Death

The sea-wort floating on the waves, or rolled up high along the shore,
Ye counted useless and vile, heaping on it names of contempt:
Yet hath it gloriously triumphed, and man been humbled in his ignorance,
For health is in the fresliness of its savour, and it cumbereth the beach with wealth;
Comforting the tossings of pain with its violet tinctured essence,
And by its humbler ashes enriching many proud.
Be this, then, a lesson to thy soul, that thou reckon nothing wortliless,
Because thou heedest not its use, nor knowest the virtues thereof.
And herein, as thou walkest by the sea, shall weeds be a    type and an earnest
Of the stored and uncounted riches lying hid in all creatures of God:
There be flowers making glad the desert, and roots fattening the soil,
And jewels in the secret d...

Night and vast caverns of rock and of iron;
Voices like water, and voices like wind;
Horror and tempests of hail that environ
Shapes and the shadows of two who have sinned.

Wan on the whirlwind, in loathing uplifting
Faces that loved once, forever they go,
TRISTAM and ISOLT, the lovers, go drifting,
The sullen laughter of Hell below.

Here lies a virgin, and as sweet
As e'er was wrapt in winding sheet.
Her name if next you would have known,
The marble speaks it, Mary Stone:
Who dying in her blooming years,
This stone for name's sake melts to tears.
If, fragrant virgins, you'll but keep
A fast, while jets and marbles weep,
And praying, strew some roses on her,
You'll do my niece abundant honour.

    Look you, I'll go pray,
    My shame is crying,
    My soul is gray and faint,
    My faith is dying.
    Look you, I'll go pray -
    "Sweet Mary, make me clean,
    Thou rainstorm of the soul,
    Thou wine from worlds unseen."

    Low hidden in among the forest trees
        An artist's tilted easel, ankle-deep
    In tousled ferns and mosses, and in these
        A fluffy water-spaniel, half asleep
            Beside a sketch-book and a fallen hat -
            A little wicker flask tossed into that.

    A sense of utter carelessness and grace
        Of pure abandon in the slumb'rous scene, -
    As if the June, all hoydenish of face,
        Had romped herself to sleep there on the green,
            And brink and sagging bridge and sliding stream
            Were just romantic parcels of her dream.

ONCE more permit me, nuns, and this the last;
I can't resist, whatever may have passed,
But must relate, what often I've been told;
Your tales of convent pranks are seldom cold;
They have a grace that no where else we find,
And, somehow, better seem to please designed.
Another then we'll have, which three will make: -
Three did I say?-'tis four, or I mistake;
Let's count them well:-The GARD'NER first, we'll name;
Then comes the ABBESS, whose declining frame
Required a youth, her malady to cure
A story thought, perhaps, not over pure;
And, as to SISTER JANE, who'd got a brat,
I cannot fancy we should alter that.
These are the whole, and four's a number round;
You'll probably remark, 'tis strange I've found
Such pleasure in detailing convent scenes: -
'Tis ...

    I was sitting,
    She was knitting,
And the portraits of our fore-folk hung around;
When there struck on us a sigh;
"Ah - what is that?" said I:
"Was it not you?" said she. "A sigh did sound."

    I had not breathed it,
    Nor the night-wind heaved it,
And how it came to us we could not guess;
And we looked up at each face
Framed and glazed there in its place,
Still hearkening; but thenceforth was silentness.

    Half in dreaming,
    "Then its meaning,"
Said we, "must be surely this; that they repine
That we should be the last
Of stocks once unsurpassed,
And unable to keep up their sturdy line."

1916.

The bat is dun with wrinkled wings
Like fallow article,
And not a song pervades his lips,
Or none perceptible.

His small umbrella, quaintly halved,
Describing in the air
An arc alike inscrutable, --
Elate philosopher!

Deputed from what firmament
Of what astute abode,
Empowered with what malevolence
Auspiciously withheld.

To his adroit Creator
Ascribe no less the praise;
Beneficent, believe me,
His eccentricities.

    Peg, peg, with a wooden leg,
        Her father was a miller:
    He tossed the dumpling at her head,
        And said he could not kill her.

In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know
Two springs that with unbroken flow
Forever pour their lucent streams
Into my soul's far Lake of Dreams.

Not larger than two eyes, they lie
Beneath the many-changing sky
And mirror all of life and time,
- Serene and dainty pantomime.

Shot through with lights of stars and dawns,
And shadowed sweet by ferns and fawns,
- Thus heaven and earth together vie
Their shining depths to sanctify.

Always when the large Form of Love
Is hid by storms that rage above,
I gaze in my two springs and see
Love in his very verity.

