W. T. Quirk – Manx Poet & Writer

The waves’ advancing armies break and fall
In creamy lather, whipped by angry squall,
And pound the shingle and the ...

The air a tension held; the trees were mute,

The bracken stood immobile in a spell.

Birdsong was choked, a ...

Where Sulby River wreathes each silver coil

From the bare moorland to the northern sea,

A parable of life is ...

In summer, when the sun is high

And thoughts are turned to holiday.

When daylight lingers in the sky,

And ...

Why gild the lily ?

Is it not fair enough

Without the artifice that man, in pride of his

Intelligence ...

Oh, hasten out! Leave in thy rear that room
Where music reigns discordant; dancers gay
Flit o’er the polished surface ...

The beach is like a battlefield, its sand

Covered with bodies stretched out in the sun,

Some in grotesque positions, ...

Over the stile and up the lane
Between the thorny brambles,
That’s the way we go again
For summer Sunday ...

Now Sundays are of all days set apart
For strolling on the promenade in twos;
Each loving swain is hooked ...

The oily waters swell and murmur low
In the grey ghostly pallor of the mist
Which in the early morn ...

Who told the lovely flower to grow

With petals six and horn of golden frill?

Who is the artist such ...

We love it when it rains to go into the loft,
Up the steps from the cowhouse, and play;
And ...

“Oh stay, my man, what do you see?”

“Leave go, old woman, let me be.

She is so fair I ...

LO, we are now to see the welcome end
Of yet another lengthy road of toil
That seemed to curl ...

I’m an oul’ bachelor, studdy and staid,
Studdy I am, an’ studdy I’ll be;
All may accounts at the week-end ...

(From Rabindranath Tagore)
 

Where no half-stifled fear the wind appals,

Where heads lift high with knowledge full and free,...

So rapt in contemplation is the soul

Of the true artist he feels not the shock

Of hostile elements.  The ...

PART 3.

And the next day before a ray
Of sun was on the world,
The King was up, no ...

The Ballamoar is a farm of mountain, field and stone,
And there is dwelling happily our widowed aunt alone;
Alone ...

The Ballamooar is a farm of mountain, field and stone,

And there was dwelling happily our widowed aunt, alone;

Alone ...

ABOVE the murmur of the night there come
The lonely tones of a sad distant bell,
One, two, and three, ...

Below my bedroom window in the Corporation Yard
A blacksmith blows his bellows and works there very hard.
He hammers ...

The old black boat
Will never float
Except upon a sea of nettles.
Half on her side
She lay and ...

They split the rocks, these giant cracks, as though

Atlas or Vulcan had with irate hand

When earth was young ...

My boy, that road leads to the distant town,
And this one stretches to the waiting sea.
Hast thou determined ...

On Easter Day the lilies fair

Gladdened all hearts and filled the air

With a pervasive fragrance fair.

On ...

She sang in the garden

An old island song,

Her sister and warden

Her chair pushed along.

Her voice was ...

She sang in the garden
An old island song,
Her sister and warden
Her chair pushed along
Her voice was ...

In the fall of the night when the rocks lay a-sleeping

And the waves gently fondled the slumberous shore,

When ...

IN the fall of the night when the rocks lay a-sleeping
And the waves gently fondled the slumberous shore,
When ...

Long shadows are creeping,
The day’s almost done;
A mother kneels weeping
Beside her dead son.

“That Thou could’st have ...

When flowers of June are in their prime

And hollyhocks and roses climb,

Delphiniums blue

Rival the sky,

And sunflowers ...

What can we know of farmers and their needs,

We in our ordered life and routine round,

Controlled by clock ...

The house is mute, the hallway dark.

The staircase is a chimney dim.

The doorways frown, the light is stark;...

There is an empty house

Beyond the lane,

And there no cat or mouse

Will come again;

The family is ...

There is an empty house
Beyond the lane,
And there no cat or mouse
Will come again;
The family is ...

Another year hangs on the line,
The sagging line of worn-out years;
A thousand there, and twenty nine
Since One ...

I had a dream on well-remembered night
Wherein we two were standing on a hill;
Alone we watched the sun ...

Why should I grieve when children look away,

Avoiding the direct and steady gaze

That all too clearly shows their ...

Here rests his head upon a Tennis Pill,
A youth, to Fortune lost, from Ping-Pong flown;
Fair Science smiled not ...

