A Celebration 
of Women Writers

"Niamh" by Ethna Carbery [aka Mrs. Seumus MacManus, Anna Johnston] (1866-1902)
From: The Four Winds of Eirinn: Poems by Ethna Carbery. (Anna MacManus.), Complete Edition, Edited by Seumas MacManus. Dublin, Ireland: M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd. 1906. p. 23.

Editor: Mary Mark 
Ockerbloom

[Page 23] 

NIAMH.

Oh, who is she, and what is she?
A beauty born eternally
Of shimmering moonshine, sunset flame,
And rose-red heart of dawn;
None knows the secret ways she came–
Whither she journeys on.

I follow her, I follow her
By haunted pools with dreams astir,
And over blue unwearied tides
Of shadow-waves, where sleep
Old loves; old hates, whose doom derides
Vows we forget to keep.

I send my cry, I send my cry
Adown the arches of the sky,
Along the pathway of the stars,
Through quiet and through stress;
I beat against the saffron bars
That guard her loveliness.

And low I hear, oh, low I hear,
Her cruel laughter, fluting clear,
I see far-off the drifted gold
Of wind-blown flying hair;
I stand without in dark and cold
And she is–Where? Where? Where?

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Editor: Mary 
Mark Ockerbloom