James Joyce is best known as a novelist, but his poetry plays an important role in understanding his literary development and artistic vision. His poems are marked by lyrical intensity, musical rhythm, emotional restraint, and subtle symbolism, often focusing on love, memory, exile, and inner consciousness.
Joyce’s most famous poetry collection is Chamber Music (1907). The poems in this book are short, delicate, and song-like, influenced by Elizabethan love lyrics and Romantic traditions. Unlike his later experimental prose, these poems are simple in language yet emotionally refined. They explore themes of youthful love, desire, longing, and spiritual tension, often conveyed through soft imagery of nature, night, and music.
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| James joyce |
Another important poetic work is Pomes Penyeach (1927), a small collection written over many years. These poems are more personal and mature, reflecting Joyce’s life in exile, his relationship with Nora Barnacle, and his feelings about Ireland. Here, Joyce’s voice becomes more ironic, introspective, and emotionally complex.
Joyce also wrote the powerful poem “Ecce Puer”, mourning the death of his father while celebrating the birth of his son. It shows his ability to combine grief and hope in a restrained, elegant style.
- Overall, James Joyce’s poems may be fewer in number, but they reveal his early lyrical mastery and provide a crucial bridge between traditional poetry and the revolutionary modernist techniques that would later define his prose works like Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.
All day I hear the noise of waters
All day I hear the noise of waters
Making moan,
Sad as the sea-bird is when, going
Forth alone,
He hears the winds cry to the water's
Monotone.
The grey winds, the cold winds are blowing
Where I go.
I hear the noise of many waters
Far below.
All day, all night, I hear them flowing
To and fro.
Dear Heart
Dear heart, why will you use me so?
Dear eyes that gently me upbraid,
Still are you beautiful — - but O,
How is your beauty raimented!
Through the clear mirror of your eyes,
Through the soft sigh of kiss to kiss,
Desolate winds assail with cries
The shadowy garden where love is.
And soon shall love dissolved be
When over us the wild winds blow — -
But you, dear love, too dear to me,
Alas! why will you use me so?
The Twilight Turns
The twilight turns from amethyst
To deep and deeper blue,
The lamp fills with a pale green glow
The trees of the avenue.
The old piano plays an air,
Sedate and slow and gay;
She bends upon the yellow keys,
Her head inclines this way.
Shy thought and grave wide eyes and hands
That wander as they list — -
The twilight turns to darker blue
With lights of amethyst.
A Flower Given to My Daughter
Frail the white rose and frail are
Her hands that gave
Whose soul is sere and paler
Than time's wan wave.
Rosefrail and fair — yet frailest
A wonder wild
In gentle eyes thou veilest,
My blueveined child.
Bid Adieu
Bid adieu, adieu, adieu,
Bid adieu to girlish days,
Happy Love is come to woo
Thee and woo thy girlish ways—
The zone that doth become thee fair,
The snood upon thy yellow hair,
When thou hast heard his name upon
The bugles of the cherubim
Begin thou softly to unzone
Thy girlish bosom unto him
And softly to undo the snood
That is the sign of maidenhood.
At That Hour
At that hour when all things have repose,
O lonely watcher of the skies,
Do you hear the night wind and the sighs
Of harps playing unto Love to unclose
The pale gates of sunrise?
When all things repose, do you alone
Awake to hear the sweet harps play
To Love before him on his way,
And the night wind answering in antiphon
Till night is overgone?
Play on, invisible harps, unto Love,
Whose way in heaven is aglow
At that hour when soft lights come and go,
Soft sweet music in the air above
And in the earth below.
Alone
The noon's greygolden meshes make
All night a veil,
The shorelamps in the sleeping lake
Laburnum tendrils trail.
The sly reeds whisper to the night
A name— her name-
And all my soul is a delight,
A swoon of shame.
A Prayer
Again!
Come, give, yield all your strength to me!
From far a low word breathes on the breaking brain
Its cruel calm, submission's misery,
Gentling her awe as to a soul predestined.
Cease, silent love! My doom!
Blind me with your dark nearness, O have mercy, beloved enemy of my will!
I dare not withstand the cold touch that I dread.
Draw from me still
My slow life! Bend deeper on me, threatening head,
Proud by my downfall, remembering, pitying
Him who is, him who was!
Again!
Together, folded by the night, they lay on earth. I hear
From far her low word breathe on my breaking brain.
Come! I yield. Bend deeper upon me! I am here.
Subduer, do not leave me! Only joy, only anguish,
Take me, save me, soothe me, O spare me!
My Dove, My Beautiful One
My dove, my beautiful one,
Arise, arise!
The night-dew lies
Upon my lips and eyes.
The odorous winds are weaving
A music of sighs:
Arise, arise,
My dove, my beautiful one!
I wait by the cedar tree,
My sister, my love,
White breast of the dove,
My breast shall be your bed.
The pale dew lies
Like a veil on my head.
My fair one, my fair dove,
Arise, arise!
