Quote of the Day (Patrick Kavanagh, on an Irish Christmas Eve Long Ago)

“No snow, but in their minds
The fields and roads are white;
They may be talking of the turkey markets
Or foreign politics, but to-night
Their plain, hard country words
Are Christ’s singing birds.
 
“Bicycles scoot by. Old women
Cling to the grass margin:
Their thoughts are earthy, but their minds move
In dreams of the Blessed Virgin,
For One in Bethlehem
Has kept their dreams safe for them.”— Irish poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), “Christmas Eve Remembered,” from Collected Poems (2004)
 
The image accompanying this post, A Frost Piece, is by Irish painter James Arthur O’Connor (1792-1841), and is in the National Gallery of Ireland.

Quote of the Day (Poet Patrick Kavanagh, With a Memory of an Irish Christmas)

“My father played the melodion
Outside at our gate;
There were stars in the morning east
And they danced to his music.
 
“Across the wild bogs his melodion called
To Lennons and Callans.
As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry
I knew some strange thing had happened.
 
“Outside in the cow-house my mother
Made the music of milking;
The light of her stable-lamp was a star
And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.”—Irish poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), “A Christmas Childhood,” from Collected Poems (2004)

Quote of the Day (Poet Patrick Kavanagh, on Being ‘Lost in Compassion's Ecstasy’)

“And you must go inland and be
Lost in compassion's ecstasy
Where suffering soars in summer air 
the millstone has become a star."—Irish poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), “Prelude,” in Irish Poems, edited by Matthew McGuire (2011)

Quote of the Day (Poet Patrick Kavanagh, on Remembering ‘All That Has Loved You or Been Kind’)

“Count then your blessings, hold in mind

All that has loved you or been kind:

Those women on their mercy missions,

Rescue work with kiss or kitchens,

Perceiving through the comic veil

The poet’s spirit in travail.

Gather the bits of road that were

Not gravel to the traveller

But eternal lanes of joy

On which no man who walks can die.”—Irish poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), “Prelude,” in Irish Poems, edited by Matthew McGuire (2011)

Song Lyric of the Day (Patrick Kavanagh, on an Autumn Day on ‘Raglan Road’)

“On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew

That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;

I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,

And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.” —Irish poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), “On Raglan Road,” recorded by The Dubliners for their LP Hometown! (1972)

I first came across this poem—or, more accurately, a history of it—back in August, in the Financial Times column, “The Life of a Song.” Patrick Kavanagh first wrote the lyrics, as part of a poem, "Dark Haired Miriam Ran Away,” in 1946, as he realized the impossibility of a relationship with a 22-year-old medical student he loved.

Some years later, in The Bailey pub in Dublin, he suggested to Luke Kelly that the lyrics might make a fine song. The Dubliners singer took him up on the idea, and you can hear the results at the tail end of this 1979 TV interview, excerpted in this YouTube clip.

Others who have sung this now-classic song include Van Morrison and The Chieftains (on their Irish Heartbeat CD), Sinead O’Connor, Mark Knopfler, Ed Sheeran, Joan Osborne, and that great
Irishman, Billy Joel.