mac:
DonaGH
A
THE
POETICAL WORKS OF
THOMAS MACDONAGH
THE
_PpETICAL WORKS
OF
THOMAS MACDONAGH
DUBLIN
THE TALBOT PRESS
1916
Printed by
The Educational Company of Ireland
at
THE TALBOT PRESS
89 Talbot St., Dublin
CONTENTS
SONGS OF MYSELF PAGE
In the Storm ... ... ... 5
In Absence ... ... ... 6
In an Island ... ... ... 7
After a Year ... ... ... 8
The Suicide ... ... ... 11
In Fever ... ... ... 12
In Dread ... ... ... 13
A Dream of Age ... ... ... 14
The Anchoret ... ... ... 15
In Calm ... ... ... 1C
In September ... ... ... 17
At the End ... ... ... 18
Our Story ... ... ... 19
To Eoghan ... ... ... 20
Death ... ... ... 21
The Rain it Raineth ... ... 22
Death in the Woods ... ... 23
At Dawn ... ... ... 26
My Poet ... ... ... 27
Requies ... ... ... 28
A Song of Another ... ... 29
A Woman ... ... ... 31
A Dream of Being ... ... 32
Two Songs from the Irish ... ... 38
John-John ... ... ... 41
To a Wise Man ... ... ... 44
Offering ... ... ... 45
Envoi ... ... ... 46
VI. CONTENTS
LYRICAL POEMS PAGE
Author's Preface ... ... ... 7
Of My Poems ... ... ... 9
Grange House Lodge ... ... 12
The Song of Joy ... ... 14
THE BOOK OF IMAGES
I. Introit ... ... ... 25
II. Images ... ... ... 26
III. The Tree of Knowledge ... 30
IV. O Star of Death ... ... 34
V. Litany of Beauty ... ... 39
VI. The Great ... ... ... 44
VII. The Poet Captain ... ... 46
VIII. The Golden Joy ... ... 50
TRANSLATIONS
The Yellow Bittern ... ... 65
Druimfhionn Bonn Dilis ... ... 68
Isn't it Pleasant for the Little Birds ... 70
Eve ... ... ... ... 71
Catullus : VIII. ... ... ... 72
Catullus: LXXVI. ... ... ... 74
EARLY POEMS
When in the Forenoon of the Year ... 79
I Heard a Music Sweet To-day ... 81
Love is Cruel, Love is Sweet ... 82
The House in the Wood beside the Lake 83
A Dream of Hell ... ... ... 88
Of a Poet Patriot ... ... ... 91
Of a Greek Poem ... ... ... 92
Ideal ... ... ... ... 93
The Seasons and the Leaves ... 94
CONTENTS Vii.
EARLY POEMS— continued PAGE
A Season of Repose ... ... 96
With only This for Likeness, only These
Words ... ... ... 104
Fairy Tales ... ... ... 106
The Coming-in of Summer ... ... 107
O Bursting Bud of Joy ... ... 109
For Victory ... ... ... 110
Of the Man of My First Play ... 112
Envoi : 1904 ... ... ... 113
INSCRIPTIONS
I. Of Ireland ... ... ... 117
II. ... ... ... ... 117
III. ... ... ... ... 118
IV. ... ... ... ... 118
V. ... ... ... ... 118
VI. ... ... ... ... 119
In Paris ... ... ... 120
The Night Hunt ... ... ... 121
The Man Upright ... ... ... 124
Wishes for My Son ... ... 127
Postscriptum ... ... ... 130
NOTES 131
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
Barbara ... ... ... 135
Within the Temple ... ... 140
To James Clarence Mangan ... ... 141
Snow at Morning ... ... ... 143
The Sentimentalist ... ... 144
The Poet Saint ... ... ... 145
Luna Dies et Nox et Noctis Signa Severa 147
May Day ... ... ... 148
viii. CONTENTS
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS — continued PAGE
Eamonn an Chnuic ... ... 150
Cormac 6g ... ... ... 152
Quando Ver Venit Meum ? ... ... 154
Averil ... ... ... ... 155
Sundown ... ... ... 157
My Love to-night ... ... ... 158
Uber alien gipfellen ist ruh ... ... 159
To my Lady ... ... ... 160
To Eoghan ... ... ... 162
The Stars ... ... ... 164
Catullus : V. ... ... ... 165
Dublin Tramcars ... ... ... 166
The Philistine ... ... ... 167
Inscription on a Ruin ... ... 168
TT is strange to look back to the time when
I first knew Thomas MacDonagh. What
with the present great war in Europe, and our
own small war in Ireland, that time has so faded
and retreated that one recalls it with difficulty
and regards it with something of astonishment —
yet it is only six years ago. Was there that
peace, that gentleness, that good-humour ? And
was the MacDonagh of April, 1916, the same
man with whom I walked, and talked and quar-
relled in 1910 ? One could quarrel with Mac-
Donagh, but not for more than three minutes at
a time, and if he were ruffled the mere touch of
a hand or the wind of a pleasant word appeased
him instantly. I have seldom known a man in
whom the instinct for friendship was so true, nor
one who was so prepared to use himself in the
service of a friend. He was intensely egotistic
in his speech ; so, it seems to me, were all the
young Irishmen of that date ; but in his actions
he was utterly unselfish.
At that time he lived a kind of semi-detached
life at the gate-lodge of Mr. Houston's house in
the Dublin hills. To this house all literary
Dublin used to repair, and there MacDonagh was
constantly to be seen. He was a quaint recluse
who delighted in company, and he fled into and
out of solitude with equal precipitancy. He had
a longing for the hermit's existence and a gift
for gregarious life. At Grange House both these
aptitudes were met, and I think he was very con-
tent there. Out on the hills, walking across the
fields, or along the narrow roads curving to this
side and that, but always running upwards, he
would repeat his verses to me, and accompany
them and follow them with a commentary that
seemed endless as the bushes that lined our road.
Just then I was so interested in my own verse
I could not afford to be interested in anyone
else's, and I should say that my impression of
his poems agreed absolutely with his impressions
about mine.
In literary ways he was very learned, and
would quote from English and French and L,atin
and Irish ; but in worldly ways he was an infantr
and he preserved that freshness of outlook and
candour of bearing until the end — an end that in
those days he did not dream of, or if he did,
he who reported everything did not report this
dream. I do not think he had any other am-
bition than to write good verse and to love his
friends, and the pleasure he found in these two
arts was the sole profit I ever knew him to seek
or to get.
There was a certain reserve behind his talka-
tiveness. Often, staring away at the hills or at
the sky, he would say, " Ah me !" — an interjec-
tion that never expressed itself further in words.
Yet that interjection, always half humorous,
always half tragic, remains with me as more than
a memory. I think that when he faced the guns
which ended life and poetry and all else for him,
he said in his half humorous, half tragic way,
" Ah me !" and left the whole business at that.
Poor MacDonagh ! There went a good man
down when you went down.
About three weeks before the Insurrection I
met him for the last time. We walked together
for nearly an hour, and I remember he was salu-
ted in Grafton Street by three young men — three
of his Volunteers. At that time I am sure he
did not intend any rebellion. I did not ask him
much about the plans of the Volunteers, for when
one is not in a movement one has no right to ask
questions about it, and the only point we spoke
of was the possibility of their arms being seized.
His remark on that contingency was stern enough.
But I can find nothing in his speech with the
implication of rebellion. I think if he had medi-
tated this he would have emphasised some phrase
with his tongue or his eye, so that afterwards I
could remember it. Indeed he was so free from
all idea of immediate violence that he arranged to
ask me later on to talk to some of his boys about
the poetry of William Blake. One thing that he
said smilingly remains with me : " When are you
lads going to stop writing stories and do some-
thing ?" said he.
xi.
He had reserves to fall back on when the end
came — reserves of pride and imagination and
courage. An officer who witnessed the execu-
tions said, " They all died well, but MacDonagh
died like a prince."
Here are his collected poems. It is yet too
early for anything in the nature of literary criti-
cism. Recollection is too recent, his death too
tragic to permit it. I will only say to his country-
men : Here are the poems of a good man, and if,
outside of rebellion and violence, you wish to
know what his thoughts were like, you will find
all his thoughts here ; and here, more truly ex-
pressed than his public actions could tell it, you
will find exactly what kind of man he was.
JAMES STEPHENS.
10th August, 1916
SONGS OF MYSELF
THOMAS MACDONAGH
Two of these poems have appeared
in "The Nation" (London), and ate
here reprinted by the kind permission
of the Editor.
IN THE STORM
With laughing eyes and storm-blown
hair
You came to my bedside;
I thought your living soul was there,
And that my dreams had lied;
But ere my lips had power to speak
A word of love to you,
The moonlight fell upon your cheek,
And it was of death's hue.
Sudden I heard the storm arise,
I heard its summons roll :
Wistful and wondering your eyes
Were fading from my soul.
The moonlight waned, and shadows thick
Went keening on the storm —
Ah ! for the quiet that was quick,
The cold heart that was warm !
(D 317)
IN ABSENCE
Last night I read your letters once again —
Read till the dawn filled all my room with
grey;
Then quenched my light and put the
leaves away,
And prayed for sleep to ease my heart's
great pain.
But ah ! that poignant tenderness made
vain
My hope of rest — I could not sleep or
pray
For thought of you, and the slow, broad-
ening day
Held me there prisoner of my throbbing
brain.
Yet I did sleep before the silence broke,
And dream, but not of you — the old
dreams rife
With duties which would bind me to the
yoke
Of my old futile, lone, reluctant life :
I stretched my hands for help in the vain
strife,
And grasped these leaves, and to this
pain awoke.
6
IN AN ISLAND
'Mid an isle I stand,
Under its only tree :
The ocean around —
Around life eternity :
'Mid my life I stand,
Under the boughs of thee.
AFTER A YEAR
After a year of love
Death of love in a day;
And I who ever strove
To hold love in sure life
Now let it pass away
With no grief and no strife.
Pass — but it holds me yet;
Love, it would seem, may die;
But we can not forget
And can not be the same,
As lowly or as high,
As once, before this came.
Never as in old days
Can I again stoop low;
Never, now fallen, raise
Spirit and heart above
To where once life did show
The lone soul of my love.
AFTER A YEAR
None would the service ask
That she from love requires,
Making it not a task
But a high sacrament
Of all love's dear desires
And all life's grave intent.
And if she asked it not? —
Should I have loved her then? —
Such love was our one lot
And our true destiny.
Shall I find truth again? —
None could have known but she.
And she? — But it is vain
Her life now. to surmise,
Whether of joy or pain,
After this borrowed year.
Memory may bring her sighs,
But will it bring a tear?
What if it brought love back? —
Love ? — Ah ! love died to-day —
She knew that our hearts lack
One thing that makes love true.
And I would not gainsay,
Told her I also knew.
io SONGS OF MYSELF
And there an end of it—
I, who had never brooked
Such word as all unfit
For our sure love, brooked this —
Into her eyes I looked,
Left her without a kiss.
THE SUICIDE
Here when I have died,
And when my body is found,
They will bury it by the roadside
And in no blessed ground.
And no one my story will tell,
And no one will honour my name :
They will think that they bury well
The damned in their grave of shame.
But alike shall be at last
The shamed and the blessed place,
The future and the past,
Man's grace and man's disgrace.
Secure in their grave I shall be
From it all, and quiet then,
With no thought and no memory
Of the deeds and the dooms of men.
11
IN FEVER
I am withered and wizened and stiff and
old,
Sick and hot, and I sigh for the cold,
For the days when all of the world was
fresh
And all of me, my soul and my flesh, —
When my lips and my mouth were cool
as the dew,
And my eyes, now worn, as clear, as new.
I wish I were lying out in the rain
In the wood at home, that the waters
might strain
And stream through me — But here I lie
In a clammy room, and my soul is dry,
And shall never be fresh again till I die.
12
IN DREAD
All day in widowed loneliness and dread
Haunted I went, fearing that all your
love
Was dead, and all my joy, as sudden
dead
As once were sudden born our joy
and love.
18
A DREAM OF AGE
I dreamt last night that I was very old,
And very lonesome, very sad of heart;
And, shunning men, dwelt in a place
apart
Where none my barren sorrow might be-
hold;
There brooded grim beside my hearth-
stone cold
Cold days of shadow, dying, till with
flame
Of happy memory once more you came
With laughing eyes and hair of burning
gold.
— O eyes of sudden joy ! O storm-
blown hair !
O pale face of my love ! why do you rise
Amid the haunting spectres of despair
To trouble their gaunt vigil with my
cries ? —
In tears I woke and knew the dream was
true :
My youth was lost, and lost the love of
you.
14
THE ANCHORET
I saw thy soul stand in the moon
Last night, the live-long night —
The jewels of Heaven in thy hand,
Thy brow with cherub coronal spanned,
And thou in God's light.
Hell is the demons' gulfed lair
Beneath the flaming bars;
And Heaven, whereto thou goest soon,
Beyond thy dwelling in the moon
And beyond the stars.
