The Project Gutenberg eBook of Eire, and other poems
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Title: Eire, and other poems
Author: Robin Flower
Release date: November 23, 2025 [eBook #77299]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Locke Ellis, 1910
Credits: Tim Miller, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EIRE, AND OTHER POEMS ***
EIRE
And other Poems
By
ROBIN FLOWER
LONDON:
LOCKE ELLIS, 18 Whitcomb Street, Leicester Square
1910.
_Certain of these Poems have appeared in “Country Life” and the
“Academy,” and are reprinted here by the courtesy of the Editors._
I.M.S.
Has primitias.
CONTENTS.
Eire: Page
Eire’s answer 3
Tír na n-óg 5
Muirnín na gruaige báine 6
The little wee lad 8
The Charm 9
The Sidhe 10
The Exile 11
Sea-Children 12
Old Songs 13
Morning in Glenair 14
The Hedge-Schoolmaster to his Love 15
The Lake of Longing 16
To H. I. B. 17
Lyrics:
On Ivinghoe Beacon 21
The Sorrow of Senchan the Lonely 23
“Chevauchons” (_To a tune of Provence_) 24
The Nightingale 25
Joy’s immortality 26
At Golder’s Hill 28
The Apple Tree 30
Desideria 31
The Bacchante 35
Sonnets 41
Hymenaea 53
EIRE.
EIRE’S ANSWER.
O Eire, Eire, what of the morrow?
Speak to us who are thinking long,
O Eire, Eire, mother of sorrow,
Mother of song.
We that cling to thy knees for ever,
True to thy hills and glens and streams;
We that the years and the seas dissever
From all but dreams,
We have laid our hearts on thy high green altar,
We are made all thine till the world’s life cease;
Speak to our hopes and hearts that falter
Words of peace.
“Children dear, I have wandered, wandered,
I have faced each sorrow the years renew,
For you I have laboured, for you have pondered,
Have wept for you.
O children broken! O children weary!
The griefs that lie in your pathways strown
I, your mistress, your mother, Eire,
I, too, have known.
But of all things sure I have found none surer
Than this one wisdom the days let fall,
That the heart grown stronger, the heart grown purer
Shall master all.
You shall leave to others the lute and tabor,
You shall go your ways from the dance and song,
You shall set your hands to the daily labour
The whole year long.
You shall count no task for your toil too humble,
You shall hate no man for the times long gone,
For strifes must perish and hates must crumble,
But love lives on.
And so at the end as the light draws nearer
You shall find that labour and love are best,
And I, your mother, grown greater, dearer,
Shall give you rest.”
TÍR NA N-ÓG.
I heard the summer calling across great breadths of sea
In the landwind and the seawind and the wind of gramarie;
For the seawind speaks in thunder and the landwind whispers low,
But the little wind of faery you scarce can hear it blow.
But listen, listen, listen and you shall hear afar
A low and lovely murmur like the singing of a star;
But listen, listen, listen till all things fade and fall
And the lone and luring music is master over all.
And you shall hear it chanting in one triumphant chime
Of the life that lives for ever and the fugitives of time
Beyond the green land’s border and washing wastes of sea
In the world beyond the world’s end, where nothing is but glee.
The magic waters gird it, and skies of laughing blue
Keep always faith with summer, and summer still is true;
There is no end of dancing and sweet unceasing song,
And eyes to eyes make answer and love with love grows strong.
But close your ears and silence the crying of your heart,
Lest in the world of mortals you walk a man apart;
For O! I heard the music, I answered to the call,
And the landwind mocks my longing and the seawind saddens all.
MUIRNÍN NA GRUAIGE BÁINE.
(From the Irish).
For a year my love lies down
In a little western town
And the sun upon the corn is not so sweet.
At the chill time of the year
On the hills where roams my dear
There is honey in the traces of her feet.
If my longing I could get,
I would take her in a net
And would ease my aching sorrow for a while;
And, though all men say me nay,
I shall wed her on a day,
She my darling of the sweet and sunny smile.
I must finish with the plough
And sow my seedlands now,
I must labour in the face of wind and weather;
But in rain and frost and snow,
Always as I come and go
I am thinking she and I should be together.
O love my heart finds fair,
It is little that you care
Though I perish in the blackness of my grief;
But may you never tread
God’s Heaven overhead,
If you scorn me and refuse my love relief.
