St Patrick’s Day Poems: The Best Irish Prayers, Ballads and Verse

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On St Patrick’s Day somebody always gets asked to say a few words. A good poem saves you, and the best Irish poems for St Patrick’s Day cost nothing to read aloud.

Every poem printed in full here is out of copyright.

Jump to:

• The best St Patrick’s Day poems at a glance
• St Patrick’s Breastplate
• Patrick’s Blessing on Munster
• The Wearing of the Green
• Short St Patrick’s Day poems
• St Patrick’s Day poems for kids
• A poem for the Irish abroad
• Songs and modern poems
• The poems I left out, and why
• St Patrick’s Day poems FAQ
• More St Patrick’s Day reading

The best St Patrick’s Day poems at a glance

• A prayer: St Patrick’s Breastplate, in Cecil Frances Alexander’s hymn (1889).
• A blessing: Patrick’s Blessing on Munster, translated by Kuno Meyer (1911).
• A ballad: “The Wearing of the Green”, Dion Boucicault’s version (1864).
• A toast: “St. Patrick’s Day” by Jean Blewett (1906).
• For the classroom: Katharine Tynan’s snake and shamrock rhymes (1907).
• For exiles: “Home” by Francis Ledwidge (1917).

St Patrick’s Breastplate

This is the big one, a prayer for protection credited to Patrick. Did he write it? Probably not.

Patrick lived in the 5th century, but the Old Irish text is no older than the 8th. It survives in the 11th-century Liber Hymnorum.

The manuscript tells how King Lóegaire laid an ambush to stop Patrick reaching Tara. Patrick sang this prayer, and the soldiers saw only deer pass by. Hence its other name, “The Deer’s Cry”.

“I bind unto myself today”: the hymn

Cecil Frances Alexander (1818 to 1895), from Dublin, wrote this hymn version in 1889, at the request of H. H. Dickinson. She also gave us “All Things Bright and Beautiful”.

I bind unto myself to-day
The strong name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this day to me for ever,
By power of faith, Christ’s Incarnation;
His baptism in Jordan river;
His death on cross for my salvation;
His bursting from the spiced tomb;
His riding up the heavenly way;
His coming at the day of doom;
I bind unto myself to-day.

I bind unto myself the power
Of the great love of Cherubim;
The sweet ‘Well done’ in judgment hour;
The service of the Seraphim,
Confessors’ faith, Apostles’ word,
The Patriarchs’ prayers, the Prophets’ scrolls,
All good deeds done unto the Lord,
And purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself to-day
The virtues of the star-lit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life-giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself to-day
The power of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, His might to stay,
His ear to hearken to my need.
The wisdom of my God to teach,
His hand to guide, His shield to ward;
The Word of God to give me speech,
His heavenly host to be my guard.

Against the demon snares of sin,
The vice that gives temptation force,
The natural lusts that war within,
The hostile men that mar my course;
Or few or many, far or nigh,
In every place, and in all hours,
Against their fierce hostility,
I bind to me these holy powers.

Against all Satan’s spells and wiles,
Against false words of heresy,
Against the knowledge that defiles,
Against the heart’s idolatry,
Against the wizard’s evil craft,
Against the death-wound and the burning,
The choking wave, the poisoned shaft,
Protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity;
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One, and One in Three,
Of Whom all nature hath creation;
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

Cecil Frances Alexander, 1889. Public domain.

In 1896 Dickinson wrote that it was “now sung in many churches on St. Patrick’s Day”. It still is, and on Trinity Sunday too.

Prefer something plainer? Kuno Meyer’s 1911 version, based on Whitley Stokes and John Strachan’s 1903 translation, opens “I arise to-day / Through a mighty strength”. Shaun Davey set the prayer to music as “The Deer’s Cry” in 1983.

Patrick’s Blessing on Munster

I’m a Cork man, so I’m biased. But this is one of the loveliest old blessings, and hardly anyone prints it.

It blesses everything, right down to the bare rocks.

God’s blessing upon Munster,
Men, women, children!
A blessing on the land
Which gives them fruit!

A blessing on every wealth
Which is brought forth on their marches!
No one to be in want of help:
God’s blessing upon Munster!