Always when Faith with stifling stress
Of grief hath died in bitterness,
I gaze in my two springs and see
A Faith that smiles immortally.

Always when Charity and ...

("Vous qui ne savez pas combien l'enfance est belle.")


Sweet sister, if you knew, like me,
The charms of guileless infancy,
No more you'd envy riper years,
Or smiles, more bitter than your tears.

But childhood passes in an hour,
As perfume from a faded flower;
The joyous voice of early glee
Flies, like the Halcyon, o'er the sea.

Enjoy your morn of early Spring;
Soon time maturer thoughts must bring;
Those hours, like flowers that interclimb,
Should not be withered ere their time.

Too soon you'll weep, as we do now,
O'er faithless friend, or broken vow,
And hopeless sorrows, which our pride
In pleasure's whirl would vainly hide.

Laugh on! unconscious of thy doom,
All innocence and opening bloom;
Laugh on...

Dermod O’Byrne of Omah town
In his garden strode up and down;
He pulled his beard, and he beat his breast;
And this is his trouble and woe confessed:

“The good-folk came in the night, and they
Have stolen my bonny wean away;
Have put in his place a changeling,
A weashy, weakly, wizen thing!

“From the speckled hen nine eggs I stole,
And lighting a fire of a glowing coal,
I fried the shells, and I spilt the yolk;
But never a word the stranger spoke:

“A bar of metal I heated red
To frighten the fairy from its bed,
To put in the place of this fretting wean
My own bright beautiful boy again.

“But my wife had hidden it in her arms,
And cried ‘For shame!’ on my fairy charms;
She sobs, with the strange child on her breast:
‘I lov...

OCCASIONED BY HIS DIALOGUES ON MEDALS.[54]

See the wild waste of all-devouring years!
How Rome her own sad sepulchre appears,
With nodding arches, broken temples spread!
The very tombs now vanish'd, like their dead!
Imperial wonders raised on nations spoil'd
Where mix'd with slaves the groaning martyr toil'd:
Huge theatres, that now unpeopled woods,
Now drain'd a distant country of her floods:
Fanes, which admiring gods with pride survey,
Statues of men, scarce less alive than they!
Some felt the silent stroke of mouldering age,
Some hostile fury, some religious rage,
Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire,
And Papal piety, and Gothic fire.
Perhaps, by its own ruins saved from flame,
Some buried marble half-preserves a name;
That na...

            Being weary of love,
            I flew to the grove,
And chose me a tree of the fairest;
            Saying, "Pretty Rose-tree,
            "Thou my mistress shall be,
    "And I'll worship each bud thou bearest.
        "For the hearts of this world are hollow,
        "And fickle the smiles we follow;
                "And 'tis sweet, when all
                "Their witcheries pall
"To have a pure love to fly to:
                "So, my pretty Rose-tree,
                "Thou my mistress shalt be,
"And the only one now I shall sigh to."

                When the beautiful hue
                Of thy cheek thro' the dew
Of morning is bashfully peeping,
                "Sweet tears," I shall say
                (As I brush them away),...

Craft's silent sister and the daughter deep
Of Contemplation, she, who spreads below
A hostile tent soft comfort for her foe,
With eyes of Jael watching till he sleep.

I

When the sea has devoured the ships,
And the spires and the towers
Have gone back to the hills.
And all the cities
Are one with the plains again.
And the beauty of bronze,
And the strength of steel
Are blown over silent continents,
As the desert sand is blown -
My dust with yours forever.


II

When folly and wisdom are no more,
And fire is no more,
Because man is no more;
When the dead world slowly spinning
Drifts and falls through the void -
My light with yours
In the Light of Lights forever!

Rachel sings sweet -
Oh yes, at night,
Her pale face bent
In the candle-light,
Her slim hands touch
The answering keys,
And she sings of hope
And of memories:
Sings to the little
Boy that stands
Watching those slim,
Light, heedful hands.
He looks in her face;
Her dark eyes seem
Dark with a beautiful
Distant dream;
And still she plays,
Sings tenderly
To him of hope,
And of memory.

    "Time in advance behind him hides his wings." - YOUNG.


    As comes amain the glossy flying raven,
        That with unwavering wing, breast on the view,
    Cleaves slow the lucid air beneath the blue,
    And seems scarce other than a figure graven -
    Ha! now the sweeping pinions flash as levin,
        And all their silken cordage whistles loud! -
        Lo, the departing flight, like fleck of cloud,
    Is swallowed quick by the awaiting heaven!


    So lag and tarry, to the youth, the years
        In their oncoming from the brooding sky,
            Till bursts at middle life their rushing speed
    All breathless with the world of hopes and fears;
        And, lo, departing, the Eternal Eye
            Winks them to moments in His e...