I would count them little worth,
All the women of the earth,
And myself alone to have the choice among them;
For in books I read it clear,
That the beauty of my dear
It has wrestled with their beauties and has flung them.
THE LITTLE WEE LAD.
As I travelled the road at the fall of the night
With the glimmering boglands to left and to right,
I heard him sing loud through the whispering dark,
The little wee lad with the voice of a lark.
He never is silent by night or by day,
But still he is singing at work and at play,
And, as his glad notes o’er the heather go winging,
They set all the sorrowful solitudes singing.
The wind in the grass and the lark in the sky
And the pattering rain to his music reply,
And the clouds and the streams and the mountains are glad
To hear the sweet song of the little wee lad.
O folk of the city, so proud and uplifted!
You sing from your lips, be you never so gifted;
From his heart he sings out in the daylight and dark,
The little wee lad with the voice of a lark.
THE CHARM.
The West is behind me, the East before me,
The North and the South to left and to right,
I bind to my charming the firmament o’er me,
The hosts of the day and the hosts of the night.
The sun and the moon and the wrath of ocean
And all things silent, all secret things,
The winds in their stillness, the winds in their motion,
The flying wings and the folded wings.
I have burnt his hair in the hearth fire’s burning,
I have spoken the words that are ill to be said;
I have turned three times and three times turning
I have cried the cry that awakes the dead.
And I know in the hut by the side of the river
He wakes and wonders and feels the charms
Steal into his blood. He is mine for ever,
Mine are his lips and his eyes and his arms.
The door stands open, the wide road calls him,
His feet stir softly and take the way;
He comes by night--for a charm enthralls him--
The road he never has come by day.
He comes, O God! there is naught can hold him,
He feels my arms through the mist and rain
Cherish and claim and clasp and enfold him;
He is mine and never his own again.
THE SIDHE.
We have no conscience and no care
And us no sweets can cloy;
For we are of the ancient air
And brothers born of joy.
We watch the earth-begotten men
That still must dream and toil
Vainly, until they turn again
Into their mother soil.
Light hearts are ours, light thoughts, light wings,
And yet our songs can say
The secret of the elder things
That men have lost for aye.
We have no conscience and no care,
No trouble and no tears,
And yet we envy men that fare
Sad through the saddened years.
THE EXILE.
(18th Century).
I wish I were in Ireland now, the country of the young,
For there they laugh the kindest laughs, the sweetest songs are sung,
And here it’s bitter living by trench and mound and wall
’Neath suns that brand and blister and freezing dews that fall.
I mind a glen in Ireland and just the way it goes,
I mind the babble of the burn and every wind that blows;
The winds blow over vineyards here, and proud the rivers fare,
But O! for my brown twinkling streams and heather-scented air.
The people here go mocking and laughing with their teeth,
There’s little meaning in their smile and little mirth beneath;
But when they laugh in Ireland with merry lips apart,
The honey of the lips betrays the honey of the heart.
The ready tears in Europe they fall for little things,
But still the Irish sorrow is fed from deeper springs,
And often they go weeping, and only they know why
For all the evil things that live and lovely things that die.
It’s hardly I’ll be winning back to Irish soil again,
And dead in foreign lands I’ll lie, as living I have lain;
But still for Ireland I have lived, and, when my time is sped,
For Ireland I’ll lay down my life, for Ireland gladly dead.
SEA-CHILDREN.
I tell you, men of Ireland, we
Are of the people of the sea
And restless, wind-tormented still
Have no will but the water’s will.
As the great sea-flood comes and goes
The tide within us ebbs and flows;
And high above us everywhere
Scream the wild gulls in the wild air.
They cannot cease, the lonely birds,
From moaning and the ancient words
That, heard but once by night or day,
Sweep the world’s boundaries away.
These are the words that long ago
Were the interpreters of woe
To the sad queens and sorrowing kings
That ruled above all human things
Yet went forth wandering; and we
Are waves upon the self-same sea
That the winds lift a little space
Foaming and in a breath efface.
OLD SONGS.
(To E. J.)
I think I’ll not forget them, when Ireland’s far away,
The songs you gathered in the glens, the songs you sang to-day;
And maybe you’ll remember, as I’ll remember well,
The grey land, the grey sky, and the grey sea-swell.
