton and Alan Price (eds.), Synge: the collected works (4 volumes) (Oxford 1962-68).
- Nicholas Greene, Synge: a critical study of the plays (London 1975).
- Diarmaid Ó Muirithe (ed.), The English language in Ireland (Thomas Davis Lecture Series), (Cork 1977).
- Robert Hogan and James Kilroy, The Abbey Theatre: the years of Synge 1905-1909 (Dublin 1978).
- Alan Bliss, Spoken English in Ireland: the background to the literature, 1600-1740 (Portlaoise 1979).
- G. J. Watson, Irish identity and the literary revival: Synge, Yeats, Joyce and O'Casey (London 1979).
- David H. Greene and Edward M. Stephens, John Millington Synge 1871-1909 (New York 1989).
- Bariou, Michel. 'À la "Belle Époque" du celtisme: le théâtre populaire et l'œuvre en prose de J. M. Synge. Ses analogies avec l'œuvre critique et romanesque d'Anatole Le Braz', in Catherine Laurent, Helen Davis (ed.) Irlande et Bretagne: vingt siècles d'histoire: actes du colloque de Rennes (29-31 mars 1993) Rennes: 1994 250-61.
- Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland (London 1995).
- Seán Ó Tuama, Repossessions: selected essays on the Irish literary heritage (Cork 1995).
- Anthony Roche and Augustine Martin (eds.), Bearing witness: essays on Anglo-Irish literature (Dublin 1996).
- W. J. McCormack, Fool of the family: a life of J.M. Synge (London 2000).
- Gregory Castle, Modernism and the Celtic revival (Cambridge 2001).
- Mary C. King, 'Disturbing events: assessing and re-assessing J.M. Synge', Bullán 6:2 (2002) 83-98.
The edition used in the digital edition
Synge, John Millington (1920). Poems and translations. 1st ed. Dublin: Maunsel.
You can add this reference to your bibliographic database by copying or downloading the following:
@book{E900010-001,
title = {Poems and translations},
author = {John Millington Synge},
edition = {1},
publisher = {Maunsel},
address = {Dublin},
date = {1920}
}
Encoding description
Project description: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts
Sampling declarations
The poems of the present text are taken from pages 3, 14–15, 18–19, and 24–25 of the edition.
Editorial declarations
Correction: Text has been checked and proof-read three times.
Normalization: The electronic text represents the edited text.
Quotation: There are no quotations.
Hyphenation: The electronic edition adheres to the practice of the textual editor.
Segmentation: div0=the text group; div1=the individual poem. Page-breaks are marked pb n=""/.
Interpretation: Names of persons are not tagged. Neither are terms for cultural and social roles.
Reference declaration
A canonical reference to a location in this text should be made using “poem”, eg poem 1.
Profile description
Creation: By John Millington Synge
Date: 1908
Language usage
- The text is in English. (en)
Keywords: literary; poetry; 19/20c
Revision description
(Most recent first)
- 2011-01-24: Header updated, new wordcount made. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
- 2008-07-19: Keywords added. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
- 2005-08-25: Normalised language codes and edited langUsage for XML conversion (ed. Julianne Nyhan)
- 2005-08-04T14:41:27+0100: Converted to XML (ed. Peter Flynn)
- 2004-05-28: Header modified; additions made to bibliography, HTML file created. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
- 2004-05-28: File parsed. (ed. Benjamin Hazard)
- 2003-05-27: Text checked and proofed, header constructed, structural mark-up inserted and verified; bibliography compiled. (ed. Benjamin Hazard)
- 2003-05-27: File captured by scanning. (data capture Benjamin Hazard)