Maybe it’s like they should have known

To hang the kern outside the door;

But they were busy at the ...

(From the French of Anatole France)

Slow are my feet from cottage to the sea,
And weariness is ever mine. ...

The merry knave did misbehave
With Blanche the kitchen servant.
We must suppose he bit her nose
In loving way ...

The ringing of the hoof-beats startles the air

And echoes are beating like drums from the hills;

The maniac coachman, ...

His place was in the warehouse. There he stood
Beside the counter, scoop in hand, and weighed
Out sugar in ...

Is it bonfires tha’s in? Well, I navar!
It seems only yesterday
I was sayin’ “Go away!”
To the childer ...

They’re tellin’ the childer far too arly
The truth about oul’ Santa Claus.
Tho’ it’s hard to say these days ...

I can tell ye, masthar, it’s a sight
On a summer day
If thou’re sitting on a seat on the ...

Wha’s that ye say?
Only five of them lef’ today?
Five? An’ wan time theer were sixteen!
Sixteen of the ...

Aw, well, it’s like it had to be
Sooner or later;
Things is eether gerrin’ bigger or smaller,
Shorter or ...

Music thou’re sayin’? A recital? Aw, bless me sowl
Thou navar h’ard such rampagin’
Theer was at this fella,
As ...

Aw, man, the lek was navar seen before.
What majesty an’ graciousness thallure!
Deed, yis; an’ if I live to ...

Hev ye avar been to Ballacorris
In the chapel down the lane,
When the winders are all stuffed with marras,...

I’m thinkin’ the Jumble Sale Saison
Is on us again.
For I’m seein’ notices all over the place.
I suppose ...

The Annicumvarsary? Aw, yis,
I went an’ all, I did.
I wouldn’ miss
Seein’ all the childer on the stages ...

‘Deed yis though, that’s the place
To see many a half-forgotten face –
Wheer? Why, at the cattle-show:
An’ I ...

I wouldn’ ha’ gone but a falla said “Right!
Ye’re comin’ to our Eisteddfod to-night!”
“Wha’s that then?” I axes, ...

The fus’ time I seen Laxa Queeyl
Was sixty year ago or more,
When I was tuk in a moty-car ...

T.T., is it? I axes; aw, well now,
Tha’s the way to be, isn’t it?
Tha’s the rale comeallyer;
Tha’s ...

Wheneva I sup dandelion an’ burdock
I’m always mindin’ days spent at the feer;
When in a roundabout with Taffy ...

Grievanagh, yessir, the wonders tha’s in.
Not lek the days when I was a stugga before,
When if ye wanted ...

The smell of wormwood takes me back a bit,
For in July an’ Augus’ years ago
I used to see ...

The sun was shinin’ powerful gran’
Upon the st’amer at the pier,
An’ all the people in the lan’
Seemed ...

List of titles of all poems in The Gaffer’s Tales sorted alphabetically.

So thou are purtendin’ to be a fool
An’ askin’ me what are stocks?
Well, now, don’t they larn thee ...

(The thirteenth of the Black Hole Ballads)
(With apologies to Longfellow)

BESIDE the indented table he stood
His wood bat ...

There once was a gay caballero
Whose fortunes descended to zero;
He went to the bank
To replenish his tank...

The glens are old:

And they have called to other ears

Than ours

In backward swinging long-forgotten years

In which ...

See the house. How grim it stands
In its lonely solitude!
Feel the ghostly clammy hands
Repelling you
From the ...

It is just a little cottage

That is thatched with yellow straw,

And it nestles in the hollow by the ...

Man cannot find more magical a place,
Decked in the robes of nature’s silk and lace
Where daisies ornament with ...

I laughed. The laugh went ringing far and wide;
Echoed, re-echoed in the empty air;
Flew mocking like a cackling ...

(The seventh of the Black Hole Ballads)
(With apologies to Scott)

The rain was wet, the wind was cold,
The ...

IN the beginning God created man
In His own image; we are blest indeed;
Yet are we worthy of the ...

Voices in the night air when dusk has descended,

Coming with sweet clarity across the still water,

Bring to my ...

When everyone has gone to bed
I lie with earphones on my head,
And listen to the music sweet
Accompanying ...

We have sung the old Missouri

And the Mississippi too;

We have sung the Minnetonka,

We have sung the Danube ...

“MY SOUL” said Mary, “magnifies the Lord.