But Purgatory, thine old abode
Since Life's impure delay,
Towers athwart the circling air
Whose topmost Heaven-reaching stair
Thou dost tread to-day.
Thy soul within the moon doth stand —
How many years of toil !
And I must bear a greater load,
And I must climb a harder road
Ere God me assoil !
15
IN CALM
Not a wind blows and I have cried for
storm !
The night is still and sullen and too
bright,
Still and not cold, — the airs around me
warm
Rise, and I hate them, and I hate the
night.
Yet I shall hate the day more than the
hush
Henceforth forever, as life more than
death ; —
And I have cried to hear the wild winds
rush
To drown my words, to drown my
living breath.
16
IN SEPTEMBER
The winds are in the wood again to-day,
Not moaning as they moan among
bare boughs
In winter dark, nor baying as they bay
When hunting in full moon, the spring
to rouse;
Nor as in summer, soft : the insistent rain
Hisses the woe of my void life to me ;
And the winds jibe me for my anguish
vain,
Sibilant, like waters of the washing
sea.
17
AT THE END
The songs that I sing
Should have told you an Easter story
Of a long sweet Spring
With its gold and its feasts and its glory.
Of the moons then that married
Green May to the mellow September,
Long noons that ne'er tarried
Life's hail and farewell to remember —
But the haste of the years
Had rushed to the fall of our sorrow,
To the waste of our tears,
The hush and the pall of our morrow.
18
OUR STORY
There was a young king who was sad,
And a young queen who was lonely;
They lived together their busy life,
Known to each other only, —
Known to each other with strange love,
But with sighs for the king's vain
sorrow
And for the queen's vain loneliness
And vain forethought of the morrow.
After a barren while they died,
In death they were not parted :
Now in their grave perhaps they know
Why they were broken-hearted.
19
TO EOGHAN
Will you gaze after the dead, gaze into
the grave? —
Strain your eyes in the darkness,
knowing it vain?
Strain your voice in the silence that never
gave
To any voice or yours an answer
again ?
She whom you loved long years is dead,
and you
Stay, and you cannot bear it and cry
for her —
And life will cure this pain — or death :
you too
Shall quiet lie where cries no echo
stir.
20
DEATH
Life is a boon — and death, as spirit and
flesh are twain :
The body is spoil of death, the spirit
lives on death-free;
The body dies and its wound dies and
the mortal pain;
The wounded spirit lives, wounded im-
mortally.
21
(D 317)
THE RAIN IT RAINETH
The homeless bird has a weary time
When the wind is high and moans
through the grass :
The laughter has fainted out of my
rime-
On ! but the life that will moan and
pass !
An oak-tree wrestling on the hill,
And the wind wailing in the grass —
And life will strive with many an ill
For many a weary day ere it pass —
Wailing, wailing a winter threne
In the clouds on high and low in the
grass ;
So for my soul will he raise the keen
When I from the winds and the
winters pass.
22
DEATH IN THE WOODS
When I am gone and you alone are living
here still,
You'll think of me when splendid the
storm is on the hill,
Trampling and militant here — what of
their village street? —
For the baying of winds in the woods to
me was music sweet.
Oh, for the storms again, and youth in
my heart again !
My spirit to glory strained, wild in this
wild wood then,
That now shall never strain — though I
think if the tempest should roll
I could rise and strive with death, and
smite him back from my soul.
23
24 SONGS OF MYSELF
But no wind stirs a leaf, and no cloud
hurries the moon;
I know that our lake to-night with stars
and shadows is strewn—
A night for a villager's death, who will
shudder in his grave
To hear — alas, how long! — the winds
above him rave.
How long ! Ah, Death, what art thou,
a thing of calm or of storms?
Or twain — their peace to them, to me thy
valiant alarms?
Gladly I'd leave them this corpse in their
churchyard to lay at rest,
If my wind-swept spirit could fare on the
hurricane's kingly quest.
And sure 'tis the fools of knowledge who
feign that the winds of the world
Are but troubles of little calms by the
greater Calm enfurled :
I know them for symbols of glory, and
echoes of one Voice dread,
Sounding where spacious tempests house
the great-hearted Dead.
DEATH IN THE WOODS 25
And what but a fool was I, crying defiance
to Death,
Who shall lead my soul from this calm
to mingle with God's very breath ! —
Who shall lead me hither perhaps while
you are waiting here still,
Sighing for thought of me when the winds
are out on the hill.
AT DAWN
Lo! 'tis the lark
Out in the sweet of the dawn !
Springing up from the dew of the lawn,
Singing over the gurth and the park !—
O Dawn, red rose to change my life's grey
story !
O Song, mute lips burning to lyric glory !
O Joy ! Joy of the lark,
Over the dewy lawn,
Over the gurth and the park,
In the sweet of the dawn !
26
MY POET
—My poet the rose of his fancies
Wrought unwritten in verse,
And left but the lilies and pansies
To strew his early hearse.
— The master-dream of your poet
Has perished for ever then?
— What know we? Should we know it
If it were born again?
27
REQUIES
He is dead, and never word of blame
Or praise of him his spirit hears,
Sacred, secure from cark of fame,
From sympathy of useless tears.
28
A SONG OF ANOTHER
FOR EOGHAN
Often enough the leaves have fallen there
Since life for her was changed to other
care ;
Often enough the winds that swept the
wave
And mocked my woe, have moaned over
her grave.
I will return : Death now can do no more
Anywhere on these seas or on the shore,
Since he has stilled her heart. I cannot
mourn
For her on these wild seas : I will return.
Death now can do no more. And what
but Death
Has any final power? He ceased her
breath,
Striking her dumb lips pallid; quenched
the lights
That were, O Death, my stars of the wild
nights
29
30 SONGS OF MYSELF
Out on rude ocean — quenched and closed
her eyes
That were, O Death, my stars of the
dawn-rise !
Long years ago her quiet form was thrust
Into the quiet earth; low in the dust
Her golden hair lies tarnished every
thread
These lone long years, tarnished and dim
and dead.
I will return to the far valley, blest
With her soul's presence, now her home
of rest —
(Where life was peace to her now death
is peace) —
There by her grave my pilgrimage may
cease ;
There life, there death, in my vain heart
shall stir
No passion but the old true love of her.
A WOMAN
Time on her face has writ
A hundred years,
And all the page of it
Blurred with his tears;
Yet in his holiest crypt
Treasuring the scroll,
Keeps the sweet manuscript
Fair as her soul.
31
A DREAM OF BEING
I walked in dream within a convent close,
And met there lonely a familiar nun;
Then in my mind arose
A vehement memory strife
With doubt of being, arose and was
fought and was won.
Trembling I said : " O mother of my
life!"
And she in tears : " At last my fond
heart knows —
Surely I am the mother of my son!"
And greeted me in dear maternal wise,
And asked me all the story of my days,
Silently garnering my quick replies,
Shamefastly holding breath upon my
praise
Of him to whom she plighted the world's
vows
(So ran the tale), my father, her loved
spouse.
32
A DREAM OF BEING 33
It did not then seem strange that this
should be
(A long time there we stayed in company)
Until she pondering said :
"And yet I chose the better part, my
child,
When from that world's love and from
thee I fled,
Leaving the wild
That I could never till aright and dreaded,
And sought this marriage garden unde-
filed,
The virgin of the Lover whom I wedded.
" Twenty years old I hither came,
Twenty years ago :
My child, if thy life were the same
As in this tale thou dreamest now to know,
These twenty years had been thine age
to-day."
I answered her : " It is my age to-day."
And then a while she mused, nor marked
the call
Of one monotonous bell, nor heard, with-
in the hall
34 SONGS OF MYSELF
Hard by, the lonesome-sounding late foot-
fall
Of one nun passing after the rest were
gone :
Within they filled their places one by one,
And a few wondered doubtless with vague
surmise,
Less on response devout,
Why still she tarried at that hour without.
I heard their voices rise and fall and rise
In their long prayer like quiet faded sighs
Calling from hearts that lost
Their passion long ago,
That are not toss'd
On waves that make them crying go
Ever at all or make them happily go.
She, quiet thus also,
And something sad,
Spoke on : " My child, what if I had
Chosen the other part, sought that world's
love
Of him thou tell'st me of,
And thus had stayed with thee? —
It had not then been better and not worse
(I pray that thus it be),
No blessing and no curse,
Making the only difference of thee,
A DREAM OF BEING 35
No difference at all (that is) or false or
true,
To welcome or to rue,
No difference, whether thou came to be
A man for men to see
Or all a dream, my dreaming soul to fill
With fancy thus an hour so waywardly.
I turn back to the plot of life I till
To fruit of such due virginal gifts
As my soul lifts
Within this Heaven's house
For twenty years unto my Lover and
Spouse :
I here return, and leave the dreamed plot
Which I have laboured not, —
Leave thee, my child, who never has been
born.
Alas ! Alas ! that so thou art forlorn,
Since I must lose thee so once more
As I have lost thee (thus my dream)
before, —
Since I must lose thee . . ." " Ah, dream
of life!" said I,
" What if the dream be life, and the
waking dream?"
Her eyes did wistful seem,
A moment wistful, then with patient sigh,
36 SONGS OF MYSELF.
"If thou dream so," she said, " thou art
indeed my dream.
Strange that a dream like thee can dream
again,
And dreaming yearn for being !
And, vision-seen, can yearn for see-
ing!
My child, thou standest always in God's
ken,
In ken of me an hour, never of men;
And thou wilt now from mine depart,
And wilt return
Seldom to mind of me, never to heart;
Nor shall I wonder or mourn,
For it is but the difference of thee
Who art now, art not in eternity;
Nor wonder ever thus of him whose praise
Thou didst rear so in story of thy days :
He may be vain as thy vain days that
burn,
Small hour by hour, in other than life's
fire,
Though with my life coeval they expire :
Life thou dost run, and he,
Only in dream of me, —
Who is the dreamer?" she faltered. I,
poor ghost,
A DREAM OF BEING 37
Left her there pondering as the vespers
ceased ;
And sisters hurrying forth met me almost
Where I passed slowly out, from the
dream released.
(D 17)
TWO SONGS FROM THE IRISH
i.
(Is truagh gan mise i Sasand)
'Tis a pity I'm not in England,
Or with one from Erin thither bound,
Out in the midst of the ocean,
Where the thousands of ships are
drowned.
From wave to wave of the ocean
To be guided on with the wind and
the rain —
And O King ! that Thou might'st guide
me
Back to my love again !
38
TWO SONGS FROM THE IRISH
n.
(Tdid na realta 3na seasamh ar an aer)
The stars stand up in the air,
The sun and the moon are gone,
The strand of its waters is bare,
And her sway is swept from the swan.
The cuckoo was calling all day,
Hid in the branches above,
How my stoirfn is fled far away —
'Tis my grief that I give her my love !
Three things through love I see,
Sorrow and sin and death —
And my mind reminding me
That this doom I breathe with my
breath.
But sweeter than violin or lute
Is my love, and she left me behind —
I wish that all music were mute,
And I to my beauty were blind.
39
40 SONGS OF MYSELF
She's more shapely than swan by the
strand,
She's more radiant than grass after
dew,
She's more fair than the stars where they
stand —
'Tis my grief that her ever I knew !
JOHN-JOHN
I dreamt last night of you, John-John,
And thought you called to me;
And when I woke this morning, John,
Yourself I hoped to see;
But I was all alone, John- John,
Though still I heard your call :
I put my boots and bonnet on,
And took my Sunday shawl,
And went, full sure to rind you, John,
To Nenagh fair.
The fair was just the same as then,
Five years ago to-day,
When first you left the thimble men
And came with me away;
For there again were thimble men
And shooting galleries,
And card-trick men and Maggie men
Of all sorts and degrees, —
But not a sight of you, John- John,
Was anywhere.
41
42 SONGS OF MYSELF
I turned my face to home again,
And called myself a fool
To think you'd leave the thimble men
And live again by rule,
And go to mass and keep the fast
And till the little patch:
My wish to have you home was past
Before I raised the latch
And pushed the door and saw you, John,
Sitting down there.
How cool you came in here, begad,
As if you owned the place !
But rest yourself there now, my lad,
'Tis good to see your face;
My dream is out, and now by it
I think I know my mind :
/it six o'clock this house you'll quit,
And leave no grief behind; —
But until six o'clock, John-John,
My bit you'll share.
The neighbours' shame of me began
When first I brought you in;
To wed and keep a tinker man
They thought a kind of sin;
JOHN-JOHN 43
But now this three year since you're gone
'Tis pity me they do,
And that I'd rather have, John-John,
Than that they'd pity you.
Pity for me and you, John-John,
I could not bear.
Oh, you're my husband right enough,
But what's the good of that?
You k ow you never were the stuff
To be the cottage cat,
To watch the fire and hear me lock
The door and put out Shep —
But there now, it is six o'clock
And time for you to step.
God bless and keep you far, John-John !
And that's my prayer.
