Courage

Deep in a valley, green with ancient beech,
And wandered through of one small, silent stream,
Whose bear-grassed banks bristled with brush and burr,
Tick-trefoil and the thorny marigold,
Bush-clover and the wahoo, hung with pods,
And mass on mass of bugled jewelweed,
Horsemint and doddered ragweed, dense, unkempt,
I came upon a charcoal-burner's hut,
Abandoned and forgotten long ago;
His hut and weedy pit, where once the wood
Smouldered both day and night like some wild forge,
A wildwood forge, glaring as wild-cat eyes.

A mossy roof, black, fallen in decay,
And rotting logs, exuding sickly mold
And livid fungi, and the tottering wreck,
Rude remnants, of a chimney, clay and sticks,
Were all that now remained to say that once,
In time not so remote, o...

"Ah, where can he linger?" said Doll, with a sigh,
As bearing her milk-burthen home:
"Since he's broken his vow, near an hour has gone by,
So fair as he promis'd to come."
-She'd fain had him notice the loudly-clapt gate,
And fain call'd him up to her song;
But while her stretch'd shade prov'd the omen too late,
Heavy-hearted she mutter'd along.

She look'd and she listen'd, and sigh follow'd sigh,
And jealous thoughts troubled her head;
The skirts of the pasture were losing the eye,
As eve her last finishing spread;
And hope, so endearing, was topmost to see,
As 'tween-light was cheating the view,
Every thing at a distance--a bush, or a tree,
Her love's pleasing picture it drew.

The pasture-gate creak'd, pit-a-pat her heart went,
Fond thrillin...

'There's a footstep coming: look out and see,'
    'The leaves are falling, the wind is calling;
No one cometh across the lea.' -

'There's a footstep coming; O sister, look.' -
    'The ripple flashes, the white foam dashes;
No one cometh across the brook.' -

'But he promised that he would come:
    To-night, to-morrow, in joy or sorrow,
He must keep his word, and must come home.

'For he promised that he would come:
    His word was given; from earth or heaven,
He must keep his word, and must come home.

'Go to sleep, my sweet sister Jane;
    You can slumber, who need not number
Hour after hour, in doubt and pain.

'I shall sit here awhile, and watch;
    Listening, hoping, for one hand groping
In deep shadow to find the latch...

Far in the Further East the skilful craftsman
    Fashioned this fancy for the West's delight.
This rose and azure Dragon, crouching softly
    Upon the satin skin, close-grained and white.

And you lay silent, while his slender needles
    Pricked the intricate pattern on your arm,
Combining deftly Cruelty and Beauty,
    That subtle union, whose child is charm.

Charm irresistible: the lovely something
    We follow in our dreams, but may not reach.
The unattainable Divine Enchantment,
    Hinted in music, never heard in speech.

This from the blue design exhales towards me,
    As incense rises from the Homes of Prayer,
While the unfettered eyes, allured and rested,
    Urge the forbidden lips to stoop and share;

Share in the sweetness ...

Just as a fawn, in forest shade,
Trembling to meet th' admiring eye,
I've seen thee try to hide, sweet maid!
Thy charms behind thy modesty.

Thus too I've seen at midnight steal
A fleecy cloud before the wind,
And veil, tho' it could not conceal,
The brilliant light that shone behind.

Ye have sung me your songs, ye have chanted your rimes
(I scorn your beguiling, O sea!)
Ye fondle me now, but to strike me betimes.
(A treacherous lover, the sea!)
Once I saw as I lay, half-awash in the night
A hull in the gloom, a quick hail, and a light
And I lurched o'er to leeward and saved her for spite
From the doom that ye meted to me.

I was sister to `Terrible', seventy-four,
(Yo ho! for the swing of the sea!)
And ye sank her in fathoms a thousand or more
(Alas! for the might of the sea!)
Ye taunt me and sing me her fate for a sign!
What harm can ye wreak more on me or on mine?
Ho braggart! I care not for boasting of thine,
A fig for the wrath of the sea!

Some night to the lee of the land I shall steal,
(Heigh-ho to be home from the se...

The Irish poem I give this translation of was printed in the Revue Celtique some years ago, and lately in An Fior Clairseach na h-Eireann, where a note tells us it was taken from a manuscript in the Gottingen Library, and was written by an Irish priest, Shemus Cartan, who had taken orders in France; but its date is not given. I like it for its own beauty, and because its writer does not, as so many Irish writers have done, attribute the many griefs of Ireland only to 'the horsemen of the Gall,' but also to the faults and shortcomings to which the people of a country broken up by conquest are perhaps more liable than the people of a country that has kept its own settled rule.


A SORROWFUL LAMENT FOR IRELAND.

My thoughts, alas! are without strength;
My spirit is journeying towards death;
My...

Night, with all thine eyes look down!
Darkness shed its holiest dew!
When ever smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true?
Hence, coy hour! and quench thy light,
Lest eyes see their own delight!
Hence, swift hour! and thy loved flight
Oft renew.

BOYS:
O joy! O fear! what may be done
In the absence of the sun?
Come along!
The golden gates of sleep unbar!
When strength and beauty meet together,
Kindles their image like a star
In a sea of glassy weather.
Hence, coy hour! and quench thy light,
Lest eyes see their own delight!
Hence, swift hour! and thy loved flight
Oft renew.

GIRLS:
O joy! O fear! what may be done
In the absence of the sun?
Come along!
Fairies! sprites! and angels, keep her!
Holiest powers...

(On a certain goddess, acclaimed as "new" but known in Babylon.)

