W. T. Quirk – Manx Poet & Writer

Let me lean over
Soothingly, tenderly,
Thou wast my lover,
Fashioned so slenderly;
Angel wings hover,
Home is the rover....

Ballads of the Ballamooars

LONELY now to me are the lanes of memory,
Dull the days I wander on the ...

OH, it is a castle ancient and its grim and rugged pile
Has known a hundred battles fought where now ...

(Apologies to John Masefield)

OH, Westminster’s a fine coll,
And all its sights are rare;
And here the chaps are ...

(Apologies to Samuel T. Coleridge)

THERE is our George! He looks so old,
In truth you’d find it hard to ...

(Apologies to Alfred Lord Tennyson)

Knock, knock, knock,
On the tight-shut door, O ye!
And I couldn’t for decency utter...

(Apologies to nobody)

O Infamy! O Tyranny! Still one
More paper in Mathematics Practical!
When shall we cease, we horny ...

(Apologies to Alfred Lord Tennyson)

YOU must come call me early, call me early, knocker-up;
Tomorrow’ll be the earliest morn ...

AS one journeying in a torrid land
Beneath th’impassioned sun, no tree
To shelter life, or canopy,
His tongue swoll’n, ...

UNTIDY Gale, who loudly speaks,
Oh, go and change those holey breeks
That seem as though they’ve swept the floor,...

SOMEWHERE there sounds a bell!
Anon there comes the noise of clatt’ring feet;
Upon the stairs a savoury odour meet,...

ONE little month will soon slip by,
Four little weeks will quickly fly;
“Twenty eight days!” we gladly cry,
And ...

A leaden sombre sky,
A dull unchanging day,
I gaze with mournful eye
Upon the doleful day.

Yet all the ...

A Very Anciente Ballad

‘Artie, Artie, what mak’s ye sae sad,
And the sun shines in the street and a ...

AS children playing in the sand
Are loth to leave the mounds they make,
Yet onward o’er the level strand...

ALL lying on the floor; kicked here and there
By clumsy-footed animals greedy
For their own bags and caring naught ...

WIRES here, wires there,
Wires everywhere.
Who rises like a sudden thought?
Why, Prinny; nervous and distraught.
O Prinny, calm!...

A silence reigns.
Anon a husky cough the stillness breaks,
Some little noise the student makes,
Then silence reigns!

A ...

(Apologies to Browning)

AT the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,
When I stick the stamp with glee;
Will ...

(Apologies to S.T. Coleridge)

AND this place we are forced to use all morn!
This, for the practice of our ...

(Apologies to Crabbe)

Thus once again, my native isle, I come
Thee to salute, my earliest, only home;
Much art ...

(Apologies to Tennyson)

Artie and Willie
Slept in a cell;
Sleep, tired students;
And they slept well.

Green was the ...

(Apologies to Rothery)

Sleep, weary student, sleep,
While shadows soft creep.
Lie cold in your nest
By raw winds caress’d....

(Apologies to Arthur Hugh Clough)

To spend nine weeks of toil and pain,
Again, again, and yet again,
In working ...

Oh, warm the breath!
Oh, sweet the sighs!
Fast-closed eyes
White sheets beneath.
Cease not, O breath;
Come not, O ...

(Apologies to Matthew Arnold)

Prinny dear, was it yesterday
We left sweet Douglas on its bay?
In the caverns ...

Amid this gloom of bricks and lime
Where life is but a pantomime,
Where London roars and church bells chime,...

I plucked an apple; the apple was sour.
I threw it away, and picked a flower.
The flower was withered, ...

SWOLLEN and angry with foaming crest
The river swirls along,
With frowning brow and quickly heaving breast,
The river-reeds among....

YOU ask me why I sit and gaze
With vacant stare in front of me;
And why amid this dunce’s ...

IF time could roll back years for me
And lift the veil that ages seam,
Them might I live what ...