Below us was the castle that crumbles on Kinban
And the foam-fringes rippling up that turned and broke and ran,
And straight in front lay Rathlin and farther yet Cantire
And all away behind us the land of your desire.
The songs that you were singing were simple as the soil
And glad with Ireland’s gladness and sad with Ireland’s toil,
A dirge for some old chieftain the snake of poison slew,
Or maybe “Cuttin’ Rushes” or “Bonnie Lads are few.”
And now the words went weeping and now the words were gay
And love and death and laughter were on your lips to-day,
And still the wind sang with you and still the sea bore part
And many joys and sorrows were mingling in your heart.
So in the darkened city and far across the sea,
The songs you gathered in the glens will sing themselves to me,
And maybe you’ll remember, as I’ll remember well,
The grey land, the grey sky, and the grey sea-swell.
MORNING IN GLENAIR.
When you went abroad at morning the sun was in your hair
And the amber lights were dancing in your eyes;
The cuckoo called us from the branch, the cuckoo of Glenair,
And the lark went laughing up into the skies.
It was morning on the mountain, it was morning in my heart,
We loved and laughed and lilted as we went,
And the mists upon the valley drifted suddenly apart
And we fled into the world of our content.
The roads ran white and winding by the bogs and heather-hills
And the tramping-men were singing to the day,
The dew was on our naked feet, we waded in the rills,
And to-morrow was ten thousand years away.
It was morning, morning, morning and the sun upon Glenair:
Though the sober world was sleeping, we were wise,
When you went abroad at morning with the daylight in your hair
And the stars of amber dancing in your eyes.
THE HEDGE-SCHOOLMASTER TO HIS LOVE.
O dearest of dear ones, O sweeter than sweetness!
Than the birds on the mountains more fleet in your fleetness,
With your hair on the wind like a stream of fine amber,
You came through the mist like the sun in September.
As I went at your side in the midst of your brightness,
Like a silver swayed birch was your lithe lissom lightness,
Your hand was in mine and our hearts beat together
And little we cared for the world and its weather.
Below in the town they were wrangling and brawling,
On the high hills of heaven the soft rain was falling,
The soft rain, the sweet rain, so silverly shining,
That it charmed us and lulled us till day was declining.
Then, hand clasped in hand, with a riot of laughter,
We ran to the town and the rain followed after,
Till he tired at the last of his splashing and streaming
And the lovely lit stars through our window came dreaming.
THE LAKE OF LONGING.
In the deep glen of Loneliness the lake of Longing lies
And, when among the swaying pines the little winds arise,
Across the black calm of the lake a silver ripple flies.
Let us go up into the hills above the lonely glen,
The sunset lingers on the hills, but darkness dwells with men;
The sun will light us up the hills and we shall rest us then.
Above the tumbled mountain-world we stand and watch the sky.
What’s this that whispers in the wind and goes lamenting by?
It is the pipe of loneliness crying a silver cry--
The voice of endless longing, that dies and will not die.
TO H.I.B.
Because a dream is in our blood
And in our hearts a strange desire
Of roses of no earthly bud
And flames of not an earthly fire,
We find no rest in this closed world,
But send our vagrant thoughts astray,
Where, on the walls of darkness hurled,
Die the last onsets of the day.
There on the hills, as evening falls,
A muffled music strays and sings,
The last bird through the darkness calls
And winds have rest with folded wings.
There we shall find them in the gloom,
The children of our strong desire,
The roses of no earthly bloom,
The flames of not an earthly fire.
LYRICS.
ON IVINGHOE BEACON.
The Beacon over Ivinghoe
Lifts up into the sky
A soaring shoulder out of earth,
Where swift cloud-shadows fly
And winds in the bent grasses make
A murmured minstrelsy.
There did we lie and watch at ease
The armies of the spring
Across the winter-guarded vale
Their gallant outposts fling
By Amersham and Aylesbury,
By Wendover and Wing.
The Saxon and the Roman here
These winds and suns have felt
And underneath this arch of sky
At this green altar knelt
And the same night has gathered all,
The Roman, Saxon, Celt.
I saw your eyes turn strange, your lips
Were cold against my kiss
And far behind your speech there dwelt
Strange wavering mysteries
--The patient legions of the dead
Spoke from their world to this--
And “Ah!” you cried “you cherish now
My beauty like a flower,
But how, when the soft graces fade,
The magic lights lose power
And Time that did my body build
Unbuilds it hour by hour?