I saw the assembled artists of our day
    Waiting for light, for music and for song.
A woman stood before them, fresh as May
    And beautiful; but, in that modish throng,

None heeded her. They said, "In our first youth
    Surely, long since, your hair was touched with grey."
"I do not change," she answered. "I am Truth."
    "Old and banal," they sneered, and turned away.

Then came a formless thing, with breasts dyed scarlet.
    The roses in her hair were green and blue.
        "I am new," she said. "I change, and
            Death knows why."

Then with the eyes and gesture of a harlot
    She led them all forth, whinneying, "New, how new!
        Tell us your name!...

The twilight is sad and cloudy,
    The wind blows wild and free,
And like the wings of sea-birds
    Flash the white caps of the sea.

But in the fisherman's cottage
    There shines a ruddier light,
And a little face at the window
    Peers out into the night.

Close, close it is pressed to the window,
    As if those childish eyes
Were looking into the darkness,
    To see some form arise.

And a woman's waving shadow
    Is passing to and fro,
Now rising to the ceiling,
    Now bowing and bending low.

What tale do the roaring ocean,
    And the night-wind, bleak and wild,
As they beat at the crazy casement,
    Tell to that little child?

And why do the roaring ocean,
    And the night-wind, wild and bleak...

Long, long ago, with vows too much forgotten,
The Cross of Christ was seal'd on every brow,
Ah! slow of heart, that shun the Christian conflict;
Rise up at last! The accepted time is now.
Soldiers of Jesus! Blest who endure;
Stand in the battle; the victory is sure.

Hark! hark! the Saviour's voice to each is calling--
"I bore the Cross of Death in pain for thee;
On thee the Cross of daily life is falling:
Children! take up the Cross and follow Me."
Soldiers of Jesus! &c.

Strive as God's saints have striven in all ages;
Press those slow steps where firmer feet have trod:
For us their lives adorn the sacred pages,
For them a crown of glory is with God.
Soldiers of Jesus! &c.

Peace! peace! sweet voices bring an ancient story,
(Such ...

Not only sands and gravels
Were once more on their travels,
But gulping muddy gallons
Great boulders off their balance
Bumped heads together dully
And started down the gully.
Whole capes caked off in slices.
I felt my standpoint shaken
In the universal crisis.
But with one step backward taken
I saved myself from going.
A world torn loose went by me.
Then the rain stopped and the blowing,
And the sun came out to dry me.

You'd call the man a senseless fool,
A blockhead or an ass,
Who’d dare to say he saw the ghost
Of Mount Victoria Pass;
But I believe the ghost is there,
For, if my eyes are right,
I saw it once upon a ne’er-
To-be-forgotten night.

’Twas in the year of eighty-nine,
The day was nearly gone,
The stars were shining, and the moon
Is mentioned further on;
I’d tramped as far as Hartley Vale,
Tho’ tired at the start,
But coming back I got a lift
In Johnny Jones’s cart.

’Twas winter on the mountains then,
The air was rather chill,
And so we stopped beside the inn
That stands below the hill.
A fire was burning in the bar,
And Johnny thought a glass
Would give the tired horse a spell
And help us up the Pass.

Then ...

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast, the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant norther...

Some born of homely parents
For ages settled down,
The steady generations
Of village, farm, and town:
And some of dusky fathers
Who wandered since the flood,
The fairest skin or darkest
Might hold the roving blood,

Some born of brutish peasants,
And some of dainty peers,
In poverty or plenty
They pass their early years;
But, born in pride of purple,
Or straw and squalid sin,
In all the far world corners
The wanderers are kin.

A rover or a rebel,
Conceived and born to roam,
As babies they will toddle
With faces turned from home;
They’ve fought beyond the vanguard
Wherever storm has raged,
And home is but a prison
They pace like lions caged.

They smile and are not happy;
They sing and are not gay;

My dear delight, my Ursula, and where
Art thou departed, to what land, what sphere?
High o'er the heavens wert thou borne, to stand
One little cherub midst the cherub band?
Or dost thou laugh in Paradise, or now
Upon the Islands of the Blest art thou?
Or in his ferry o'er the gloomy water
Does Charon bear thee onward, little daughter?
And having drunken of forgetfulness
Art thou unwitting of my sore distress?
Or, casting off thy human, maiden veil,
Art thou enfeathered in some nightingale?
Or in grim Purgatory must thou stay
Until some tiniest stain be washed away?
Or hast returned again to where thou wert
Ere thou wast born to bring me heavy hurt?
Where'er thou art, ah! pity, comfort me;
And if not in thine own entirety,
Yet come before mine eyes a ...

It's slim and trim and bound in blue;
Its leaves are crisp and edged with gold;
Its words are simple, stalwart too;
Its thoughts are tender, wise and bold.
Its pages scintillate with wit;
Its pathos clutches at my throat:
Oh, how I love each line of it!
That Little Book I Never Wrote.

In dreams I see it praised and prized
By all, from plowman unto peer;
It's pencil-marked and memorized,
It's loaned (and not returned, I fear);
It's worn and torn and travel-tossed,
And even dusky natives quote
That classic that the world has lost,
The Little Book I Never Wrote.

Poor ghost! For homes you've failed to cheer,
For grieving hearts uncomforted,
Don't haunt me now. . . . Alas! I fear
The fire of Inspiration's dead.
A humdrum way I go to-...

I said, "My youth is gone
Like a fire beaten out by the rain,
That will never sway and sing
Or play with the wind again."

I said, "It is no great sorrow
That quenched my youth in me,
But only little sorrows
Beating ceaselessly."

I thought my youth was gone,
But you returned,
Like a flame at the call of the wind
It leaped and burned;

Threw off its ashen cloak,
And gowned anew
Gave itself like a bride
Once more to you.