To The Comely Four Of Aran Poem by Anna Johnston MacManus

I send my prayer upon
The winds that chase the sun,
O Four who are most comely and renowned!
Conal the Wanderer,
And Brendan grave, of Birr,
Fursey, and Berchain of this holy ground.

Keep you my treasure safe
From sorrow and from chafe;
From the strange deadly things that haunt the world
When dark lies, dewy-cool;
From rush-fringed bogland pool;
And from the storm-whipped sea's green snare upcurled

O when his weary feet
Journeyed through snow and sleet
On high bald mountains where the way was lone,
My prayers went as a light
Before him in the night,
And Christ, the Kind, was kindly to my own.

He is my secret love,
O Four who sit above!
To you I whisper all my hungering heart
He is my dear desire,
My soul's red altar-fire,
And, bitter woe! too long are we apart.

By Oghil Well in gray
Mist ere the dawn of day,
I knelt for sake of him and cried to you,
And made my hands a cup,
And drank the white wave up,
The three keen draughts that chilled me through and through.

His bright head be your care,
O tender Saints and fair!
Be you his mantle in the dew and rain,
His shelter from the cold,
The staff within his hold,
And mine the grieving be, the cold, the pain.