And will you, when deep winter chills
The seasons of desire,
And love, the tattered balladist,
Thrums on a ragged wire,
Past the grey hair and glazing eye
Discern the hearted fire?”
* * * * *
Alone I climb the Beacon now
And watch the world outrolled,
The farms, the fields, the breadth of sky,
The wide unbroken wold,
And autumn’s traitor banners hung
Above the woods of gold.
It was my fault, that in Love’s wells
I troubled the clear springs
And, looking in his burning eyes,
Recked little of his wings
And, being but a mortal made,
Dreamed of immortal things.
THE SORROW OF SENCHAN THE LONELY.
The exultant hours that clamour on the wing,
Rejoicing blooms and merry birds that sing
And all the wind and wonder of the spring--
These things are good and all these things are mine.
Dreams many-hued and visions strong to fly
And over earth’s low lands continually
The wind of beauty passing in the sky--
These things are good and all these things are mine.
Thoughts that get strength above life’s night to tower
And hear beyond these clouds and glooms that lour
The ringing clarions of the morning hour--
These things are good and all these things are mine.
Strength with night’s terrors and day’s toils to cope
And far above the mortal moment’s scope
Flung heavenward, the indomitable hope--
These things are good and all these things are mine.
But, after the wild noises of the street,
The double peace that makes life’s round complete
And on my floors the sound of little feet--
These things are best and these things are not mine.
“CHEVAUCHONS.”
(To a tune of Provence.)
Let us ride out, O lady mine,
By hedges robed in eglantine,
Until we stand
Where spring has breathed his peace divine
In lilac and laburnam land.
Let us go forth and watch once more
How morning spends his sunny store
And dew begems
The leafy walls, the grassy floor,
The willows and the chestnut stems.
Let us be swift. The cuckoos cry,
The blackbirds flute a rich reply;
And down the vale
Have we not heard them, you and I,
The low sobs of the nightingale?
Let us be merry, as of old,
When song upon your lips was gold
And music made
Warm pulsing worlds of planets cold
And sunshine in a night of shade.
This is the end of spring; and spring
Has found no magic yet to bring
Lost glories back,
But, with fled blossom and flown wing,
Must travel still the appointed track.
_Dorsington, 1 June, 1909._
THE NIGHTINGALE.
We heard the note
Of the last bells across the waters float;
The birds that sing
The silver secrets of the evening.
We watched the day
Pass far and far and very far away;
Saw from each farm
The silent smoke ascending into calm.
We watched expire
The fainting onsets of the waves of fire;
And, mist-enfurled,
The moon rose past the shoulder of the world.
Then loud and low,
Clear and confused, and strangely swift and slow,
We heard the wail
And passionate hunger of the nightingale.
He sang desire,
And all the darkling thickets thrilled with fire;
He sang despair,
And all the woodland wept and all the air.
And last the song
Soared in a rapture confident and strong
And was the call
Of Love triumphant always over all.
JOY’S IMMORTALITY.
These are the trees that saw them pass
The happy fields among,
When they were only lad and lass,
That now are dead so long.
When they were only lass and lad,
The nesting birds would sing
As though their little hearts were mad
With the new wine of spring.
And far across the wooded vale,
How clear and sweet and strong
The love-bedrunken nightingale
Would sing their mating song!
They saw the summer glories glow
And rain of autumn leaves,
Nor wept that earth’s own kind should go
Where earth’s own bosom heaves.
When winter waved a snowy hand
And bade the world be white,
They went about the silent land
And carolled their delight.
And they are gone! The trees remain,
The birds are singing still,
The footsteps of the wind and rain
Are silver on the hill.
But still I see them dancing on,
The bridegroom and the bride;
The pained and mortal flesh is gone,
The immortal joys abide.
Their eyes in every flower are glad,
Their voice in every song,
As they were still but lass and lad
That now are dead so long.
AT GOLDER’S HILL.
I saw a child at Golder’s Hill
Rule the wide kingdom of sweet will
And catch an innocent employ
From the abundant heart of joy.