TO A WISE MAN
If I had spent my talent as you spend,
If you had sought this rare thing
sought by me,
We had missed our mutual pity at life's
end,
As we have missed only our sympathy.
44
OFFERING
To her who first unmade a poet and gave
Love and unrest instead of barren art,
Who dared to bring him joy and then to
brave
The anger and the anguish of his
heart,
Knowing the heart would serve her still ;
and then
Who gave back only what to art be-
longs,
Making the man a poet over again, —
To her who gave me all I give these
songs.
45
ENVOI
I send these creatures to lay a ghost,
And not to raise up fame !
For I shrink from the way that they go
almost
As I shrink from the way that they
came.
To lose their sorrow I send them so,
And to lose the joys I held dear;
Ere I on another journey go
And leave my dead youth here.
For I am the lover, the anchoret,
And the suicide — but in vain;
I have failed in their deeds, and I want
them yet,
And this life derides my pain.
I suffer unrest and unrest I bring,
And my love is mixed with hate;
And the one that I love wants another
thing,
Less unkind and less passionate.
46
ENVOI 47
So I know I have lost the thing that I
sought,
And I know that by my loss
I haye won the thing that others have
bought
In agony on this cross.
But I whose creed is only death
Do not prize their victory;
I know that my life is but a breath
On the glass of eternity.
And so I am sorry that I failed,
And that I shall never fulfil
The hope of joy that once I hailed
And the love that I yearn for still.
In a little while 'twill be all the same,
But I shall have missed my joy;
And that was a better thing than fame
Which others can make or destroy.
So I send on their way with this crude
rime
These creatures of bitter truth,
Not to raise up fame for a future time,
But to lay the ghost of my youth.
4? SONGS OF MYSELF
And now it is time to start, John-John,
And leave this life behind;
We'll be free on the road that we journey
on
Whatever fate we find.
LYRICAI, POEMS
LYRICAL POEMS
THOMAS MAcDONAGH
To
AND DONAGH MACDONAGH
(D 317)
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
j)HIS volume contains the lyrical poems writ-
ten by me since the publication of SONGS
OF MYSELF in 1910. In addition it contains
all that I wish to preserve of my previous
work, with the exception of some poems in that book.
The EARI,Y POEMS are taken from my three books,
Through the Ivory Gate, published in 1902, April and
May, published in 1903, and The Golden Joy, printed
in 1904 and published in 1906. These books are long
out of print. In The Golden Joy also were published
four numbers (v, vi, vir, vm), of the BOOK OF IMAGES.
Some of these early poems I have altered considerably,
some slightly ; some I have not touched again. I have
taken nothing from SONGS OF MYSELF.
With regard to my mystical poems, especially some
numbers of THE BOOK OF IMAGES, I wish to say simply
that they owe nothing to any other inspiration than
the experiences which they record. I have no theories
of mysticism. The images here enshrined I have
known since my childhood as I have known myself,
without any introduction that I am aware of, and
without need of explanation.
The making and re-making of these poems, my new
work and my old, began in 1911, during the year that
I lived in Grange House Lodge, Rathfarnham, the
tenant and neighbour of my friend, David Houston.
OF MY POEMS
i
There is no moral to my song,
I praise no right, I blame no wrong :
I tell of things that I have seen,
I show the man that I have been
As simply as a poet can
Who knows himself poet and man,
Who knows that unto him are shown
Rare visions of a Life unknown,
Who knows that unto him are taught
Rare words of wisdom all unsought
By him, and never understood
Till they are taken on trust for good
And, all unspoiled by pride, again
Uttered in trust to other men.
This is my practice and my rule,
Albeit I have been at school
These thirty years and studied much.
I've found wise books but never such
As could teach me a single word
To set by what my childhood heard.
io LYRICAL POEMS
I've studied conduct but not found
A single rule in all the round
Of sagest laws to set by this,
That he who runs to seek shall miss,
That he who waits in trusting calm
Shall have the laurel and the palm.
The singing way and winning way :
Who in himself aware can stay,
Leaving all memory and all strife,
Shall have the things of Truth and Lite
Around him, as around a child
The timid creatures of the wild,—
Shall know the state that Adam gave
For gain of reason and the grave.
Let no one from this saying look
To find no poems in this book
But poems learned and uttered so :
Life I have lived and books I know,
And other common things I tell
That me and other men befell.
But when this rapture stirs the blood
When the first blossom breaks the bud
And Golden Joy begins anew,
Then in the calm stand near to view
The things we saw with Adam's eyes
OF MY POEMS ii
In the first days of Paradise;
And these of all my seeing be
The light, and of my life to me :
They show to me the single bond
Of life with life here and beyond :
They lift my deeds the grave above
And give a meaning to my love.
So to you two for whose loved sake
This gathering of song I make
I need not tell of right and wrong
Or set a moral to my song.
GRANGE HOUSE LODGE
Babylon is passed away,
Dublin's day must now begin;
On the hill above the bay
Make your mansion, pray and sin.
Pray for grace yourself to be,
To be free in all you do,
For a straight sincerity, —
Grace to see a point of view.
And you'll sin in praying so,
For to know you're right is wrong,-
Yet we can't like blossoms grow
But to blow the wind along.
Sin is always very near —
It is here as in the crowd;
Know you're humble and austere,-
Be sincere and you'll be proud.
Once was purple Babylon
The pavilion of our pride,
Now the lodge of Mauravaun
Stays us on the mountain side.
12
GRANGE HOUSE LODGE 13
In a lodge inside a gate
Live in state and live apart,
Till the little-distant date
When your fate will bid you start, —
Bid you leave this room and that,
Where you sat and where you slept, —
Lock the door and leave the mat,
Smiling at the way 'twas kept.
For, whate'er your sin or whim,
You were prim and rounded things;
And you kept your life in trim,
Though not as the hymn-book sings.
What about it after all? —
If you fall you rise again,
And at least you never sprawl
At the call of other men.
There again by pride you sin —
Come within and shut the door;
Far from Babylonian din
Now begin your prayer once more.
Save me from sincerity
Such as spoiled the Pharisee. — Amen.
THE SONG OF JOY
i.
O mocking voice that dost forbid always
The poems that would win an easy praise,
Favouring with silence but the delicate,
strong,
True creatures of inspired natural song,
Only the brood of Art and Life divine,
Thou say'st no fealty to the spurious
line
Of phantasies of earth, — to mortal things
That strain to stay the heavens with their
wings
And ape the crowned orders at the Throne
Around a graven image of their own,
Setting the casual fact of one poor age
Aloft, enormous in its privilege
Of instant being! — O voice of the mind,
14
THE SONG OF JOY 15
Wilt thou forbid the songs that come like
wind
Out of the south upon the poet heart, —
Out of the quietude of certain art?
Now the cross tempests from the boreal
frost
Harry my atmosphere, and I have lost
My joyous light of poetry in vain
Without the gloom profound of hell for
gain—
With only hostile follies that annoy,
The brawls that overwhelm the song of
And are not sorrowful or strong enough
To make a passion out of wrath or love —
Only To-day with its vain self at strife,
And affectations of fictitious life,
And spite, and prejudice, and out worn
rules
Kept by the barren ignorance of fools, —
Why, when I come to thee, shunning
them all,
Why must the harsh laughter of mockery
fall
Upon my soul, waiting to know the word
Of a new song within my heart half heard ?
16 LYRICAL POEMS
Why must the music cease and hate come
forth
To call these winds out of the withering
north ?
n.
You bring a bitter atmosphere
Of blame and vain hostilities,
Stirring beauty and joy with fear
Of words, as night wind stirs the trees
With whispers which will leave them sere.
So, harsh and bare, your bitter heart
Will leave you like a bush alone,
Sullen and silent and apart,
When all the winds it called are
gone —
The winds were airs of your own heart.
Ah, bitter heart, not always thus
You came, but with a storm of Spring,
With happiness impetuous,
With joy and beauty following —
Who now leave all these ruinous !
THE SONG OF JOY 17
III.
Not ruinous, O mockery, not all
Ruinous quite ! — Not sped beyond recall
My storm of Spring, my storm of happy
youth,
That blew to me all gifts of joy but truth,
That blew to me out of the Ivory Gate
Figures and phantasies of life and fate.
I sang of them that they were life enough,
Giving them lasting names of joy and
love;
And when I saw their ghostly nothingness
I made a bitter song out of distress,
And cried how joy and love had passed
me by;
Though my heart happily whispered that
I,
Not truth of joy or love, had broken ease,
Had broken from false quiet, won release.
I sang distress, then came out fresh and
new
Into good life, knowing what fate would
do.
i8 LYRICAC POEMS
Not bitter, mockery, not harsh to blame,
Not with dark winds of enmity I came,
But following truth, in dread of shapes
that seem
Of life and prove but of a passing
dream, —
In dread of ease, that h#s the strongest
chain, —
In dread of the old phantasies again.
The south wind blew : it was my storm
of Spring —
O tempest of my youth, what will you
bring
To me at last who know you now at
last?—
The south wind blew, and all my dread
was past.
Yet thou, O mockery, wouldst hold the
word
Of that harsh day, though here the south
has stirred !
Cease now for ever, for that day is done ;
My sad songs are all sung, Joy is begun.
Voice of the mind, thy truth no more shall
mock :
THE SONG OF JOY 19
That door of ease with love's rare key
I lock-
And reverent, to Joy predestinate,
With the same key open my door of fate.
rv.
A storm of Spring is blowing now
And love is throwing buds about !
Oh, there's a bloom on yonder bough
Under the withering leaves of doubt ! —
The bough is green as Summer now.
O lover ! laugh, and laughing hold
What follows after piety :
In faith of love be over-bold,
Lover, the other self of me —
The bitter word no more I hold.
How could I mock you, happy one,
Who now have captured all a heart?
Take up my tune and follow on :
Borrow the passion of my art
To sing your prothalamion !
20 LYRICAL POEMS
V.
Now no bitter songs I sing :
Summer follows for me now;
For the Spirit of the Spring
Breathes upon the living bough :
All poor leaves of why and how
Fall before this wonder, dead :
Joy is given to me now
In the love of her I wed.
She to-day is rash to cast
All on love — and wise thereby;
Love is trust, and love at last
Makes no count of how and why;
Worlds are wakened in the sky
That had slept a speechless spell,
At the word of faith, — and I
Hold my faith from her as well.
For she trusts to love in all,
Life and all, and life beyond;
And this world that was so small,
Bounded by my selfish bond,
THE SONG OF JOY 21
Now is stretched to Trebizond,
Upsala and Ecuador,
East and west of black and blond,
In my quest of queens like her.
Was she once a Viking's child
That her beauty is so brave?
Sun-gold, happy in the wild
Of the winter and the wave,
Pedestal'd by cliff and cave,
With the raven's brood above,
In the North she stood and gave
Me the troth of all her love.
Or in Egypt the bright storm
Of her hair fell o'er my face,
And her features and her form,
Fashioned to that passionate grace,
Won me from an alien race
To her love eternally,
Life on life in every place
Where the gods cast her and me.
Here to-day we stand at last
Laughing in our new-born mirth
At the life that in the past
Was a phantasy of earth,
(D 317) V
LYRICAL POEMS
Vigil of our life's true birth
Which is joy and fate in one,
Now the wisdom of the earth
And the dooms of death are done.
So my bride is wise to-day
All to trust to love alone :
Other wisdom is the clay
That into the grave is thrown :
This is the awakening blown
By the Spirit of the Spring :
Laughing Summer follows soon,
And no bitter songs I sing.
THE BOOK2OF IMAGES
THE BOOK OF IMAGES
INTROIT
i.
COELI LUCIDA TEMPLA
The temples clean from star to star,
Built up in that aethereal space
Where forms of other being are,
Image no being of this place.
We symbol forms enshrined in them
Angels are emblemed in a clod,
And every stone is made a gem
Set in the altar of its God.
25
II.
I who austerely spent
My years of youth, nor lent
The journeys of my joy
To youth's employ,
Who sacred held my life
Apart from casual strife,
Striving to comprehend
Life's first and end.
I, in the watches grim
Of winter mornings dim,
Saw life inscrutable
A God vigil,
And in a morn of May
Heard at the dawn of day
The music of that morn
The stars were born.
26
IMAGES
I ancient images
Of parts and passages
Of powers and things that be
Did know and see,
The chalice and the wine,
The tree of knowledge divine,
The veil, the gossamer,
The hill-side bare,
The trampling ploughing team,
The holy guiding gleam
Of one star standing straight
Above Light's gate,
The child with rapturous voice
Singing, Farewell ! Rejoice !
Singing the joy of death
The gate beneath,
The dumb shores of a sea,
The waves that ceaselessly
Uselessly turn and toss,
Knowing their loss,
LYRICAL POEMS
The flowers of heaven and earth,
The moons of death and birth,
The seasons of the soul,
The worlds that roll
That roll their dark within
Around their suns that spin
Around the gate of Light
In day, in night,
The soaring Seraphim,
The God-wise Cherubim, —
Forms of beauty and love
I saw above.
