The Planets Seven by Joseph Mary Plunkett, Tune by McGrath of Harlow
(For the chords, click here)  "The flowers of heaven and earth are the same flowers."   Joseph Mary Plunkett 1887-1916. 

McGrath's Comments:  Joseph Mary Plunkett. I've got a battered selection of his poems I picked up in a junk shop in Clonmel.  It must have been printed fairly soon after he was shot - because it talks of him as being dead, but it never mentions the circumstances of his death.  Wartime censorship I imagine.  Anyway, here's a ballad he wrote that's included in the introduction written by his sister Geraldine. I've never seen it anywhere else: 

The planets seven that swing through Heaven 
On a golden tether round their Lord the Sun, 
Are not so humble, but they sometimes grumble, 
That their life is humdrum with but little fun. 
Though that shining sickle the moon's not fickle,
Yet she's sometimes mickle and more times less, 
But my love, my blessing, would give them a lesson 
Both the stars and crescent in graciousness.

There's many a flower in a heavy shower 
Would say that its hour of grief was black 
And the bearded barley would take it hardly 
In the morning early to be cut and stacked; 
The silver herring off the coast of Kerry 
Is not so merry to meet with death, 
But my love, my children, she would beguile them 
With her easy smiling while he stopped their breath.

If the stars lack teachers, or ever a preacher 
To recall the creatures to the ways of God, 
Let them cease to whistle and come and listen 
Kneeling like Christians upon the sod; 
Then Saint Columba will shake the slumber 
Of Death that cumbers their tired eyes 
And my love will glance with a look entrancing 
And send them dancing to Paradise.