Righteous Anger

James Stephens 1882 (Dublin) – 1950



THE lanky hank of a she in the inn over there
Nearly killed me for asking the loan of a glass of beer:
May the devil grip the whey-faced slut by the hair,
And beat bad manners out of her skin for a year.

That parboiled imp, with the hardest jaw you will see
On virtue’s path, and a voice that would rasp the dead,
Came roaring and raging the minute she looked on me,
And threw me out of the house on the back of my head!

If I asked her master he’d give me a cask a day;
But she, with the beer at hand, not a gill would arrange!
May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten, and may
The High King of Glory permit her to get the mange.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 29, 2023

41 sec read
90

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF
Closest metre Iambic heptameter
Characters 644
Words 137
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4

James Stephens

James Stephens was an Irish Republican and the founding member of an originally unnamed revolutionary organisation in Dublin on 17 March 1858, later to become known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood, also referred to as the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood by contemporaries. more…

All James Stephens poems | James Stephens Books

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