He teased the mossy-antlered stag
And taught a puppy’s tail to wag;
He made a playful ripple shake
The water-lilies in the lake;
Smelt at a rose, tiptoed to kiss
The overarching clematis,
Ran shouting up the hill to stare
And watch the dying sunset flare;
Then from his calling mother hid
And would not answer when she chid.
So glad, he seemed no human birth,
But some wild spirit of the earth,
Some rapture of delirious mood,
Not yet betrayed to flesh and blood,
But elemental, swift and free
As sunlight dancing on the sea.
O happy heart, could you but keep
Safe from the heavy mortal sleep,
Wherein we wander, having sold
A heavenly hope for earthly gold;
Then would your morning of delight
Reach far into the realms of night,
Rich with the rapture that uncloses
Your brother lilies, sister roses,
And take for its eternal treasure
This sweet simplicity of pleasure.
THE APPLE TREE.
I am the apple-tree that stood
Ere song had raised the walls of Troy;
Round me the shepherd folk renewed
With every Spring their piping joy.
My branches swayed with every breath,
My wealth of blossom showering snowed;
They had no thought of pain and death,
For life and joy unchanged abode.
But in a strange and shadowed Spring
Sharp tremors ran through all my leaves;
Men came about me whispering,
“Destiny some dark purpose weaves.”
And as the year to Winter turned,
My leaves began to fade and fall,
A ruddy-golden apple burned
High on the topmost branch of all.
They took the golden fruit away,
And took the simple rustic joy:
Men come no longer from that day
And I am lonely after Troy.
DESIDERIA.
I know not where I heard it,
The song more sweet than all,
No music may re-word it,
So rich its rise and fall.
I know not where I saw them,
The roses red with joy,
It seemed no rain could flaw them,
Nor any wind destroy.
We are lost in worlds we know not
And faint with wandering;
For O! such roses grow not,
And no such voices sing.
THE BACCHANTE.
THE BACCHANTE.
[Scene: _The Eastward slopes of Cithaeron. A Bacchante with wine cup and
thyrsus comes running up the hill. A youth follows her, and, as the
first streaks of dawn line the sky, she turns and speaks._]
Thy words are cast on air. My heart possessed
Throbs in the sudden rapture of new joy
As in a shaken hand against the light
Tumultuously the ruby heart of wine
Pants to the racing pulses. O farewell
The weary days and ordered tasks of Thebes!
I am no more a servant of the hour,
But bend all hours and seasons to my will.
For look! I drink and time is nought to me,
I reel with joy as yond sky reels with day,
Swayed by no less a god, no god of thine,
But mine, my god, and I his thing, his slave,
Stricken to rapture, as one strikes a lyre
And wakes the madness sleeping in its strings.
Lo! shall such strings respond to touch of man,
That once have thrilled to mightier harmonies
Swept by the passionate fingers of a god?
Might such things be, call for me once again,
And I will come repentant to thine hand,
And thou shalt set me to what tune thou wilt
Nor one wild random strain betray the past.
Not you I loved,
Not you at all, but something seen in you,
Some glory shining in your eyes, some word
Crying through all your speech, some prisoned joy
Half-manifest in you. Could your arms shut in
My spirit awakened? Or your kiss assuage
The stirring tides that beat against the bounds
Of all my being? As a sailor calls
A favouring wind and the gods answer him
With braying storm and cruel-running surge,
So at your summons all my life uprose
In tempest and the overflowing wave
Carried me from the shallows to the sea.
And there were voices roaming on the hills
And wild free winds that wantoned through the world
And clouds that loitered, shadowing earth, or hung
Fire-winged above the sunset. All of these
Mixed with my blood and, lingering at my heart,
Joined with its pulses and were one with me.
Being one with such, how could I else but roam
With wind and cloud and whomsoever of men
Such eager longing severs from their kind
To chase the flying freedom of the hills
In open day of shadow and sun, or when
Night glooms and glimmers in the windy moon.
And then he came, who seemed no less to me
Than as the winds and clouds had stooped to earth
And, gathering all the grace of bending flowers
And sinuous streams and grasses of the hills
And all the lithe and splendid mountain forms,
Had taken shape and stood triumphant there
Moulded to human beauty.
O gods, gods!
Must I not leave the weary round of earth
And follow, follow, follow in his train
With foam-white nymphs and goat-foot demigods
Through all the splendour and the pride of things
To the unknown end of rapture? O! the hills
Snow-topped above the climbing ranks of pine,
Soared over by the eagle only and trod
Only of men half-eagle. These are mine,
My sisters and companions till I die.
