That I was King in Kerry, and you were Galway's Queen.

I roused and ranged about me three score of burnished spears,
And rode across the moorland, the north wind round my ears.

It bore me buoyant tidings,--your beauty and your grace,--
And, as I galloped forward, I yearned upon your face.

We fared by Abbeydorney, Listowel and Lixnaw,
Where all my word was wisdom, and all my look was law.

We never paused to bivouac; we never paused to sleep
Where murmurous Feale Water ran shallow or ran deep.

We swam the swirl of Shannon; we hurled back to his lair
The blustering O'Brien who ruled the kerns of Claire.

Then, mire and foam-bespattered, about the dusk of day
We came where Galway's turrets loomed over Galway's bay.

The silence throbbed with trumpets, tumultuous, elate,
And you, a flower of wonder, bloomed in the castle gate.

You made the flush of sunset seem but a pallid thing;
Your voice had all the rapture that trembles through the spring.

Within your eyes the love-light was glory after drouth;
All summer's hoarded honey was one kiss from your mouth.

Deirdre, whose tragic beauty the great Cuchullin knew,
And Maeve, the long lamented, sooth, what were they to you!

In through the rush-strewn hallway you led us to the feast;
And when the wine was drunken there stood the stoled priest.

He oped the holy bride-book; he read the marriage rite;
And then--and then--mavourneen, it was our wedding night!

Would I might dream it over, the dream I dreamed yestreen,
That I was King in Kerry, and you were Galway's Queen!

A KERRY LAD

There 's a Kerry lad a-wandering across the dipping sea,
A Kerry lad a-wandering the foam,
And oh, the swelling joy of it, the joy that there will be
When that wandering Kerry lad comes home!

There 'll be glad voices calling him, glad voices in the street,
And hands to clasp the hands of the gossoon;
There 'll be soft winds a-whispering above the fields of peat,
And little birds a-carolling in tune!

The Kerry sky 'll be bluer then, for all the clouds will part,
And greener 'll be the grass above the loam,
And oh, the happy feeling in one lonely Irish heart
When that wandering Kerry lad comes home!

A KERRY DAY

Under the sweep of a fell the smoke-reek curls and drifts
Where a white-walled cottage stands nestling amid the green;
Kerry skies above arched wit