My spirit doth in Saviour God rejoice;

For notice hath He ta’en of ...

(The eighth of the Black Hole Ballads)

The Man of Maths was Paddy,
Work not to him doth belong;
For ...

The man of the hills is a remarkable fellow ;

His whiskers are white and his molars are yellow ;...

A darksome stillness broods o’er all,
The breeze is dank and chill,
And there beneath a covering pall
Its moonless ...

(The eleventh of the Black Hole Ballads)

THERE is a master whose name is Ned
And with his supple cane...

Being the Twenty-Fifth of the Black Hole Ballads

O Harry, do not shout that ranting song,
Don’t shout that ranting ...

Let it be said, there is no virtue now

In living as our grandsires did of yore,

In ignorance and ...

ONCE I wandered
In the valley of a dream,
By the margin of a stream
As it slid with glance ...

Painfully feeble to all intent,

Wondrously wrinkled and old and bent,

Wearing a sun-bonnet day in, day out

Our Ellen ...

(Prize Song in ‘Yn Chruinnaght’)

Up on Barrule there lived a man,
A man grey-haired and old;
He had a ...

THE trees went forth upon a time to choose
Who might among their number be their King;
And to the ...

(inspired by Matthew Arnold)

That night was felt a sense of tragedy,
A feeling that the Gods could not reject,...

The sun swims down, in golden splendour clad,
And earth prepares the coming night to meet;
The night urged on ...

You who look long and look so steadfastly

At Bradda reared against the afterglow,

Etched in his outline a dark ...

AS far as my researches carry me
It seems as if the year can well be filled
With birthdays of ...

In early morn when roads are bare and still

And every cottage yet in slumber lies,

When the night dews ...

On Sunday evening we to chapel go

Along the road, and sit six in a row,

And listen to the ...

On Sunday evening we to chapel go
Along the road, and sit six in a row,
And listen to the ...

The preacher was in a merry mood;

The fire was warm, the talk was good,

And he was full of ...

The preacher was a sober man,

Of that there was no doubt;

But he was known upon the Plan

To ...

A mossy carpet spread
Beneath the tall trees,
And through the wood a singing stream
Soft gurgles on the way...

Once upon a time – oh, quite a long time ago,

There lived a King and Queen, and a Princess, ...

We are very busy
For this afternoon our Lizzie,
Not to mention little Ann and Isobel,
Will be duly chosen...

Ann is our Queen of the May;
Ann is our Queen of the May;
We’ll own her, and gown her,...

Dancing on the village green,
Dancing in the market square,
There is nothing to be seen
More exciting anywhere.
Keep ...

A sheet of water from a leaden sky
Fell solid, and damply clinging mist
Rose thick and white. The passing ...

(With apologies to Wm. Cowper)

Oh that my lips had language! Life has passed
With me from down town to ...

Walking the country roads at night

Or in the early hours of morning,

I lack not company despite

The dark ...

A sullen roar, as of a cagèd beast
That hurls its body forward in blind rage,
Leaping in vain to ...

Being the Nineteenth of the Black Hole Ballads

LOVE not me for comely grace,
For my pleasant handsome face,
Nor ...

(The Sixteenth of the Black Hold Ballads)
(With apologies to Sir Walter Scott)

AH! Lovely Gus, thine hour with us...

OH, I sighed, for I loved her, I loved her,
But her heart was as hard as the stone.
Oh, ...

The sunlight glinted on the dockyard wall
Gilding the ugly brickwork, damp and dark,
And there within the hammers, busy ...

The sunlight glinted on the cottage wall,
Gilding its humble portal with a glow
That with Heaven’s tender radiance seemed ...

The sunlight glinted on the prison wall,
Gilding its ugly brickwork, grim and dour,
And there within a brazen bell ...

AS the thick red mist that comes creeping after
The fall of the sun in the fathomless deep,
When echoes ...

Rain on the window and the lone wind sighing,

Sighing in the branches of the gaunt old elm-tree;

Sighing and ...

RAIN on the window and the lone wind sighing,
Sighing in the branches of the gaunt old elm-tree;
Sighing and ...

IT breathed in the glen
In the moonlight;
A mournful amen
In the moonlight.
The stream and the breeze
And ...

They will not walk up Colby Glen,

The knowing ones, when it is dark,

That would disturb the Little Men...