There will I live, there die. The nights shall shed
Solace of dews upon me, and the sun
Burn up my beauty with his amorous gaze
And the wind lash me with his whips of rain,
But never shall I come to human doors,
Or know a human sorrow, or a joy
That is not half a god. The years are mine
Winged with delight and rapture and desire.
Not as men die shall I forsake the day
With weeping and with wailing and a hope
Half-known of other lives in other worlds,
But sure of slumber, with no backward gaze,
On some wild eve of autumn I shall pass
With the last leaf descending, as the sun
Sinks headlong in the ruined west, and far
Night gathers round the breaking heart of day.
So shall I pass for ever without fear,
Happy in life, in death, unfalteringly
Gazing with steady eyes as darkness dawns
And my rapt soul goes burning into night.
SONNETS.
SONNETS.
(1)
Last night we heard the elements in pain
Rage o’er the sanctuary where we lay enshrined,
The creeping murmur of the insidious rain
And unavailing anger of the wind.
Yet what to us the thunder on the roof,
Or the lashed windows wailing in our ears,
For in prophetic peace we stand aloof
And look through tempest to the sunlit years.
Time and his wrathful ministers of storm
Take arms against us vainly, for we know
That in the soul the things to be take form,
And love stands firm though all the world turn foe.
Let us love on, and dream, nor be afraid,
For out of dreams and love the world is made.
(2)
O terrible world, that hast such store of pain,
Such dangers ambushed in thy waste of years,
Such sorrows showering like the winter rain,
And for men’s thirst such bitter wells of tears!
Love’s chronicles of sorrow have we read,
And conned his weary precedents of pain,
How many longing lovers died unwed
And how young passion did with beauty wane;
Yet not the less we front the dangerous days
Unbending and unawed as those of yore,
And confidently tread the ancient ways
With all of doubt behind, all hope before.
One wins the quest where all the many fail,
And many died that one might see the Grail.
(3)
Those morning lovers of the times of old,
That first laid hands upon the wings of joy,
That found earth brazen and that left it gold,
Wrought at the building that no years destroy.
’Twas love that laid the bases, fixed the scope,
And measured justly with his rule and line,
And they, his labourers, builded with their hope,
Their dreams, their wonder and their tears divine.
So age by age the fabric scaled the skies
With walls of silver and with towers of rose,
And chambers hung with woven tapestries
Figured with all his raptures, all his woes;
And we within this fortress live, whereof
The builder and the architect is Love.
(4)
Not the great morning with his flight of fire
Or the king-eagle gazing in the sun
Outflies the upward wing of my desire
Or clearlier lists Love’s earliest orison.
Up from the region of forgetting night
Love lifts me on, and ever as I climb
I watch within my widening scope of sight
The long perspectives stretch of space and time.
There all the lovers of to-day’s sweet earth,
There all the hoarded joys of yesterday,
There the young heralds of to-morrow’s mirth
Raise one triumphing and accordant lay;
And the song’s secret my purged ears discover,
Love’s one same substance lives in every lover.
(5)
The stars are throbbing in the lucid sky
With silver pulses restlessly astir,
And thin-drawn wafts of vapour wander by
And fade and leave no witness that they were.
Of old the starry aspect gave presage
Of motions stirring in the womb of time;
Men read the lettering of the heavenly page
And reading, shunned to fall or dared to climb.
But the one planet ruling our intents
Is Love that burns, a steady orb of light,
Set far above the sphere of accidents
And changing orbit of the hosts of night.
Shall not our joy be from their joys as far
As this our planet from their faithless star?
(6)
O many a morning shall we see unfold,
And many a night that takes the sun away,
Day’s gradual growing of the gray to gold,
Night’s slow subsidence of the gold to gray!
Each day that comes is as a ship in flight
From the far circle of the unknown sea,
That touches at our island of delight
In the vast ocean of Eternity.
And now their merchandise is sweet as Spring,
Now salt as bitter leavings of the wave,
But we will take the traffic that they bring
And bless the hands that good or evil gave;
For one munificent day has given us more
Than all the evil merchants have in store.