And therebeneath I saw
The form of transient law,
The great of an earth or age,
Captain and sage,
The lamps of Rome and Greece,
The signs of war and peace,
The eagle in the storm,
Man's clay-fast form.
IMAGES 29
The phases of the might
Of God in mortal sight
I saw, in God's forethought
Fashioned and wrought,
Now wrought in spirit and clay,
In rare and common day,
And shown in symbol and sign
Of power divine.
These images of old
Reverently I hold,
And here entemple, enstate.
And dedicate,
That I with other men
May worship here again
Him who revealed to us
His creatures thus.
III.
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
In the dusk I again behold
Figures of knowledge divine,
A chalice of sacred gold
Filled to the brim with wine,
A double-woven veil
With meshes that enfold
A gauze of gossamer frail :
I tremble and lie still,
Held by a holy dread
Lest the wine from the chalice spill
And the knowledge of God lie dead.
I lose the chalice from view
Through infirmity of will.
I take the veil in my hands
And to uncover the gauze
I open the woven strands —
And then in dread I pause
so
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 31
Lest the gossamer be rent
And the perfect knowledge destroyed :
Then I know how power is spent
And the deed of the will made void.
The veil has vanished too,
And barren before me lies
The hill where once I knew
The lost secret of Paradise.
It was there I was as the wild
Of the earth and the water and air,
Untroubled by knowledge, the child
Of God and Time — it was there
I shouted with joy in the light
With the stars of morning and God,
Where the knowledge tree in my sight
Bent with fruit to the sod.
There the spirit of me awoke
To the serpent's constant call,
To the earth of me it spoke
And bade me to know all,
To eat and be as a god.
I ate and was a man,
With desire as a god to be,
For then I first began
Knowledge to taste and to see,
32 LYRICAL POEMS
And the eternal plan
To know, and be one with the laws
That are with eternity.
I ate and was a man
Upon a bare hill side,
For the tree was withered up
And the ancient life had died.
I held a gossamer gauze,
And I gazed on a golden cup.
And now again I have seen
The cup that I saw at my birth,
And have held the gauze between
Its webs in a veil of the earth,
And I gaze on the hill again
Where the tree that withered shall grow
When I in pleasure and pain
Have toiled to the full and know.
I gaze on the hill to see
New promise of knowledge divine.
I know that infirmity
Shall be changed to power with the sign
That to me is given now.
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 33
And I hear the trampling of hooves
Thundering up with a plough,
And a team of horses moves
In splendour over the rise
Of the ridge, and into the light.
I shout with joy at the sight
As I shouted in Paradise.
IV.
O STAR OF DEATH
The earth in its darkness spinning
Is a sign from the gate of horn
Of the dream that a life's beginning
Is in its end reborn —
Dark symbol of true dreaming,
The truth is beyond thy seeming
As the wide of infinitude
Is beyond the air of the earth !
Death is a change and a birth
For atoms in darkness spinning
And their immortal brood.
The wisdom of life and death
As a star leads to the gate
Which is not of heaven or hell ;
And your mortal life is a breath
Of the life of all, and your state
Ends with your hail and farewell.
34
O STAR OF DEATH 35
Wisdom's voice is the voice
Of a child who sings to a star
With a cry of, Hail and rejoice !
And farewell to the things that are,
And hail to enternal peace,
And rejoice that the day is done,
For the night brings but release
And threatens no wakening sun.
Other suns that set may rise
As before your day they rose,
But when once your brief light dies
No dawn here breaks your repose.
I followed a morning star,
And it led to the gate of light,
And thence came forth to meet our night
A child and sang to the star.
The air of the earth and the night were
withdrawn
And the star was the sign of an outworn
dawn
That now in the aether was newly bright.
For sudden I saw where the air through
space was gone
From the portal of light and the child and
the sign o'er the portal —
36 LYRICAL POEMS
The star of joy a mortal leading
In the clear stood holy and still,
And under it the child sang on.
I who had followed of happy will,
Knew the dark of life receding —
One with the child and the star stood a
mortal.
The child sang welcomes of the gate of
light-
Welcome to the peace of perfect night
Everduring, unbeginning !
Now let the mornings of the earth bring
grief
To other souls a while in darkness spin-
ning,
To other souls that look for borrowed
light,
Desiring alien joys with vain belief.
Welcome and hail to this beyond all good,
Joy of creation's new infinitude,
That never will the spirit use
Another time for life, and yet
That never will the spirit lose,
Although it pass, but takes its debt
To life and time, and sends endued
O STAR OF DEATH 37
With gain of life each atom soul
New-fashioned to fulfil the whole.
O star of death ! O sign that still hast
shone
Out beyond the dark of the air !
Thou stand'st unseen by yearning eyes
Of mourners tired with their vain prayer
For the little life that dies,—
Whether holding that it dies
That all life may still live on
In its death as in its birth,
Or believing things of earth
Destined ever to arise
To a new life in the skies.
Blinded with false fear, how man
Dreads this death which ends one span
That another may begin ! —
Holding greatest truth a sin
And a sorrow, as not knowing
That when death has lost false hope
And false fear, begins the scope
Of true life, which is a going
At its end and not a coming,
That the heart shrinks from the numbing
Fall of death, but does not grope
(D 317) G
38 LYRICAL POEMS
Blindly to new joy or gloom —
Shrinks in vain, then yields in peace
To the pain that brings release
And the quiet of the tomb.
0 star of death ! I follow, till thou take
My days to cast them from thee flake on
flake,
My rose of life to scatter bloom on bloom,
Yet hold its essence in the phial rare
Of life that lives with fire and air, —
With air that knows no dark, with fire not
to consume.
1 followed a morning star
And I stand by the gate of Light,
And a child sings my farewell to-night
To the atom things that are.
V.
LITANY OF BEAUTY
Joy, if the soul or aught immortal be-
How may this Beauty know mortality?
O Beauty, perfect child of Light,
Sempiternal spirit of delight !
White and set with gold like the gold of
the night,
The gold of the stars in quiet weather, —
White and shapely and pure ! —
O lily-flower from stain secure,
With life and virginity dying together !
One lily liveth so,
Liveth for ever unstained, immortal, a
mystic flower :
Perfectly wrought its frame,
Gold inwrought and eternal white,
39
4r LYRICAL POEMS
White more white than cold of the snow,
For never, never, near it came,
Never shall come till the end of all,
Hurtful thing in wind or shower,
Worm or stain or blight;
But ever, ever, gently fall
The dews elysian of years that flow
Where it doth live secure
In flawless comeliness mature,
Golden and white and pure-
In the fair far-shining glow
Of eternal and holy Light.
Beauty of earthly things
Wrought by God and with hands of men !
Beauty of Nature and Art,
Fashioned anew for each lift Time brings,
For each new soul and living heart !
Beauty of Beauty that fills the ken
Till the soul is swooning, faint with de-
light !
Beauty of human form and voice,
Of eyes and ears and lips ! —
O golden hair and brow of white ! —
Wine of Beauty that whoso sips
Doth die to a spirit free, and rejoice,
LITANY OF BEAUTY 41
Living with God and living with men,
Rapt rejoice in eternal bliss,
Raising his face to meet the kiss
Of the Beauty seraphic he sees above
In figure of his love.
O Beauty of Wisdom unsought
That in trance to poet is taught,
Uttered in secret lay,
Singing the heart from earth away,
Cunning the soul from care to lure, —
O mystic lily, from stain and death secure,
Till the end of all to stay!
O shapely flower that must for ever en-
dure !
O voice of God that every heart must
hear !
O hymn of purest souls that dost un-
sphere
The ravished soul that hears ! O white,
white gem !
O rose that dost the senses drown in bliss !
No thought shall stay the wing, or stem
The song or win the heart to miss
Thy love, thy joy, thy rapture divine !
O Beauty, Beauty, ever thine
42 LYRICAL POEMS
The soul, the heart, the brain,
To own thee in a loud perpetual strain,
Shriller and sweeter than song of wine,
Than song of sorrow or love or war !
Beauty of heaven and sun and day,
Beauty of water and frost and star,
Beauty of dusk-tide, narrowing, grey !
Beauty of silver light,
Beauty of purple night,
Beauty of solemn breath,
Beauty of closed eye, and sleep, and
death !
Beauty of dawn and dew,
Beauty of morning peace,
Ever ancient and ever new,
Ever renewed till waking cease
Or sleep for ever, when loud the angel's
word
Through all the world is heard !
Beauty of brute and bird,
Beauty of earthly creatures
Whose hearts by the hand of God are
stirred !
LITANY OF BEAUTY 43
Beauty of the soul,
Beauty informing forms and features,
Fairest to God's eye, —
Beauty that cannot fade or die
Though atoms to ruin roll !
Beauty of blinded Trust,
Led by the hand of God
To a heaven where Cherub hath never
trod!
Austere Beauty of Truth
Lighting the way of the just !
Splendid Beauty of Youth-
Staying when Youth is sped,
Living when Life is dead,
Burning in funeral dust !
The glory of form doth pale and pall,
Beauty endures to the end of all.
VI.
THE GREAT
This way in power the great went by.
Hark to the echoes throbbing still !
Hark to the voices chanting high
Deeds for a while that shall not die !
Splendid they shone in purple and gold.
See where we caught the perfect
gleam, —
Wrought it in tapestry of old.
The purple fades but the gold is gold.
The great, they bore a soul in each,
A link-shell in the chain of souls,
Theirs were the jewels of Life's beach,
From gem to gem an age doth reach.
Heaven-lent, for Heaven they held their
dream,
Though their vesture, e'en purple,
marked it not :
The earthlings one in fortune seem,
But are forgone — no gold, no gleam !
44
THE GREAT 45
This way the great shall ever pace, —
Be our great the great till the end of
it;
Fall not our gold from its burnished
place ;
Be our voice not dumb to another race.
This way — or so then, not this way,
Perhaps not thus the great will go;
Perhaps our Heaven they will gainsay;
Our jewels perhaps — so not this way.
VII.
THE POET CAPTAIN
They called him their king, their leader
of men, and he led them well
For one bright year- and he vanquished
their foe,
Breaking more battles than bards may
tell,
Warring victoriously, — till the heart spake
low
And said — Is it thus? Do not these
things pass? What things abide?
They are but the birds from the ocean,
the waves of the tide;
And thou art naught beside, — grass and
a form of clay.
And said — The Ligurian fought in his
day, —
In vain, in vain ! Rome triumphs. He
left his friends to the fight,
And their victory passed away,
And he like a star that flames and falls
in the night.
46
THE POET CAPTAIN 47
But after another year they came to him
again,
And said — Lead us forth again. Come
with us again.
But still he answered them — You strive
against fate, in vain
They said — Our race is old. We would
not have it pass.
Ere Rome began we are, a gentle people
of old,
Unsavage when all were wild.
And he — How Egypt was old in the days
that were old,
Yet is passed, and we pass.
They said — We shall have striven, unre-
conciled.
And he went with them again, and they
conquered again.
Till the same bare season closed his un-
quiet heart
To all but sorrow of life — This .is in
vain ! Of yore
Lo, Egypt was, and all things do depart,
This is in vain ! And he fought no more.
48 LYRICAL POEMS
He conned the poems that poets had
made in other days-
And he loved the past that he could pity
and praise.
And he fought no more, living in solitude,
Till they came and called him back to
the multitude,
Saying — Our olden speech and our old
manners die.
He went again, and they raised his ban-
ner on high :
Came Victory, eagle-formed, with wings
wide flung,
As with them a while he fought, with
never a weary thought, and with
never a sigh,
That their children might have again
their manners and ancient tongue.
But again the sorrow of life whispered
to his soul
And said — O little soul, striving to little
goal !
Here is a finite world where all things
change and change !
And said — In Mexico a people strange
49
Loved their manners and speech long ago
when the world was young !
Their speech is silent long — What of it
now? — Silent and dead
Their manners forgotten, and all but
their memory sped !
And said — What matter? Heart will
die and tongue;
Or if they live again they live in a place
that is naught,
With other language, other custom, diff-
erent thought.
He left them again to their fight, and no
more for him they sought.
But they chose for leader a stern sure
man
That looked not back on the waste of
story :
For his country he fought in the battle's
van,
And he won her peace and he won her
glory.
VIII.
THE GOLDEN JOY
What has the poet but a glorious
phrase
And the heart's wisdom? — Oh, a Joy of
gold!
A Joy to mint and squander on the
Kind-
Pure gold coined current for eternity,
Giving dear wealth to men for a long age-
And after, lost to sight and touch of
hands,
Leaving a memory that will bud and
bloom
And blossom all into a lyric phrase —
The glorious phrase again on other lips,
The heritage of Joy, the heart again,
so
THE GOLDEN JOY 51
Wisdom anew that ages not but lives
To Sappho-sing the Poet else forgot.
O Joy ! O secret transport of mystic
vision,
Who hold'st the keys of Ivory and Horn,
Who join'st the hands of Earth and
Faerie !
