Poem by Louise Imogen Guiney

Columba and the Stork

The cliffs of Iona were red, with the moon to lee,
A finger of rock in the infinite wind and the sea;
And white on the cliffs as a volley of spray down-flying,
The beautiful stork of Eiré indriven and dying.

I stole from the choir; I fed him, I bathed his breast,
Till in late sunshine he lifted his wing to the west.
Oh, the bells of the Abbey were calling clearer and bolder,
And I feared the pale admonishing face at my shoulder.

Columb the saint’s! but I said, with mine arm in air,
(Of that banished body and homesick spirit aware,)
“The bird is of Eiré; out of the storm I bore him;
And lo, he is free, with the valleys of Eiré before him.”

Of the man that was Eiré-born, and in exile yet,
This the reproach I had, and cannot forget,
This the reproach I had, and never another:
“Blessed art thou, to have lightened the heart of my brother!”

1. Florentin
2. Peter Rugg the Bostonian
3. Writ in My Lord Clarendon’s “History of the Rebellion”
4. Vergniaud in the Tumbril
5. A Madonna of Domenico Ghirlandajo

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