(7)
Look from the cliff, look out upon the sea
That, coiling round innumerable isles,
Foams on the borders of infinity,
Fretted with travelling storms and treacherous smiles.
Our ship swings at the anchor far below,
With folded sails and silence round the keel,
Unwitting what strange surge her bows shall know,
What shores her peering crows-nest shall reveal.
Far off the islands in their locked lagoons,
All surf-surrounded and inviolate,
Dream under larger suns and mightier moons
Than light this idle country where we wait;
Let us with morning from the harbour sweep,
Our pilot knows the ways of all the deep.
(8)
They say the gods are to the woodlands fled,
Or deep withdrawn into the heedless sky;
In solitudes and silence of the dead
Lies disenthroned each slumbering deity.
But I have seen in many a radiant street,
Through mists of morning or of evening gold,
A soundless vision borne on glancing feet,
Love delicately going as of old.
For he was made alone of man’s delight
And follows still the crowded ways of men;
Altars of others crumble in the night,
His with a kiss are builded up again;
And on those altars hearts instead of spice
Are made an offering and a sacrifice.
(9)
Say not that beauty is an idle thing
And gathered lightly as a wayside flower
That on the trembling verges of the spring
Knows but the sweet survival of an hour.
For ’tis not so. Through dedicated days
And foiled adventure of deliberate nights
We lose and find and stumble in the ways
That lead to the far confluence of delights.
Not with the earthly eye and fleshly ear,
But lifted far above mortality,
We see at last the eternal hills, and hear
The sighing of the universal sea;
And kneeling breathless in the holy place
We know immortal Beauty face to face.
(10)
Ah! cease to sing. The heavenward flight of song
Limed by a mortal weakness, sinks to earth,
Into the drear infinitudes of wrong
And sad impossibilities of mirth.
The veiled and awful night resumes anew
Her territories in debate with day,
The grass is tingling with the earliest dew,
The last flower folded, the last bird away.
And we, the trembling children of desire,
Let us go too, but never to forget
How the sky filled with presences of fire
That even after sundown linger yet,
And this my mortal music seemed as fair
As incense melting in a golden air.
HYMENAEA.
HYMENAEA.
I.
If I with song could make your music more
Or with its rapture quicken all your joys,
Then would I summon from my singing store
The poise and counterpoise
Of rhythmic words made sweet with gathered lore
From all their past employs.
II.
Would they but come, the coloured words and brave,
Each murmuring of the hour that gave him birth,
How one was sad, one merry and one grave;
But all the sorrow and mirth,
Blent in a symphony, should be your slave
And sing the joys of earth.
III.
And, as it sang, the world would be again
As in the golden morning of desire,
When the first maiden loved the first of men,
And the first dawn shed fire,
And the young winds about their woodland den
Sang through the leafy lyre.
IV.
There were no cities then, no smoky pall,
No eager highways opening on despair,
No flame of lights when gracious gloom should fall
Through the dim evening air,
But gradual moons and timorous stars were all
That lit the secret lair.
V.
Round them the forest-wildernesses sighed
Under the homeless winds that stir and stray;
Night-wandering owlets in the darkness cried,
The panther took his prey;
They had no fear; Love’s sheltering wings were wide
And brought them safe till day.
VI.
We cannot know their simple joys and sweet,
Or of the brown leaf make the buds of spring,
For time has trampled with his flying feet
The mouths that strive to sing
And bound with leaden vanities the fleet
And heavenward-climbing wing.
VII.
But the great world goes onward as of old,
With moon and stars and nightly gift of dew;
The unwearied sun’s magnificence of gold
Doth day by day renew
The fainting earth, that leaps from out the cold
Unto her summons true.
VIII.
There is a resurrection from the tomb
Of years, the grave-clothes that our souls enmesh;
Each wakening day brings with it from the gloom
Its dreams and deeds afresh,
Dreams that are deeds astir within the womb,
Deeds that are dreams made flesh.
IX.
Therefore, remembering all the weary change
And heavy burden of our lifeless fears,
We yet have hope, and watch the morning range
Above the mist of tears,
If haply, to our prayers no longer strange,
She shall shine down the years.
X.
I do not bid you rest. The field is set,
The great battalions through the twilight move,
Each to his post. The call is chanting yet
And we stand forth to prove
If good shall strike down ill in conflict met--
And on our side is Love.
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