A blessing on their peaks,
On their bare flagstones,
A blessing on their glens,
A blessing on their ridges!

Like sand of sea under ships
Be the number of their hearths:
On slopes, on plains,
On mountain-sides, on peaks.

Anonymous, from the Tripartite Life of Patrick (9th century or later), translated by Kuno Meyer, 1911. Public domain.

Want something shorter for a card? My St Patrick’s Day blessings page has plenty.

The Wearing of the Green

This began as an anonymous street ballad about the crackdown after the 1798 Rebellion. The United Irishmen wore green, and wearing it marked you as a rebel. The singer meets Napper Tandy, a United Irishman in exile.

The words most people know are by the Dublin playwright Dion Boucicault (1820 to 1890). He reworked an older street ballad, keeping most of the old words. He put it in his 1864 play Arrah-na-Pogue and added the verses about America.

In 1888 the anthologist H. Halliday Sparling called it “a hash-up by Boucicault” of an old variant. That older one was written from exile in France, not America. Everybody sings Boucicault’s anyway.

O Paddy dear, and did you hear the news that’s going round?
The shamrock is forbid by law to grow on Irish ground;
St Patrick’s Day no more we’ll keep, his colours can’t be seen,
For there’s a bloody law again the wearing of the green.
I met with Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand,
And he said, “How’s poor old Ireland, and how does she stand?”
She’s the most distressful country that ever yet was seen,
They are hanging men and women for the wearing of the green.

O if the colour we must wear is England’s cruel red,
Sure Ireland’s sons will ne’er forget the blood that they have shed.
You may take the shamrock from your hat and cast it on the sod,
But ’twill take root and flourish there, though under foot ’tis trod.
When law can stop the blades of grass from growing as they grow,
And when the leaves in summer-time their verdure dare not show,
Then I will change the colour that I wear in my caubeen,
But till that day, please God, I’ll stick to wearing of the green.

But if at last our colour should be torn from Ireland’s heart,
Her sons with shame and sorrow from the dear old isle will part;
I’ve heard a whisper of a country that lies beyond the sea,
Where rich and poor stand equal in the light of freedom’s day.
O Erin, must we leave you, driven by a tyrant’s hand?
Must we ask a mother’s blessing from a strange and distant land?
Where the cruel cross of England shall nevermore be seen,
And where, please God, we’ll live and die still wearing of the green.

Dion Boucicault, 1864, from an older street ballad. Text as printed by Sparling, 1888. Public domain.

A caubeen is an old Irish cap. For why green became our colour, see why we wear green on St Patrick’s Day.

Short St Patrick’s Day poems

Jean Blewett (1862 to 1934) was a Canadian poet. This toast, from The Cornflower, and Other Poems (1906), is short enough to read before the soup goes cold. Raise a glass at each “Here’s to”.

There’s an Isle, a green Isle, set in the sea,
Here’s to the Saint that blessed it!
And here’s to the billows wild and free
That for centuries have caressed it!

Here’s to the day when the men that roam
Send longing eyes o’er the water!
Here’s to the land that still spells home
To each loyal son and daughter!

Here’s to old Ireland, fair, I ween,
With the blue skies stretched above her!
Here’s to her shamrock warm and green,
And here’s to the hearts that love her!

Jean Blewett, 1906. Public domain.

“I ween” is old English for “I think”. For something with more bite, try my top Irish toasts.

St Patrick’s Day poems for kids

These two rhymes are by the Irish poet Katharine Tynan (1859 to 1931), from her Rhymed Life of St. Patrick (1907).

“St Patrick banishes Snakes”

St Patrick by his holy hand
Banished all snakes from Ireland;
All foul things that wriggle and crawl,
Spotted, striped, he banished them all,
Excepting only the useful worm
That opens the earth after winter’s storm:
Bade them, snake and adder, that they
Come no more till the Judgement Day.
Snakes barred and snakes ringed,
Snakes hooded and snakes winged,
Came creeping and crawling from bank and byre,
Lest he give them all to the Judgement fire.
Snakes young and snakes old,
Snakes crimson and snakes gold,
All in a mighty pother and hurry,
For that deep lake in the hills of Kerry,
Which holds them all till the Judgement Day.
St Patrick, keep all evil away!