Thou art the inmate of the hermit soul
That shuns the touch of every street-
worn wind
Sweet to all else, that shuns doctrine and
doubt,
To wait in trembling quietness for thee.
Thou art the spouse of the busy human
mind
That bravely, sanely, bears his worldly
part •
And claims no favour for the gift of thee ;
But, Nature's child, lives true in Nature's
right,
Filling the duties of the Tribe of Man,
Keeping the heart, O Joy ! untarnished
still
And pinion-strong to soar the exalted
way.
S2 LYRICAL POEMS
The Poet guards the philosophic
soul
In contemplation that no importunate
thought
May mar his ecstasy or change his song;
And though he see the gloom and sing
of sorrow,
He is the world's Herald of Joy at last :
His song is Joy, the music that needs
sorrow
To fill its closes, as Death fulfils Life,
As Life fills Time, and Time Eternity :
Joy that sees Death, yet in Death sees
not woe.
O Joy ! the Spring is green — on
many a wall
The roses straggle, on many a tree dew-
laden ;
And now the waters murmur 'neath their
banks
And all the flocks are loud with firstling
cries,
And in the heart of life Joy wakes anew
To live a long day ere the winter falls;
And now the song of an invisible lark,
THE GOLDEN JOY 55
And now a child's voice makes the morn-
ing glad;
The kindling sky and the mist-wreathed
earth
Have broken from the drowsihood of
night,—
Dawn widened grey, but now the orient
blush
Is over all the roses on the wall,
Over the drooping trees that wait the
winds
To join them to the murmur of the day.
The Pilgrim Seer who journeyed
silently
When all the ways were Winter, wild
and bare,
Tarries to-day to hear the call of bliss, —
Of Joy, Joy, Joy ! thou emblem, symbol,
sign
Of all the Pilgrim's dream of Paradise —
The Beatific Vision of Beauty supreme !
Thou art the Angel of the Gate of
Heaven !
Thou are the great Vice-regent of the
King!
(D317) H
54 LYRICAL POEMS
Then forward goes and will not
brook Life's house,
Yearning to dwell far away, far away.
In the wide palace of Eternity —
To hold a life beyond this birth and
death
With the high Prophets in their calm
sublime. —
Ah yet, in Joy's despite, his heart will
keep
Memorial futile melancholy thought
Of this and some that never knew the
gold !
And so he turns, bows down to toil with
men,
To toil and strive and care for earthy
cares ;
The common life that has her claim on
all
Claims him, and yet leaves him his
ecstasy ;
Knowing the glooms of life and the dark
nights,
Sure of the dawns and the white Summer
days,
He sings in twilight and the state of Job
THE GOLDEN JOY 55
One golden Dawn and one enduring
Wealth !
So he keeps ever burning in his heart
The fire eternal that will flame and shine
When the man lies compounded with the
rest
Who never knew to look upon his light,
Whose light none saw, whose lives are
all forgot.
One is Eternity to common man,
Twain to the poet soul ; — though his
name die,
Though after fall of years many or fev«
His phrases wander out of memory's
fold,
His soul is twain, a heritage has he,
His dreams are children dreams and
parent dreams.
What has the Poet but a glorious
phrase
And the heart's wisdom? He has
naught to do
With April changes that your lives
endue,
Sunshine and shadow. Him your
blame and praise
56 LYRICAL POEMS
Trouble in calm along the spirit's
ways
That are with the great Change, un-
changing, true,
With the great Silence where no voice
is new
And no voice old — a train of prophet
days.
What but the Golden Joy that sacred
stands
As gift of Paradise to human art?
For though the lust of the world still
claims and brands
All others, the Joy stands for us
apart
And will not fail or tarnish touched
by hands
That highly bear the trust of poet
heart.
So would I rhythm and rime the
glorious phrase
In this Spring lyric morning of my day,
When brown and green and nebulous
silver lie
Quiet and happy 'neath the vernal pomp
THE GOLDEN JOY 57
Of that rich sky, — the trees a dome of
song,
Song in the waters, in the sea-born wind,
And in the human soul the Cherub hymn
Of Joy, which is the heart's philosophy.
Dear holy hymn, yet wert thou sad
to hear
Matched with the dream song of the
Ivory Gate
That waked a boy to rapture long ago,
That raised a boy to poet in an hour,
That the boy failed to mimic with his
voice
But held heart-hid against his vocal day
And sings here to thee, Joy, this lyric
morn !
For first he sang out of a book of Death
Before his day, and then with weaker
voice
Chanted of resurrection, sang for Hope
All in a Spring like this, before his day
Of Beauty now which is the light of Hope
He sings and of the Quest that cannot
cease
Voyaging to Wonder on an endless road;
58 LYRICAL POEMS
But chiefly and over all and through the
whole
Sings yet the memory of untaught days
When dawn and dark brought to the
waiting soul
The vision that he sees now through the
dusk
Leading him back to thy tranquility.
I saw last night again the Unknown
Land,
And, travelled far, I stood beside a sea
Whose pale waves crowding stared head
over head
And mouthed warning inarticulate.
Spirits of poets they, high called and lost,
Thus missing half the Man's eternity
For gaining half the Poet's, Joy forgone.
And there by the dread waste of liquid
life
My feet were set upon a living shore
Wrought of the souls that never knew
the Joy
And never needed, never lost, — all dumb
But at long rest while the waves turn and
toss.
THE GOLDEN JOY 59
These quiet I loved more than the quick
foam,
And yet the human pity at my heart
Stirred and would draw me to that pas-
sionate shame,
But that the Joy flamed and the glorious
phrase
Broke into rapture : the waves wept to
hear,
Wept for the exaltation once their own,
Wept for the gold they never more may
spend
In mintage of the phrase upon the Kind,
Wept, wept, to scatter from the spirit's
tower
The joy-notes and the glory of this song.
I hastened thence to spare them cruelty
Out through the Ivory Gate, — and thus
I know
The dream was but a symbol of the true.
It is the Spring and these the songs
of Spring,
Songs of the rathe rose and the lily's
hope ; —
For now the Poet hears the lily call
60 LYRICAL POEMS
That came to Christ from beauty's natural
shrine
And, through his lips, soared sacred out
and up
Into the space beyond of holiness,
The aether of the rapture of High God.
Oh ! it steals to us like the breath of
dawn
That fills the pipes of Nature with sweet
sounds, —
Steals low and swells anon into a chant
To throb and triumph through the heart
of Spring
With the clear canticle of Love that hails
The orient Epiphany of Joy.
And now the poet heart is calling too
And called aloud by every voice divine
Behind our wall out through the lattices.
Now is the season of the Golden Joy,
Now is the season of the birth of Love —
The perfect passion of the heart of God,
The rapture of the beauty of the world,
The rapture of eternity of bliss 1
For all our Winters pass and all rains go,
And all the flowers of Joy appear again,
THE GOLDEN JOY 61
And Spring is green with figs more beau-
tiful
And sweet with odours of the mystic
Tree
That droops its branches over Heaven
and Earth,
Scattering flowers and fruit and passionate
wine
Down into all the places of the sun,
And into all the nether places dim,
Fragrant with ecstasy of Joy and Peace.
And who will steep his senses in the
flowers
And who will feed his spirit on the fruit
And who will fill his veins with the great
wine
Shall see no Winters and shall feel no
rains
But Joy perpetual in the Land of God.
TRANSLATIONS
TRANSLATIONS
THE YELLOW BITTERN
(FROM THE IRISH OF CATHAL BUIDHE MAC
GIOLLA GHUNNA)
The yellow bittern that never broke out
In a drinking bout, might as well have
drunk ;
His bones are thrown on a naked stone
Where he lived alone like a hermit
monk.
0 yellow bittern ! I pity your lot,
Though they say that a sot like my-
self is curst —
1 was sober a while, but I'll drink and
be wise
For I fear I should die in the end of
thirst.
It's not for the common birds that I'd
mourn,
The black-bird, the corn-crake, or the
crane,
65
66 LYRICAL POEMS
But for the bittern that's shy and apart
And drinks in the marsh from the
lone bog-drain.
Oh ! if I had known you were near your
death,
While my breath held out I'd have
run to you,
Till a splash from the Lake of the Son
of the Bird
Your soul would have stirred and
waked anew.
My darling told me to drink no more
Or my life would be o'er in a little
short while;
But I told her 'tis drink gives me health
and strength
And will lengthen my road by many
a mile.
You see how the bird of the long smooth
neck
Could get his death from the thirst at
last —
Come, son of my soul, and drain your cup,
You'll get no sup when your life is
past.
67
In a wintering island by Constantine's
halls
A bittern calls from a wineless place,
And tells me that hither he cannot come
Till the summer is here and the sunny
days.
When he crosses the stream there and
wings o'er the sea
Then a fear comes to me he may fail
in his flight —
Well, the milk and the ale are drunk
every drop,
And a dram won't stop our thirst this
night.
DRUIMFHIONN BONN DILIS
(FROM THE IRISH, TRADITIONAL)
— O Druimfhionn Donn Dilis !
0 Silk of the Kine !
Where goest thou for sleeping?
What pastures are thine?
— In the woods with my gilly
Always I must keep,
And 'tis that now that leaves me
Forsaken to weep.
Land, homestead, wines, music :
1 am reft of them all !
Chief and bard that once wooed me
Are gone from my call !
And cold water to soothe me
I sup with my tears,
While the foe that pursues me
Has drinking that cheers.
68
DRUIMFHIONN BONN DIUS 69
— Through the mist of the glensides
And hills I return :
Like a brogue beyond mending
The Sasanach I'll spurn :
If in battle's contention
I have sight of the crown,
I'll befriend thee and defend thee,
My young Druimfhionn Donn !
(D 317)
ISN'T IT PLEASANT FOR THE
LITTLE BIRDS
(FROM THE IRISH, TRADITIONAL)
Isn't it pleasant for the little birds
That rise up above,
And be nestling together
On the one branch, in love?
Not so with myself
And the darling of my heart —
Every day rises upon us
Far, far apart.
She is whiter than the lily,
Than beauty more fine.
She is sweeter than the violin,
More radiant than sunshine.
But her grace and nobleness
Are beyond all that again —
And O God Who art in Heaven,
Free me from pain!
70
EVE
(FROM THE OLD IRISH)
I am Eve, great Adam's wife,
I that wrought my children's loss,
I that wronged Jesus of life,
Mine by right had been the cross.
I a kingly house forsook,
111 my choice and my disgrace,
111 the counsel that I took
Withering me and all my race.
I that brought winter in
And the windy glistening sky,
I that brought sorrow and sin,
Hell and pain and terror, I.
71
CATULLUS: VIII
My poor Catullus, what is gone is gone,
Take it for gone, and be a fool no
more-
Heaven, what a time it was ! Then white
suns shone
For you, you following where she
went before —
I loved her as none ever shall be loved !
Then happened all those happy things —
all over,
All over, all gone now, and far away !
Then you got all you would, my happy
lover,
And she was not unwilling — day after
day
White suns shone, white suns shone, and
you were loved.
And now she is unwilling — let her know
That you can turn back from a vain
pursuit,
72
CATULLUS: VIII. 73
Now live no longer wretched, turn and
go
Strong on your way, be hard, be reso-
lute.—
Good-bye, my dear. Catullus goes un-
moved.
Catullus never will yearn for you again.
You are unwilling — he will not ask
for you.
You'll sorrow when no one asks for you,
— and then,
Bitter and bad and old, what will you
do?
What hope have you to give love and be
loved ?
What life is there for you? — What life
is there?
Who will come now for love and
your delight?
Whose will they say you are? Who'll
think you fair?
Whom will you kiss? Whose lips
now will you bite?
But you, Catullus, go your way unmoved.
CATULLUS: LXXVI
If there be joy for one who looks back
on his youth
And knows he has kept faith with
God and men,
Never outraged the sanctity of truth,
And never outraged trust — there is
joy then
For you, Catullus, in the long years to be,
Out of this love, out of this misery.
For all the service and duty that men
can wish and give
You have given to one heart, and you
know their loss —
They are lost, and their loss tortures you,
and you live
Wretched to rajl at fate — you are on
your cross !
Leave your cross. Take the only cure,
and be
Resolute, rid of love and misery !
74
CATULLUS: LXXVI. 75
It is hard at once to lay aside the love
of years —
It is hard, but must be — God ! if ever
you gave
Help to the dying — if you are moved by
tears,
Look on me wretched ! Pity me and
save !
I have lived pure — from this love let me
free !
Let me free, root this canker out of me !
This lethargy has crawled through all
my heart and brain,
And driven out joy ,like death evil
and sure.
I do not ask that she love me again,
Nor — what can not be now — that she
be pure.
Let me be strong, rid of this agony —
O God, for what I have been grant this
to me !
EARLY POEMS
EARLY POEMS
WHEN IN THE FORENOON OF
THE YEAR
When in the forenoon of the year
Fresh flowers and leaves fill all the
earth,
I hear glad music, faint and clear,
Singing day's birth.
