Poetry Revisited: Beauty’s a Flower by Moira O’Neill

Beauty’s a Flower

(from Songs from the Glens of Antrim: 1900)

          Youth’s for an hour, 
          Beauty’s a flower,
          But love is the jewel that wins the world.

Youth’s for an hour, an’ the taste o’ life is sweet,
Ailes was a girl that stepped on two bare feet;
In all my days I never seen the one as fair as she,
I’d have lost my life for Ailes, an’ she never cared for me.

Beauty’s a flower, an’ the days o’ life are long,
There’s little knowin’ who may live to sing another song;
For Ailes was the fairest, but another is my wife,
An’ Mary—God be good to her!—is all I love in life.

          Youth’s for an hour, 
          Beauty’s a flower,
          But love is the jewel that wins the world.

Moira O’Neill (1864–1955), real name Agnes Shakespeare Higginson
Irish-Canadian poet