Katharine Tynan, 1907. Public domain.

For teachers: Nigel Monaghan of the National Museum of Ireland has searched its fossil records. He told National Geographic there has never been “any suggestion of snakes in Ireland”. Patrick had an easy day.

“St Patrick takes the Shamrock for a Text”

The King at last his Druids spurned;
Gave Patrick the word for which he burned,
To preach the Gospel of Christ, unfearing,
Up and down through the land of Erin;
Yet chose darkness himself. It was
At Tara that Patrick sought in the grass,
Found the dear Shamrock, and preached: Lo, see
The Miracle of the Trinity!
Lo, “Three in One and One in Three!”
Great numbers there received the Faith,
Ransomed to Christ from darkness and death.
Great honour that little shamrock has,
That grows so green in the Irish grass.

Katharine Tynan, 1907. Public domain.

The shamrock story wasn’t written down until the botanist Caleb Threlkeld mentioned it in 1726. More in my guide to the shamrock.

Ella Higginson’s “Four-Leaf Clover” (1898) is a sweet American poem about luck. Just remind the kids a shamrock has three leaves, not four.

A poem for the Irish abroad

Francis Ledwidge (1887 to 1917), from Slane in Co. Meath, wrote “Home” in Belgium in July 1917. He was killed at Ypres that same month.

A burst of sudden wings at dawn,
Faint voices in a dreamy noon,
Evenings of mist and murmurings,
And nights with rainbows of the moon.

And through these things a wood-way dim,
And waters dim, and slow sheep seen
On uphill paths that wind away
Through summer sounds and harvest green.

This is a song a robin sang
This morning on a broken tree,
It was about the little fields
That call across the world to me.

Francis Ledwidge, written in Belgium, July 1917; published in Last Songs, 1918. Public domain.

Tynan felt the same pull, dedicating her Patrick rhymes “To you, children of Patrick and Bride, / Scattered over the world so wide”.

Songs and modern poems

• “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” (1912) is by Chauncey Olcott, George Graff Jr. and Ernest R. Ball. The story is on my When Irish Eyes Are Smiling page.
• Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies (1808 to 1834) are songs set to old Irish airs. See my St Patrick’s Day music guide.
• Derek Mahon’s “St Patrick’s Day”, collected in New Collected Poems (2011), is still in copyright, so read it at the Poetry Foundation.

For Yeats, Kavanagh, Heaney and the rest, my top 100 Irish poems will keep you busy until next March.

The poems I left out, and why

My old list had three poems I’ve dropped. I couldn’t trace “St. Patrick’s Day”, credited to C. C. Hassler, to any book or date.

“Four Leaf Clover”, credited to Eloise A. Skimings, is a love verse with nothing Irish in it. A third, credited to “Unknown”, stops mid-sentence.

Which St Patrick’s Day poem did you learn at school? Tell me in the comments.

St Patrick’s Day poems FAQ

What is the most famous St Patrick’s Day poem?

St Patrick’s Breastplate, the prayer beginning “I bind unto myself today”. Cecil Frances Alexander’s 1889 hymn version is still sung around 17 March.

Did St Patrick write St Patrick’s Breastplate?

Almost certainly not. The Old Irish text is no older than the 8th century, centuries after Patrick. Old Irish prayers were often credited to saints.

What is a good short St Patrick’s Day poem?

Jean Blewett’s “St. Patrick’s Day” (1906) is 12 lines and works as a toast. Tynan’s rhymes in the kids’ section are short too.

What St Patrick’s Day poems are good for kids?

Katharine Tynan’s “St Patrick banishes Snakes” and “St Patrick takes the Shamrock for a Text” (1907) rhyme well and tell the two famous legends. Both are public domain, so print away.

More St Patrick’s Day reading

• St Patrick’s Day blessings
• Top 100 Irish poems
• The real story of St Patrick’s Day
• The shamrock and St Patrick
• Top 10 Irish toasts
• May the road rise up to meet you: meaning
• When Irish Eyes Are Smiling: the story

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