Its dear delight thrills the dawn through
With melody like an old lay
Of country birds and morning dew
And of the May.
And then I hear the first cock crow,
And then the twitter in the eaves,
And gaze upon the world below
Through green rose leaves.
79
8o LYRICAL POEMS
And see the white mist melt away,
And watch the sleepless sheep come
out
Under the trees that hear all day
One cuckoo's shout.
I HEARD A MUSIC SWEET
TO-DAY
I heard a music sweet to-day,
A simple olden tune,
And thought of yellow leaves of May
And bursting buds of June,
Of dewdrops sparkling on a spray
Until the thirst of noon.
A golden primrose in the rain
Out of the green did grow —
Ah ! sweet of life in Winter's wane
When airs of April blow ! —
Then drifted with the changing strain
Into a dream of snow.
81
LOVE IS CRUEL, LOVE IS
SWEET
Love is cruel, love is sweet, —
Cruel, sweet.
Lovers sigh till lovers meet,
Sigh and meet —
Sigh and meet, and sigh again —
Cruel sweet ! O sweetest pain !
Love is blind — but love is sly,
Blind and sly.
Thoughts are bold, but words are shy-
Bold and shy —
Bold and shy, and bold again —
Sweet is boldness, — shyness pain.
82
The house in the wood beside the lake
That I once knew well I must know
no more
My slow feet other paths must take —
How soon would they reach the old-
known door !
But now that time is o'er.
The lake is quiet and hush to-day;
The downward heat keeps the water
still
And the wind that round me used to play
Ere through elm and oak from the
pine-clad hill
I plunged with heart a-thrill.
A time can die as a man can die
And be buried too and buried deep;
83
84 LYRICAL POEMS
But a memory lives though the ages
fly-
I know two hearts one memory keep
That cannot die or sleep.
How clear the shadow of every tree —
The oaks and elms in stately line !
The lake is like a silent sea
Of emerald, or an emerald mine,
Till the forest thins to pine.
For the slender pine has never a leaf,
And the sun and the breeze break
through at will —
There's a weed that the eddy whirls in
a sheaf
In the brown lake's depths, all wet
and chill. —
I call it the lake-pine still.
Such idle names we used to give
To the weeds as we passed here in
our boat—
We .shall pass no more, and they shall
live
While others o'er them idly float —
They shall neither hear nor note.
THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD 85
They are things that never hear or see —
Yet once I trusted my heart to all;
I heard my tale from many a tree, —
Thought the lake - pines knew one
light foot-fall,
One laugh and one low call.
And perhaps they did, for all the day
They seem like me to be sad and
lone;
The current has not come to play
And twist its sheaf; no breeze has
blown,
Though yon the sedges moan.
And oft o'er the waters I fondly bowed.
And made belief that I saw there
One face, for my fancy featured a cloud
Or showed me my own more bright
and fair —
How vainly now I stare !
Is it vain to think that at some time yet —
Far off, perhaps in a thousand years — >
We shall meet again as we have met :
A meeting of olden joy and tears
Which all the more endears.
(D J17) K
86 LYRICAL POEMS
Perhaps in a house beside a lake
In a wood of elm and oak and beech —
Ah, hope is long ! It can wait and wake.
Though the world be dead it can
forward reach
And join us each to each.
But I fear the waiting — God, recall,
Recall, recall Thy fated will !
How can I wait while the slow leaves fall
From the tree of time and I fulfil
My vigil lone and chill?
How can I wait for what is mine? —
Thou didst will it so, and Thou art
just —
Oh, give me the life of the water-pine
Till I hear one laugh, one call I trust,
One foot-fall in the dust !
Mine then ! Mine now, by changeless
fate —
I ask but this with humble soul; —
But bid me not, O God, to wait
With miser hope's reluctant dole
While wakeful aeons roll !
THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD 87
The time I loved is dead, cold dead;
For it could die, and shall not rise
As I shall from a grosser bed
To wait and watch with hungered
eyes
And many a vain surmise.
The sedge and pines are moaning now;
The current comes to twist its sheaf;
The shadow of the isle-tree bough
Is blotted out; and twilight brief
Foreruns long night of grief.
A DREAM OF HELL
Last night I dreamt I was in hell;
In waking dread I dream it yet;
I feel the gloom, my brow is wet;
My soul is prisoner of the spell.
Hell, gloomy, still, — no fire, no cry.
Flames were a joy and shrieks delight.
And sounds of woe and painful light
Were bliss to gloom without a sigh.
I dreamt that moments passed like years
In dumb blind darkness whelmed and
drowned,
In silence of a single sound,
In grief eternal void of tears.
A single sound I heard all night
Pulse through the stillness like a sob :
I heard the weary changeless throb
Of dead damned hearts the silence smite.
88
A DREAM OF HELL 89
No change, no end; no end, no change —
As in a death house when the door
Is closed, and to return no more
One form is gone, when stillness strange
Creeps in and in one dim room stays,
The widow, who with sleepless eyes
Has watched long, hears with dull sur-
prise
A ticking she has heard for days,
So heard I myriad heart-beats blend
Into one mighty changeless knell,
The throb-song of the silent hell :
No end, no change; no change, no end.
In silence, solitude and gloom,
With working brain and throbbing heart,
Remembering things that cannot start
To life again out of the tomb,
Remembering, ruing, day by day,
And year by year, and age by age,
In sorrow without tear or rage
Watching the moments pass away,
go LYRICAL POEMS
I found thee — of all mortals thee ! —
Buried in hell for endless time,
Buried in hell for unknown crime,
Who ever wert a saint to me.
I found thee there — I know not how —
And thou wilt never know that I,
Thy pitying friend of earth, was nigh-
My pity ne'er can reach thee now.
OF A POET PATRIOT
His songs were a little phrase
Of eternal song,
Drowned in the harping of lays
More loud and long.
His deed was a single word,
Called out alone
In a night when no echo stirred
To laughter or moan.
But his songs new souls shall thrill,
The loud harps dumb,
And his deed the echoes fill
When the dawn is come.
91
OF A GREEK POEM
Crave no more that antique rapture
Now in alien song to reach :
Here uncouth you cannot capture
Gracious truth of Attic speech.
Utterly the flowers perish,
Grace of Athens, Rome's renown,
Giving but a dream to cherish
Tangled in a laurel crown.
I that splendour far pursuing
Left unlit the lamps of home,
And upon my quest went ruing
That I found not Greece or Rome.
92
IDEAL
Fragment of a perfect plan
Is the mortal life of man :
Beauty alone can make it whole,
Beauty alone can help the soul
To labour over the island span
Lying between seas that roll
Darkly, forward and behind :
Beauty beatific will bind
The mortal and the immortal mind.
93
THE SEASONS AND THE
LEAVES
Now when the storms have driven out
the cold
The Spring comes in with buds in tender
sheaf
The Spring comes in with buds, the
Winter flown,
The Winter fled and dead — the May will
fold
Around us the soft clothing we have
known
In dreams of Joy when Calm lulled storm
and leaf
The lurking showers patter down the
May
And wash to glory all the yellow gleam
That loves with light and gold and greens
to play
On bole and bough and spray —
94
THE SEASONS AND THE LEAVES 95
But after Summer, Autumn's quiet beam
Comes, and the West Wind, and the
skies are grey —
And then the leaves grow heavy, the soul
grows old,
Old as an age within a little day,
When once they see the doubtful dim
extreme,
When belfries of the Winter once have
tolled
The knells of death, then dross is all
their gold.
A SEASON OF REPOSE
In summer time, under the leaves, in
Calm
Of middle country, sweet it is to be
Alone amid the old monotony
Of sabbath Peace, which, holy as a Psalm
Of David, falls on aching Thought in
balm,
Rich with the reverence of high
ecstasy
And dreams of David's land of vine and
palm.
David is dead long time, and poets here
Sell their rich souls upon more sordid
marts ;
And as a grape is crushed all human
hearts
rAre trampled of the Beauty they held
dear,
96
A SEASON OF REPOSE 97
Their Wine soon quaffed, their Memory
but a tear
Dried by new Passion ere another
starts —
Dream not of David thou in human fear.
All souls are lost in the vain world of
noise ;
All gifts of God are bartered for that
pelf
And every angel soul will change
itself
To serve a brutish idol which destroys
The sacred spirit's mortal equipoise,
Eternal Calm — to serve an evil elf
Who traffics but Life's lust for Cherub
joys.
Here, in a Summer of sweet Solitude,
Oblivion lives gentlier than Thought,
Which pains the spirit anxious and
distraught,
Hissing harsh names of disillusions rude —
Blind Apathy of men, Ingratitude,
And Gain for loss of noble kin dear
bought —
Here, 'mid the rose, let Envy not intrude.
98 LYRICAL POEMS
The pious time of fretful Quietness
Is panting with the happy heart of
Noon,
And Life, under the leaves, were yet
a boon,
If, lulled in slumber mute, this Happi-
ness
By night or day knew everlastingness,
If 'twere not hurt by dread of waking
soon,
Something endured amid the world to
bless —
Song, by enraptured Beauty waked and
stirred,
Filling the heart with bitter shrill
delight,
Killing the heart with joy to live
aright,
Stronger than Thought doled out in
sound and word,
And better than all noise of pipe or bird —
The spirit's own high winging in great
light,
The spirit's own clear singing, spirit-
heard.
A SEASON OF REPOSE 99
Leaves weave a world of images to last —
The tideless placid passage of the
Nile,
The sensuous seasons of a tropic isle,
The blooms, the glooms, the shadows
over-cast
That fall in opiate peace upon the Past,
Far from the stress of cities mile on
mile,
The middle calm of country, earth-bound
fast.
In the beginning Calm on all things lay —
Clung round Eternity as Light on
Space,
Setting a glory unto Beauty's face,
Lulling the primal Time to drowse and
stay;
When we are hence she shall resume her
sway
And rule with other Time in every
place —
When echoes of old Life have ebbed
away.
ioo LYRICAL POEMS
Here was a Druid's house of noise and
spell
In the forgotten yesterday of now :
The glade called out with sacrifice
and vow,
Till on his gods long Death oblivious fell,
And with that far Dawn rang the cloister
bell
Calling lone hermits at one shrine to
bow :
The forest stands above their dark-built
cell.
The Tide with hideous whirl and wash
and foam
Breaks over all and all with tumult
fills;
But anon ebbs, backwards its billow
spills : —
Horace, the fish are free ! But earth
and loam
Have claimed the ruins of thy little
home,
Have claimed thy farm among the
Sabine hills, —
Aye, and one day will claim thy tomb
and Rome.
A SEASON OF REPOSE 101
Ah, drown the hours deep in Oblivion's
wave,
Or living shun they still Death's old
regret !
Unconscious falls the rose, the mig-
nonette
Buries its odour in a winter's grave,
And no vain Love will strive their joy
to save,
No heart throb slow and think ne'er
to forget —
Only this human Life for tears doth
crave.
O Vanity too vain of human heart,
How dost thou mind thy Summer's
withered bloom,
And Beauty, springing from her
Mother's tomb !
How dost thou yearn for Manners that
depart,
And Times with goodness holy that will
start
To no new being from their tarnished
gloom ! —
How dost thou cherish Memory's idle
smart !
(D317) I/
102 LYRICAL POEMS
Drown Thought — but ah, it will not die
or swoon !
It is the Worm that liveth for Hell's
pain,
The smoke of torment haunting the
quick brain
With faces mocking as the winter moon
To a lost child, who hears the Banshee's
croon
Shrill in the shimmer of the icy plain,
And knows her clammy hand will clasp
him soon.
So are these piteous tears for ever shed,
And Grief waits everywhere among
the crowd
Where Life with noise and folly most
is loud :
Now she invades my solitude with Dread
And anxious Thought, all in my Summer
bed
Of flowers the fairest, curtained with
a cloud
Of lilac bloom, in Quiet's mansion
spread.
A SEASON OF REPOSE 103
But Noon is far, the dusk more narrow
grows ;
And soon a star will hush the spar-
rows' din,
And fold them all the stooping eaves
within ;
Now cold will fall with drooping leaves
the rose,
The lilac flowers will drink the dew and
close ;
And silent Hours will link anew and
spin
The world and Thought round Seasons
of Repose.
WITH ONLY THIS FOR LIKE-
NESS, ONLY THESE WORDS
With only this for likeness, only these
words,
I look this June upon the bloom of the
earth,
Upon the rare brown and the young
green of the earth,
Yearning for power and finding but these
words.
The changing tide of radiance in the
sky
Is over me, and earth and earth around,
Here where no waters rock, no streets
resound —
Earth glory and the glory of the sky.
Around, above — but far, how far be-
yond ! —
For these will pass, their memory will
sleep —
The train of Beauty vain in vain will
sweep
Past the dumb soul, the memory beyond.
104
WITH ONLY THIS FOR LIKENESS 105
I cannot grasp that glory with my hand,
Nor clasp my wonder in the casket choice
Of undulant words or words of the
straight voice —
I, stammering of speech and halt of
hand.
