Stop, stop and listen for the bough top
Is whistling and the sun is brighter
Than God's own shadow in the cup now.
Forget the hour-bell. Mournful matins
Will sound as well, Patric, at nightfall.
Faintly through mist of broken water
Fionn heard my melody in Norway,
He found the forest track, he brought back
This beak to gild the branch and tell, there,
Why men must welcome in the daylight.
He loved the breeze that warns the black grouse,
The shout of gillies in the morning
When packs are counted and the swans cloud
Loch Erne, but more than all those voices,
My throat rejoicing from the hawthorn.
In little cells behind a cashel,
Patric, no handbell has a glad sound.
But knowledge is found among the branches.
Listen! The song that shakes my feathers
Will thong the leather of your satchels.
Stop, stop and listen for the bough top
Is whistling...
Translated from Irish by Austin Clarke from "Colloquy of the Old Men" - a debate between Fenian poet Oisin and St. Patrick.