The lulled waters swell and murmur low
Beneath the crags and cliffs and come to rest
Upon the shingle in ...

SEE where the dusty highroad winds along
From London unto distant York, its line
Like some gigantic ribbon laid upon...

When all were settled to their own content
And gathered round the fire of blazing logs,
When new-trimmed lamp sent ...

‘Twas many hundred years ago

When on the Isle the mist hung low,

And Little People ruled the land,

A ...

I smile to think of Jimmy Sharpe
Who lives just down our street
He had a cannon quite as big...

What can this be here in this dusty loft,
What the light finds when I unclose the door,
This frame, ...

Oh, what if when fatigued with life’s unrest
And broken-spirited with burdens hard,
When from our sight all happiness in ...

What can this be here in this dusty loft,

What the light finds when I unclose the door;

This frame, ...

What can this be here in this dusty loft,

What the light finds when I unclose the door;

This frame, ...

Imagine a countryside
Peaceful and calm,
Some fields and some trees,
A stream and a farm.
A day of close ...

ONCE, when all was young, I came
Upon the earth.
Found that all things were the same,
From birth
Till ...

Rare is it now to see a horse and cart.

This age of petrol finds no useful place

For a ...

(The twelfth of the Black Hole Ballads)
(With apologies to Longfellow)

UNDER a spreading Panama
That villain Smithy sits;
Biff ...

(The fifth of the Black Hole Ballads)
(With apologies to Longfellow)

It was the sixth form classroom
On a cold ...

It was just after two on a May afternoon

In the year nineteen fifteen,

When the little Peel lugger near ...

Among the strange immortals of our land,

Mona’s sweet Isle, long famed in verse and song,

There is a creature ...

Low rumbling and high splashing noises fill

This ancient building with its knotted floor

And ceiling beams that brush a ...

My saucy youth derides my sober age,

Mocking, haunting, refusing to be stilled:

That which was me, and wholly me, ...

‘Father, there is no moon tonight,
The clouds are scudding swift and black,
Flying on through the stormy night –...

Christmas morn is bright and fair,

Glittering snow is lying deep;

Still and keen the frosty air,

Low and laden ...

What shall we do with this fair land which now

We occupy for a brief breathing space,

Ere to our ...

Below the mountain’s flank

Uprearing to the sky,

Where spur and rock and shoulder rank

Round snaefell’s majesty,

Deep ...

‘Tis not the thing itself, ‘tis the approach ;

The different fall of light whence one has come,

The other ...

I am now a little school-girl and I go to school each day,

And I post a note to Daddy ...

TOO little didst thou speak at any time;
In dim obscurity thy gentle glow
Thou let’st to burn; no we, ...

Furry bee, you great brown lump
Wandering from clump to clump
Of flowers and shrubs around the pump
Rusty in ...

Night claims its fee and takes to it the land,
And shadows lengthen; dusk on either hand
Makes dark spots ...

Destroy what is incomprehensible !

Erase the writing that can give the lie !

Ignore, decry, but do not reason ...

(from the French of A. de Larmartine)

When thy celestial songs prelude
The stillnesses of summer nights,
Winged songster of ...

Dead is the sky above the frozen ridge,

And icy as the hand of death the breeze;

Drawn on the ...

Oh, peerless climber into heaven’s blue,

I hark enthralled to your bubbling song,

And watch your fluttering wings as you ...

Could I with half thy skill render my thought
In verse then were I blest indeed, and more –
I ...

Clip clop, up and down
We jerk and roll to Castletown;
Ruts, mounds, holes and stones
Give a shaking to ...

Death, why dost thou hard stare at me, I pray?
Why smilest thou in manner grimly cold?
And what is ...

Being the Eighteenth of the Black Hole Ballads.

Small stream that swirls ‘neath rustic span,
Apt emblem of a roguish ...

Again a year has ticked along

In seconds, hours and days

That you have spent your friends among,

And you ...

I

The sky was clear, the sky was blue. No cloud
Floated to mar the pure serenity
Of the deep ...

Sometimes the moon sails in the frosty sky
Like a white ship, majestic and supreme.
Sometimes it rises early then ...

(From the French of Pierre de Ronsard)

As one sees on a stem a rose in May
In all its ...

Wake me not yet with shrill compelling bell !

I would in dreams remain, untouched by care,

Safe in a ...

