Cover art by William Henry Bartlett

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Notes

This short lyric is a prayer for the gift of tears, a theme with deep roots in both Eastern and Western Christian spirituality. The donum lacrimarum — the gift of tears — was regarded in monastic theology as a special grace, a sign of compunction (compunctio cordis), and a means of spiritual purification equivalent in some traditions to a second baptism. The idea that weeping could cleanse the soul as water cleanses the body is made explicit here in the striking petition of stanza three, where the speaker asks that a stream of tears over his breast might be a washing tonight for his heart and body. The poem belongs to the rich Irish tradition of personal devotional lyric, comparable in tone and preoccupation to poems such as the Tiughraind Bhécáin or the lyrics associated with Mael Ísu Ua Brolcháin, and its compression and emotional directness are characteristic of the finest verse in that tradition. The reference in stanza two to the woman — almost certainly Mary Magdalene, or possibly the sinful woman of Luke 7 — who was granted the stream to her cheek grounds the speaker’s petition in scriptural precedent: if God granted tears to that afflicted, feeble woman, the speaker implies, he may grant them also to the penitent now praying. The closing stanza achieves an exceptional intimacy, addressing God as a mo dile (“O my dear one”) and imaging Christ’s blood within the speaker’s own heart, before concluding with the quietly devastating question: tears for me, O God — who will give them but you?

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Translation

Grant me, O great God, upon this present world (I will not conceal it), against the pains of the plagues, fierce waves of tears.

1. May there come to me in flow a vessel that will not be empty, until I reach alone at dawn beyond every peril of treachery.
2. Alas, O holy Christ, without a little stream on my cheek — even as you granted the pool to the feeble, wretched woman.
3. Alas, for every limb, without a little stream across my breast — that there might be a washing tonight for my heart and for my body.
4. For every aged sage who left his patrimony, for your kingdom clear, for your step upon the cross —
5. For every one who has seen his transgression upon this present world — my transgression, O living God, may it be lamented by me.
6. For your great goodness, for your sovereignty without sorrow — suddenly, at once, grant me a well of tears.
7. O my dear one, O God, your blood within my heart. Tears for me, O God — who will give them but you?

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