FAIRY TALES
O spirits heaven born !
O kind De Danann souls,
Whose music down our story rolls,
And holds it near the morn,
You stir the poet heart
To dream in quickening rimes
The magic of the fairy times
That never shall depart !
O fairy people good,
Truth-tellers of the dew !
The face of truth smiles only true
Beneath your beauty's hood ;
And wins from idle story
Souls that the world would mar,
Showing the common things that are
As images of glory.
106
THE COMING-IN OF SUMMER
Yesterday a swallow
Cuckoo-song to-day,
And anon will follow
All the flight of May,
For Summer is a-coming in.
Corncrake's ancient sorrow
Pains the evening hush,
But the dawn to-morrow
Gladdens with the thrush —
And Summer is a-coming in.
Oh ! laburnum yellow,
Lilac and the rose,
Chestnut shadow mellow
In my garden-close,
And Summer, Summer coming in !
Lo, with shield and arrow,
Burnished helm and spear,
Flower and leaflet narrow
Rank on rank appear —
King Summer is a-coming in !
107
io8 LYRICAL POEMS
Summer, haste and hallow
Something of the Spring,
Which is harsh and callow
Till thy herald sing —
Oh ! Summer is a-coming in !
O BURSTING BUD OF JOY
0 bursting bud of joy
1 pluck thee in thy flower !
Fast I plant thee in my breast
To bloom and bloom for ever.
I lived without thee long,
Lonesome my life without thee.
Lightly blossom in my breast,
O flower mine, for ever !
109
FOR VICTORY
An old man weeps
And a young man sorrows
While a child is busy with his gladness.
The old shall cheer
And the young shall battle, —
The child shall tremble for their glad-
ness.
O Victory
How fair thou comest,
Young though the ages are thy raiment f
Thy song of death
How sweet thou singest,
Coming in that splendour of thy raiment I
All flaming thou
In grandeur of the Fianna
Or crowned with the memory of Tara I
In the fame of Kings,
In the might of chieftains,
Bound in the memory of Tara !
no
FOR VICTORY in
Sweet little child
To thee the victory —
Thou shalt be now as the Fianna!
For thee the feast,
For thee the lime- white mansions,
And the hounds on the hills of Fianna !
OF THE MAN OF MY FIRST
PLAY
As one who stands in awe when on his
sight
A fragment of antiquity doth burst
And body huge above the plain which
erst
Knew its high fame and all its olden
might,
So in a dream of vanquished power and
right
I gazed on him, a fragment from the first,
A ruin vast, half builded here and curst, —
Perhaps full moulded in the eternal
night.
How may I show him? — How his story
plan
Who was prefigured to the dreaming eye
In term of other being? — May he fill
This mask of life? — Or will my creature
cry
Shame that I dwarf the sequel and the
man
To house him thus within a fragment
still?
112
ENVOI: 1904
Seeking, I onward strive, straight on, nor
yet
Come to the place I sighted long ago,
Nor shall come, I fear now, until the
glow
Of this impetuous morning-tide be set
'Mid sober-tinted clouds of calm regret,
Philosophy — destined perhaps to grow,
For all their shadow, into truth, and so
To trust more sure that strongly can
forget.
The prelude thus of all my after-play
These variant notes, most wayward, hesi-
tant,—
The groping of blind fingers that will
stray
Over the stiff strange keys ere the bold
chant
Breaks from the organ, sudden, resonant,
And men that murmured waiting, silent
stay.
113
INSCRIPTIONS
INSCRIPTIONS
i
OF IRELAND
A half of pathos is the past we know,
A half the future into which we go;
Or present joy broken with old regret,
Or sorrow saved from hell by one hope
yet.
There once was pleasant water and fresh
land
Where now the Sphinx gazes across the
sand;
Yet may she hope, though dynasties have
died,
That Change abides while Time and she
abide.
ii
What of my careful ways of speech?
What are my cold words to the heart
That lives in man? They cannot reach
One passion simpler than their art.
117
(D 317) M
n8 LYRICAL POEMS
III
Though silence be the meed of death
In dust of death a soul doth burn :
Poet, rekindled by thy breath,
Joy flames within her funeral urn.
IV
My poet yearns and shudders with desire
To bring to speech your music's intense
thought :
It is music all, yet he in ice and fire
Excruciates till it to words is wrought.
— Winter is dead ! Hark, hark, upon
our hills
The voices for whose coming thou
didst yearn !
Hail Spring ! O Life, with happy
Spring return !
O Love, revive ! Joy's laugh the dawn-
tide fills.
INSCRIPTIONS 119
— I shall not see him coming, Joy the
vernal,
Joy the heart-wakener, with his songs
and roses :
To thee the Spring : to me Death,
who discloses
The splendour of another Joy, eternal !
VI
What is white?
The soul of the sage, faith-lit,
The trust of Age,
The infant's untaught wit.
What more white?
The face of Truth made known,
The voice of Youth
Singing before her throne.
IN PARIS
So here is my desert and here am I
In the midst of it alone,
Silent and free as a hawk in the sky,
Unnoticed and unknown.
I speak to no one from sun to sun,
And do my single will,
Though round me loud voiced millions
run
And life is never still.
There goes the bell of the Sorbonne
Just as in Villon's day —
He heard it here go sounding on,
And stopped his work to pray —
Just in this place, in time of snow,
Alone, at a table bent —
Four hundred and fifty years ago
He wrote that Testament.
120
THE NIGHT HUNT
In the morning, in the dark,
When the stars begin to blunt,
By the wall of Barna Park
Dogs I heard and saw them hunt
All the parish dogs were there,
All the dogs for miles around,
Teeming up behind a hare,
In the dark, without a sound.
How I heard I scarce can tell —
'Twas a patter in the grass —
And I did not see them well
Come across the dark and pass;
Yet I saw them and I knew
Spearman's dog and Spellman's dog
And, beside my own dog too,
Leamy's from the Island Bog.
121
122 LYRICAL POEMS
In the morning when the sun
Burnished all the green to gorse,
I went out to take a run
Round the bog upon my horse;
And my dog that had been sleeping
In the heat beside the door
Left his yawning and went leaping
On a hundred yards before.
Through the village street we passed-
Not a dog there raised a snout —
Through the street and out at last
On the white bog road and out
Over Barna Park full pace,
Over to the Silver Stream,
Horse and dog in happy race,
Rider between thought and dream.
By the stream, at Leamy's house,
Lay a dog — my pace I curbed —
But our coming did not rouse
Him from drowsing undisturbed;
And my dog, as unaware
Of the other, dropped beside
And went running by me there
With my horse's slackened stride.
THE NIGHT HUNT 123
Yet by something, by a twitch
Of the sleeper's eye, a look
From the runner, something which
Little chords of feeling shook,
I was conscious that a thought
Shuddered through the silent deep
Of a secret — I had caught
Something I had known in sleep.
THE MAN UPRIGHT
I once spent an evening in a village
Where the people are all taken up with
tillage,
Or do some business in a small way
Among themselves, and all the day
Go crooked, doubled to half their size,
Both working and loafing, with their eyes
Stuck in the ground or in a board, —
For some of them tailor, and some of
them hoard
Pence in a till in their little shops,
And some of them shoe-soles — they get
the tops
Ready-made from England, and they die
cobblers —
All bent up double, a village of hobblers
And slouchers and squatters, whether
they straggle
Up and down, or bend to haggle
124
THE MAN UPRIGHT 125
Over a counter, or bend at a plough,
Or to dig with a spade, or to milk a cow,
Or to shove the goose-iron stiffly along
The stuff on the sleeve-board, or lace the
fong
In the boot on the last, or to draw the
wax-end
Tight cross-ways — and so to make or to
mend
What will soon be worn out by the
crooked people.
The only thing straight in the place was
the steeple,
I thought at first. I was wrong in that;
For there past the window at which I sat
Watching the crooked little men
Go slouching, and with the gait of a hen
An odd little woman go pattering past,
And the cobbler crouching over his last
In the window opposite, and next door
The tailor squatting inside on the floor —
While I watched them, as I have said
before,
And thought that only the steeple was
straight,
There came a man of a different gait —
126 LYRICAL POEMS
A man who neither slouched nor pattered,
But planted his steps as if each step
mattered ;
Yet walked down the middle of the street
Not like a policeman on his beat,
But like a man with nothing to do
Except walk straight upright like me and
you.
WISHES FOR MY SON
BORN ON SAINT CECILIA'S DAY 19 1 2
Now, my son, is life for you,
And I wish you joy of it, —
Joy of power in all you do,
Deeper passion, better wit
Than I had who had enough,
Quicker life and length thereof,
More of every gift but love.
Love I have beyond all men,
Love that now you share with me —
What have I to wish you then
But that you be good and free,
And that God to you may give
Grace in stronger days to live?
For I wish you more than I
Ever knew of glorious deed,
Though no rapture passed me by
That an eager heart could heed,
Though I followed heights and sought
Things the sequel never brought.
127
128 LYRICAL POEMS
Wild and perilous holy things
Flaming with a martyr's blood,
And the joy that laughs and sings
Where a foe must be withstood,
Joy of headlong happy chance
Leading on the battle dance.
But I found no enemy,
No man in a world of wrong,
That Christ's word of charity
Did not render clean and strong —
Who was I to judge my kind,
Blindest groper of the blind?
God to you may give the sight
And the clear undoubting strength
Wars to knit for single right,
Freedom's war to knit at length,
And to win, through wrath and strife,
To the sequel of my life.
But for you, so small and young,
Born on Saint Cecilia's Day,
I in more harmonious song
Now for nearer joys should pray —
Simpler joys : the natural growth
WISHES FOR MY SON 129
Of your childhood and your youth,
Courage, innocence, and truth :
These for you, so small and young,
In your hand and heart and tongue.
POSTSCRIPTUM
SEPTEMBER 1913
I, Adam, saw this life begin
And lived in Eden without sin,
Until the fruit of knowledge I ate
And lost my gracious primal state.
I, Nero, fiddled while Rome burned :
I saw my empire overturned,
And proudly to my murderers cried —
An artist dies in me ! — and died.
And though sometimes in swoon of sense
I now regain my innocence,
I pay still for my knowledge, and still
Remain the fool of good and ill.
And though my tyrant days are o'er
I earn my tyrant's fate the more
If now secure within my walls
I fiddle while my country falls.
130
NOTES
Grange House Lodge : Marbhan (pro-
nounced approximately Mauravaun),
the brother of Guaire, King of Con-
nacht in the seventh century, is the
hermit of the Old-Irish poem known
as King and Hermit.
The Yellow Bittern : An Bunan Buidhe.
All my translations are very close to
the originals. In my version of this
poem I have changed nothing for the
purpose of elucidation. I have even
translated the name of Loch Mhic an
Ein, a lake in the North - west of
Ireland. Some of the references
must be obscure to all but students of
Irish literature; I think, however, that
the poem does not suffer too much
from the difficulty of these.
131
I32 NOTES
Druimfhionn Bonn Dilis : a poem of the
Jacobite period. Druimfhionn Donn
Dilis (pronounced approximately
dhrim-in dhown dheelish) the name
of a cow — white-backed, brown, true
— is one of the symbolic names of
Ireland. This is a dialogue between
the Stuart and Druimfhionn.
Eve : An Old- Irish poem of the tenth
century. Of its four stanzas I have
omitted one which I think worthless.
Catullus : vm : Miser Catulle, desinas
ineptire ... In line 15 of the
Latin I have adopted Professor Bury's
reading :
Scelesta, anenti quae tibi manet vita?
Catullus : LXXVI : Siqua recordanti bene-
facta priora voluptas est homini
Postscriptum : Nero's cry was, Qualis
artifex pereo !
MISCELLANEOUS
POEMS
THOMAS MAcDONAGH
(D 317} K
BARBARA
BORN 24TH MARCH, 1915.
You come in the day of destiny,
Barbara, born to the air of Mars :
The greater glory you shall see
And the greater peace, beyond these
wars.
In other days within this isle,
As in a temple, men knew peace;
And won the world to peace a while
Till rose the pride of Rome and
Greece, —
The pride of art, the pride of power,
The cruel empire of the mind :
Withered the light like a summer flower,
And hearts went cold and souls went
blind ;
135
136 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
And, groping, men took other gifts,
(God is so good), and thought them
the best:
But the light lives in the soul that lifts
The quiet of love above the rest.
I have dreamt of you as the Maid of
Quiet
Entempled in ecstacy of joy,
Secure from the madness of blood and
the riot
Of fame that lures with the glory of
Trov. —
4
Barbara, alien to Athens and Rome,
Barbara, free from their pride of wit,
Strange to the country of Exile, at home
In Eden, by memory and promise of
it.
And so I have dreamt of your happy state
When men go home from Troy and
strife,
And wait again for the vision, and wait
To know the secret of their life.
BARBARA 137
I have dreamt that they will find you there
Barbaric, strange, like Seraph or Saint,
Innocent of their glory and care,
Strong in the wit that their wit makes
faint.