(From the French of Alfred de Musset)

PIPPA, when the shadows come
And your mother says goodnight;
When you kneel ...

Monarch of words, three hundred years hast thou
Reigned in a splendour only thine, and grown
In fame, and ever ...

(From the Spanish of Francisco de Rioja)

Carnation, envy of Aurora,

Deepest flame of all the flowers,

On thy birth ...

(Died October 29th, 1897)

See’st thou this bulb?  It is a miracle !

Here is compact a force man cannot ...

Tom Brown, your little isle reveres your name!

Poet of Manxland, your immortal fame

Has long out-lived you, and will ...

Poem to Trudy

(From sick bay in Ghent)

And was it Easter when we first resolved

To walk no longer ...

Tom Brown, thy little Isle reveres thy name,
Poet magnificent! Thine immortal fame
Hath long outlived thee, and will long ...

Off from the Grandstand, dropping down Bray Hill,

Rounding the Quarter Bridge, to Ballacraine,

Weaving Glen Helen and the northern ...

Tourist Trophy Races

Off from the Grandstand, dropping down Bray Hill,

Rounding the Quarter Bridge, to Ballacraine,

Weaving Glen Helen ...

Oft-times I feel ashamed, looking with clear

Sad eyes upon my life, so lightly spent,

So full of trivial nonsense, ...

Trout in clear water lying, cool and brown,

Nose to the thrusting element that flows

Over and under and along ...

One did what duty counselled for her guest,

A housewife whose one thought was to provide

A table that would ...

A man may spend his life in many ways

Seemingly free as air, and yet a slave

Become to that ...

If stars were gold dust sprinkled on a bed
Of purple velvet, and the moon a disc
Of pure white ...

There is a gentleness in ancient things,

Old earthenware and furniture from days

When life was leisurely and time was ...

Amy with her petal skin and hair of liquid gold
Has come from distant Liverpool to join our little fold,...

A perfect marriage when two rivers meet

Is consummated; each to each a force

Contributes, each to each a nature ...

(The Seventeenth of the Black Hole Ballads)

WE fear thy words, oh gentle master;
Thou needest not fear ours;
For ...

Upon the warm brown rocks where we
sat watching silver spary,
Where sea-gulls wheeled and breezes blew
a golden sun-beam ...

Still finger pointing to the frosty stars
From out the glare and seething life below,
Grim and clear-cut against the ...

When all is quiet where there has been laughter,

And the last voice has faded down the lane,

The house ...

When did this rose have its beginning?  When

Will be its end?  The bud took form and hue

Last week, ...

There is no way to capture beauty so

That beauty will remain vivid and fresh.

When we have grasped her ...

Whether we wish it,

Whether or no,

Someone will come to us,

Someone will go;

Someone will love us,

Someone ...

Whether we wish it, whether or no,
Someone will come to us, someone will go;
Someone will love us, someone ...

(The ninth of the Black Hole Ballads)
(With apologies to R.S. Hawker)

We saw them not, we could not hear...

I heard someone whistling in the night,

Outside my window in the dead of night.

It was a plaintive air....

WELL was it said by those we thought sedate
In all our youthful ardour when we came
Out from the ...

Why death?  Why this incessant funeral?

Change and decay in all around I see,

Spring into winter, winter into spring;...

Did ye navar hear tellin’ of Willie?
The Gimlad they’re callin’ him too;
The sharp that he is, aw, not ...

December paradox!  The hand of death

That the heart seizes and a numbness brings

To sense and feeling, nurtures yet ...

To-night I smelt the smoke of a woodland fire.

Sudden and bitter-sweet to me it came,

Acrid and pungent, pricking ...

Did I take pen and with a far-off look
Sit me before a pile of foolscap high,
And with a ...

The lover lives but for a flashing glance
Of bright blue eyes ‘neath lashes long and dark,
Skywards then soars ...

A golden discourse and message bright,
Then broken off and left, a jagged edge;
Nothing but darkness, gone the heavenly ...

(Apologies to Mr. William Walshe)

Distracted with care
For ye Chocolate Eclayre
Since nothing could brook him
Ye Studente betook ...

The hill was steep, the road was hard
As upwards climbed the weary bard.
He dragged unwilling feet along
With ...

Among the strange immortals of our land,
Mona’s sweet isle, long famed in verse and song,
A creature that is ...

It is not so amusing now to see

As once, tigers and lions in a cage,

For we begin to ...