FOUR more Saturdays will come and go
Ere from this place we turn our toe
In fervid jubilation.
Four more ...

(With apologies to John Masefield)

QUINN came in from Newcastle and some from far Carlisle,
Travelling down to London from ...

Usual toil!
Quick as Kissacks
We turn in Physics
A bobbin for our coil.
Unusually hot,
Curious the weather
Fickle ...

OUR homes are in the trees,
We are clad but in the breeze,
And our forms are feathery light,
Flaky ...

TO rise in the grey of the morning
When the sun has not risen from bed,
A dark scowl our ...

IF I am wearied of this life of toil,
And all the air seems full of sweating groans,
When there ...

THE sun will shine, and yet the rain may pour;
The stream swift run, yet still backwaters creep.
Thus though ...

Calculus awful,
Quite a mwful!
No Physical Training,
For it is raining,
And we are thankful,
Though earth is dankful....

Another fine day.
How time flies!
Where to-day
My way lies?
I don’t know,
To and fro;
Potter hither,
Maybe ...

(With apologies to Fitzgerald)

1.
Awake! for, Ringing in the Realm of Night,
The Morning Bell has put all Sleep ...

Well-a-day, there’s a junior called Price
Who really is awfully nice,
So gentle and sweet,
And so dainty of feet,...

So this May Day! And very appropriate weather
Sun shining, and face shining, both of ‘em together.
May all before ...

(Apologies to Southey)

It was a winter evening.
My morrow’s work was done,
And I before my window drear
Bewailed ...

(Apologies to Leigh Hunt)

Benjamin Heppell (may his tribe decrease!)
Awoke one night feeling quite ill at ease
To see, ...

I cry out aloud to the tempest
As it sweeps in the dark world about me;
It answers my prayer ...

High wind shrieking
Through trees, and rumbling
In the flues
Old and crumbling,
Can’t hear speaking –
What’s the use?...

A College Cantata
(With Greek Chorus)

CHORUS: Hide thee, Joey, in thy cover,
Grim Bill wants thy barren hand;
We ...

YE sons that are going to fight for your country,
Stout be your hearts as ye march on your way;...

A nation weeps, a nation mourns,
A nation sorrows in its bournes,
A sombre cloak its frame adorns,
For Haig ...

THE wearying shore
Fought inch by inch,
Back to the cliff
Against the advancing sea.
And more and more,
Yet ...

Yet still one more Good Friday dawns! ‘Tis fair,
That is the striking fact, ‘tis bright and clear;
No fairer ...

(Apologies to R.W. Emerson)

Being the Twenty First of the Black Hole Ballads

IF the Grammarian thinks he speaks
The ...

Away in the green glen a streamlet’s song,
As it chatters and bubbles the stones among,
Proclaims “I live!” as ...

MUD, thick and black, heaves all around and hems
One little solid spot; and germs infest
Its slimy depths, with ...

(Apologies to Gray)

Being the Twenty-Fourth of the Black Hole Ballads

‘Twas in the Grammar School’s green yard
Where Sixth ...

I set by meself in the outhouse
A-chewin’ a long birra straw;
An’ the averin’s drawin’ in mighty,
So wharram ...

I said, “Let’s all do something dramatic!”
Another, “A play like we did in the attic.”
Then Tom, “Yes, quite ...

RED banners unfurlin the late evening fires
Beyond the etched trees and the golden-tipped spires.
Ablaze as with brands is ...

(With apologies to Matthew Arnold)

Being the Twentieth of the Black Hole Ballads

STREW on it rubbish, rubbish,
But never ...

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

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

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

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

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 ...

Being the Twenty-Fifth of the Black Hole Ballads

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

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

Being the Nineteenth of the Black Hole Ballads

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being the Eighteenth of the Black Hole Ballads.

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

(From the French of Alfred de Musset)

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

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

(Apologies to Mr. William Walshe)

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