Yet why should I dream for you, my
child?
The deed will always out-dare the
dream :
This garden go the way of the wild :
These things will change from what
they seem;
They will change to the glory they knew
of old
In the old barbaric way of the world
That flames again in the hearts that were
cold
That flings to the winds the flags that
were furled.
For the old flags wave again, like trees :
The forest will come with the timid
things
That are stronger than the dynasties,
As your curls are stronger than iron
rings.
138 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
When the life of the cities of Europe
goes
The way of Memphis and Babylon,
In Ireland still the mystic rose
Will shine as it of old has shone.
O rose of Grace ! O rare wild flower,
Whose seeds are sent on the wings of
Light !
O secret rose, our doom, our dower,
Black with the passion of our night;
Be bright again in the heart of this child,
In peace, in trembling joy made
known !
Let Exile and Eden be reconciled
For her on earth, in wild and sown !
Be one, my child, with that which returns
As sure as Spring, to the arid earth
(When the hearth lies cold the wild fire
burns :
When the sown lies dead the wild
gives birth).
BARBARA 139
Be one with Nature, with that which
begins,
One with the fruitful power of God:
A virtue clean among our sins,
'Mid the stones of our ruin a flower-
ing rod.
And, against the Greek, be one with the
Gael,
One knowledge of God against all
human,
One sacred gift that shall not fail,
One with the Gael against the Romaa
So may you go the barbaric way
That the earth may be Paradise anew,
And Troy from memory pass away,
And the pride of wit be naught to you.
Written in June, 1915.
WITHIN THE TEMPLE
The middle of the things I know
Is the unknown, and circling it
Life's truth and life's illusion show
Things in the terms of sense and wit.
Bounded by knowledge thus, unbound,
Within the temple thus, alone,
Clear of the circle set around,
I know not, being with the unknown;
But images my memories use
Of sense, and terms of wit employ,
Lest in the known the unknown lose
The secret tidings of my joy.
140
TO JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN
Poor splendid Poet of the burning eyes
And withered hair and godly pallid
brow,
Low-voiced and shrinking and apart wert
thou,
And little men thy dreaming could de-
spise.
How vain, how vain the laughter of the
wise !
Before thy Folly's throne their children
bow —
For lo ! thy deathless spirit triumphs
now,
And mortal wrongs and envious Time
defies.
And all their prate of frailty : thou didst
stand
The barren virtue of their lives above,
And above lures of fame; — though to
thy hand
141
142 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
All strings of music throbbed, thy single
love
Was, in high trust, to hymn thy Gaelic
land
And passionate proud woes of Roisin
Dubh.
SNOW AT MORNING
As with fitful tune,
All a heart-born air,
Note by note doth fall
The far vision fair
From the Source of all
On the dreaming soul,
Fall to vanish soon.
From the darkening dome,
Starlight every one
Brightening down its way,
Each a little swan
From a cygnet grey,
Wave on wave doth sail,
Whitening into foam.
Late unloosed by God
From their cage aloft
Somewhere near the sky,
Snow flakes flutter soft,
Flutter, fall, and die
On the pavement mute,
On the fields untrod.
143
THE SENTIMENTALIST
In after years, if years find us together,
How we shall tell each other the old
tale
Of this brave time, when through this
doubtful weather
For Love's Hesperides we two set
sail !
From opposite far shores fate bid us
start,
We knew not whither and we cared
not then —
And shall we meet? Or shall we drift
apart ?
Or meet and part, never to meet
again ?
And if the after years find us asunder? —
Well, I may brood over this broken
rime,
While you perhaps in some far place may
wonder
If I think ever still of this old time.
144
THE POET SAINT
Sphere thee in Confidence
Singing God's Word,
Led by His Providence,
Girt with His Sword;
Bartering all for Faith,
Following e'er
That others deem a wraith,
Fleeting and fair.
" Walk thou no ample way
Wisdom doth mark;
Seek thou where Folly's day
Setteth to dark.
" Darkness in Clarity
Wisdom doth find,
Folly in Charity
Doubting the Kind,
" Folly in Piety,
Folly in Trust,
Heav'n in Satiety,
Death in Death's dust.
145
i46 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
" Thou from the dust shalt rise
Over all Fame,
Angels of Paradise
Singing thy name."
LUNA DIES ET NOX ET NOCTIS
SIGNA SEVERA
Lucretius
•
The mountain, rolled in purple, fold on
fold,
Delicate, dim, aware,
After the sunset, when the twilight air
Is hush, expectant : — And below, between
The road-way and the mountain, the thin
screen,
Frigid and straight, of trees of darkening
green :
Above the middle mountain, sudden,
soon,
Half burnished, ready risen, the round
moon :
Then burnished full : Splendour and the
stars' light :
Light and the night and the austere signs
of the night.
147
MAY DAY
I wish I were to-day on the hill behind
the wood, —
My eyes on the brown bog there and the
Shannon river, —
Behind the wood at home, a quickened
solitude
When the winds from Slieve Bloom set
the branches there a-quiver.
The winds are there now and the green
of May
On every feathery tree-bough, tender on
every hedge :
Over the bog-fields there larks carol to-
day,
And a cuckoo is mocking them out of the
woodland's edge.
148
MAY DAY 149-
Here a country warmth is quiet on the
rocks
That alone make never a change when
the May is duly come;
Here sings no lark, and to-day no cuckoo
mocks :
Over the wide hill a hawk floats, and the
leaves are dumb.
(D 317)
EAMONN AN CHNUIC
— Who is that out there still
With voice sharp and shrill,
Beating my door and calling?
— I am Ned of the Hill,
Wet, weary and chill,
The mountains and glens long walking.
— O my dear love and true !
What could I do for you
But under my mantle draw you?
For the bullets like hail
Fall thick on your trail,
And together we both may be slaughtered.
— Long lonely I go
Under frost, under snow,
Hunted through hill and through hollow.
No comrade I know :
No furrow I sow :
My team stands unyoked in the fallow :
150
EAMONN AN CHNUIC 151
No friend will give ear
Or harbour me here, —
'Tis that makes the weight of my sorrow !'
So my journey must be
To the east o'er the sea
Where no kindred will find me or follow !'
(D 317) O2
CORMAC OG
(FROM THE IRISH)
At home the doves are sporting, the Sum-
mer is nigh —
Oh, blossoms of April set in the crowns
of the trees ! —
On the streams the cresses, clustering,
knotted, lie,
And the hives are bursting with spoil of
the honey bees.
Rich there in worth and in fruit is a forest
fine;
A winsome, lithe, holy maiden — oh, fair
to see !
A hundred brave horses, lambs and a
hundred kine
By Lee of the trout — and I an exile from
thee!
152
CORMAC OG 153
The birds their dear voices are turning
all to song,
The calves are bleating aloud for their
mother's side,
The fish are leaping high where the
midges throng —
And I alone with young Cormac here
must abide !
QUANDO VER VENIT MEUM?
— Poet, babbling delicate song
Vainly for the ears of love,
Vail not hope if thou wait long;
Charming thy hope to song
Thou wilt win love.
Thou dost yearn for lovelier flow'r
Than all blooms that all men cull :
Thou wilt find in its one hour,
In its one dell, the flow'r
That thou wilt cull.
Thou wilt know it in its own dell,
And pause there; and thy heart then
Leaving hope will sing love well,
Fill with heart's joy the dell
Of thy love then.
— Where is thy dell, when is thy time.
Lovely winsome tenderling?
Ah ! if death fall ere that prime —
Now, bring me now in time
My tenderling !
154
II.
AVERIL
I love thee, April ! for thou art the Spring
When Spring is Summer; and thy way-
ward showers,
Sudden and short, soothly do bring May
flowers,
Thus making thee a harbinger, whose
wing
Bright jewels, Nature's rarest choice, doth
fling
O'er dewy-glistening brakes and banks
and bowers,
To ravish loving eyes through longer
hours
When Winter is a dead forgotten thing.
Sach promise dost thou give of Summer
bloom ; —
But thine own sunshine hast thou, thine
own light;
155
156 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
And fair are April flowers, April leaves —
Fairer to eyes aching from Winter's
gloom
Than late-blown joys of May, that greet
the sight
When drunk with gladness it from thee
receives.
SUNDOWN
Lilac and green of the sky,
Brown of the broken earth,
Apple trees whitening high,
May and the Summer's birth.
Voices of children and mirth
Singing of clouds that are ships,
Sure to sail into the firth
Where the sun's anchor now dips.
Here is our garden that sips
Sweets that the May bestows,
Breath of laburnum lips,
Breath of the lilac and rose.
Blossoms of blue will close
After the ships are gone,
Drinking the dew in a doze
Under the dark till the dawn.
Twilight and ships crowd on
Into the road of the West,
After the sun where he shone
Reddening down to rest.
157
MY LOVE TO-NIGHT
My love to-night, her arm across her face,
Has wept for me, wandering she
knows not where,
And wept the while she suffered his em-
brace,
Letting him think she wept for other
care.
Weep, O my love, for your own piteous
fate,
For all that now is lost of your love's
right :
I wait alone, without — I tearless wait,
For you, my love, more bitter is this
night.
158
UBER ALLEN GIPFELLEN 1ST
RUH
Over all the mountains is rest;
In all the tree tops the faint west
Scarce stirs a bough. v
The nestlings hush their song.
Wait awhile — ere long
Rest too shalt thou.
159
TO MY LADY
You with all gifts of grace, have this one
gift-
Or simple power — your way of life to lift
For way of love out of the common way
Of manner and conduct where with all it
lay.
Your love, although your life now, is
apart
From these, and not by will so but by
heart.
You hold no secrets of yourself from you :
You have no vanity, no doubt to do
What 'tis your way to do ; and as you live
Not in yourself alone, you take and give :
You hold no secrets of yourself from me,
Nor fail to see in me what is to see.
So you, surrendering every defence,
Yield not, but hold the perfect reticence
160
TO MY LADY 161
Of intimate love. We have no need of
speech
(Though I speak this) our equal trust to
reach.
Our acts we guard not, and we go our
ways
Free, though together now for all our
days.
TO EOGHAN
If now I went away, or if you went
Away from here, and after we had spent
Long years apart, we met here once again,
Though we are quite estranged, I think
that then
We might our friendship find and hold
anew,
For then would be no anger in us two.
We would learn all the things that hap-
pened since
Our parting, and see changes, and not
wince
In jealousy or pride, but find it sweet
After our long estrangement thus to meet,
As intimate as now, yet distant, free
From this constraint of close hostility,
Weary perhaps of life and wandering,
Yet eager still, — I think that I should
bring
162
TO EOGHAN 163
All the old faults, and you would laugh
at them,
Even welcome, maybe, what you now
condemn.
And what would you bring? What would
you be? — I dare
Not think what you may be, and what you
were.
THE STARS
In happy mood I love the hush
Of the lone creatures of God's hand,
But when I hate I want the rush
Of storms that trample sea and land.
The stars are out beyond the storms
Which are my kin, and they are cold
And critical, and creep in swarms
To guess what could be never told.
164
CATULLUS: V.
(VIVAMUS, MEA LESBIA, ATQUE AMEMUS . .)
Let us live and let us love,
Lesbia, caring not a curse
F^r the prate of Sour old men.
Suns may set and rise again;
But for us, when our brief light
Once is set, waits one sheer night
To be spent in single slumber.
Give me a thousand kisses, love,
Then a hundred, — then rehearse,
Thousand, hundred, till they mount
Millions — and then blot the count;
Lest we know, — or some sore devil
Over-look and bring us evil,
Knowing all our kisses' number.
165
DUBLIN TRAMCARS
i.
A sailor sitting in a tram —
A face that winces in the wind —
That sees and knows me what I am,
That looks through courtesy and sham
And sees the good and bad behind —
He is not God to save or damn,
Thank God, I need not wish him blind !
ii.
Calvin and Chaucer I saw to-day
Come into the Terenure car :
Certain I am that it was they,
Though someone may know them here
and say
What different men they are,
I know their pictures — and there they sat,
And passing the Catholic church at Rath-
gar
Calvin took off his hat
And blessed himself, and Chaucer at that
Chuckled and looked away.
166
THE PHILISTINE
I gave my poems to a man,
Who said that they were very great —
They showed just how my love began
And ended, but too intimate
To give to read to every one.
I took my book and left him there,
And went out where the sinking sun
Was calling stars into the air.
He thought that I had let them look
Privily in behind the bars,
Had sold my secret with a book —
I cursed him and I cursed the stars.
167
INSCRIPTION ON A RUIN
I stood beside the postern here,
High up above the trampling sea,
In shadow, shrinking from the spear
Of light, not daring hence to flee.
The moon beyond the western cliff
Had passed, and let the shadow fall
Across the water to the skiff
That came on to the castle wall.
I heard below murmur of words
Not loud, the splash upon the strand,
And the long cry of darkling birds.
The ivory horn fell from my hand.
168
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