E d i t o r 's   N o t e
After reading Adele Kenny's Saint-Patrick's-Day-inspired contribution to this issue of Verse-Virtual, I got an idea. I thought it would be interesting to devote my Editor's Note to Irish poets. So I asked Adele to name those Irish poets who immediately came to her mind — without looking at a book or an online reference.  Adele's list included eight poets:
William Butler Yeats
Eavan Boland
Brendan Behan
Padraic Pearse
Joseph Plunkett
Oscar Wilde
Jonathan Swift
Seamus Heaney
You probably think I've featured these poets here — but I haven't.  In fact I really asked Adele for her impromptu list of Irish poets so that I could choose other Irish poets to feature — poets who are less well-known than 'Adele's Eight.'  I chose six:

Ellen O’Leary
Emily Lawless
George William (“A. E.”) Russell
Eva Gore-Booth 
Thomas MacDonagh 
Patrick Kavanagh

So, here are 'Firestone's Six' — in chronological order — each with a portrait and a poem. 
Ellen O’Leary
(1831–1889)
To God and Ireland True
 

I sit beside my darling’s grave,  
Who in the prison died,
And tho’ my tears fall thick and fast  
I think of him with pride:
Ay, softly fall my tears like dew,
For one to God and Ireland true.
 
“I love my God o’er all,” he said,  
“And then I love my land,
And next I love my Lily sweet,  
Who pledged me her white hand: 
To each—to all—I’m ever true,
To God, to Ireland, and to you. 

No tender nurse his hard bed smoothed,  
Or softly raised his head;
He fell asleep and woke in heaven
Ere I knew he was dead;
Yet why should I my darling rue?
He was to God and Ireland true. 

Oh! ’tis a glorious memory,  
I’m prouder than a queen, 
To sit beside my hero’s grave,  
And think on what has been;
And, oh my darling, I am true
To God—to Ireland—and to you. 
Emily Lawless  
(1845 – 1913) 
In Spain


YOUR sky is a hard and a dazzling blue, 
Your earth and sands are a dazzling gold, 
And gold or blue is the proper hue, 
You say for a swordsman bold. 

In the land I have left the skies are cold, 
The earth is green, the rocks are bare, 
yet the devil may hold all your blue and your gold 
Were I only once back there! 


George William (“A. E.”) Russell 
(1867–1935)

The Unknown God
 
 
FAR up the dim twilight fluttered
  Moth-wings of vapour and flame:
The lights danced over the mountains,
  Star after star they came.
 
The lights grew thicker unheeded,
  For silent and still were we;  
Our hearts were drunk with a beauty
  Our eyes could never see.


Eva Gore-Booth
 (1870-1926)
The Quest


FOR years I sought the Many in the One,
I thought to find lost waves and broken rays,
The rainbow’s faded colours in the sun— 
The dawns and twilights of forgotten days.
 
But now I seek the One in every form,
Scorning no vision that a dewdrop holds,
The gentle Light that shines behind the storm,
The Dream that many a twilight hour enfolds.


Thomas MacDonagh
 (1878 - 1916)
A Woman

Time on her face has writ
A hundred years,
And all the page of it
Blurred with his tears;

Yet in his holiest crypt
Treasuring the scroll,
Keeps the sweet manuscript
Fair as her soul. 
Patrick Kavanagh
(1904 - 1967)
Peace


And sometimes I am sorry when the grass
Is growing over the stones in quiet hollows
And the cocksfoot leans across the rutted cart-pass
That I am not the voice of country fellows
Who now are standing by some headland talking
Of turnips and potatoes or young corn
Of turf banks stripped for victory.
Here Peace is still hawking 
His coloured combs and scarves and beads of horn.

Upon a headland by a whinny hedge 
A hare sits looking down a leaf-lapped furrow
There's an old plough upside-down on a weedy ridge
And someone is shouldering home a saddle-harrow.
Out of that childhood country what fools climb
To fight with tyrants Love and Life and Time? 
...and a Peaceful St. Patrick's Day to all!
Respectfully submitted,
Firestone Feinberg
March, 2015