Death

A thought ay like a flower upon mine heart,
And drew around it other thoughts like bees
For multitude and thirst of sweetnesses;
Whereat rejoicing, I desired the art
Of the Greek whistler, who to wharf and mart
Could lure those insect swarms from orange-trees
That I might hive with me such thoughts and please
My soul so, always. foolish counterpart
Of a weak man's vain wishes! While I spoke,
The thought I called a flower grew nettle-rough
The thoughts, called bees, stung me to festering:
Oh, entertain (cried Reason as she woke)
Your best and gladdest thoughts but long enough,
And they will all prove sad enough to sting!

(For the Rev. James J. Daly, S. J.)



Bright stars, yellow stars, flashing through the air,
Are you errant strands of Lady Mary's hair?
As she slits the cloudy veil and bends down through,
Do you fall across her cheeks and over heaven too?

Gay stars, little stars, you are little eyes,
Eyes of baby angels playing in the skies.
Now and then a winged child turns his merry face
Down toward the spinning world -- what a funny place!

Jesus Christ came from the Cross (Christ receive my soul!)
In each perfect hand and foot there was a bloody hole.
Four great iron spikes there were, red and never dry,
Michael plucked them from the Cross and set them in the sky.

Christ's Troop, Mary's Guard, God's own men,
Draw your swords and strike at Hell and s...

1.
Bear witness, Erin! when thine injured isle
Sees summer on its verdant pastures smile,
Its cornfields waving in the winds that sweep
The billowy surface of thy circling deep!
Thou tree whose shadow o'er the Atlantic gave
Peace, wealth and beauty, to its friendly wave, its blossoms fade,
And blighted are the leaves that cast its shade;
Whilst the cold hand gathers its scanty fruit,
Whose chillness struck a canker to its root.

2.
I could stand
Upon thy shores, O Erin, and could count
The billows that, in their unceasing swell,
Dash on thy beach, and every wave might seem
An instrument in Time the giant's grasp,
To burst the barriers of Eternity.
Proceed, thou giant, conquering and to conquer;
March on thy lonely way! The nations fall
Bene...

My father left a park to me,
But it is wild and barren,
A garden too with scarce a tree,
And waster than a warren:
Yet say the neighbours when they call,
It is not bad but good land,
And in it is the germ of all
That grows within the woodland.

O had I lived when song was great
In days of old Amphion,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,
Nor cared for seed or scion!
And had I lived when song was great,
And legs of trees were limber,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,
And fiddled in the timber!

'Tis said he had a tuneful tongue,
Such happy intonation,
Wherever he sat down and sung
He left a small plantation;
Wherever in a lonely grove
He set up his forlorn pipes,
The gouty oak began to move,
And flounder into hornpipes.

    I have a puppet-jointed child,
    She's but three half-years old;
    Through lawless hair her eyes gleam wild
    With looks both shy and bold.

    Like little imps, her tiny hands
    Dart out and push and take;
    Chide her--a trembling thing she stands,
    And like two leaves they shake.

    But to her mind a minute gone
    Is like a year ago;
    And when you lift your eyes anon,
    Anon you must say No!

    Sometimes, though not oppressed with care,
    She has her sleepless fits;
    Then, blanket-swathed, in that round chair
    The elfish mortal sits;--

    Where, if by chance in mood more grave,
    A hermit she appears
    Propped in the opening of his cave,
    Mummied almost with years;
<...

Through foulest fogs of my own sluggish soul,
Through midnight glooms of all the wide world's guilt,
Through sulphurous cannon-clouds that surge and roll
Above the steam of blood in anger spilt;
Through all the sombre earth-oppressing piles
Of old cathedral temples which expand
Sepulchral vaults and monumental aisles,
Hopeless and freezing in the lifeful land;
I gaze and seek with ever-longing eyes
For God, the Love-Supreme, all-wise, all-good:
Alas! in vain; for over all the skies
A dark and awful shadow seems to brood,
A numbing, infinite, eternal gloom:
I tremble in the consciousness of Doom.

I bear a basket lined with grass;
I am so light, I am so fair,
That men must wonder as I pass
And at the basket that I bear,
Where in a newly-drawn green litter
Sweet flowers I carry, - sweets for bitter.

Lilies I shew you, lilies none,
None in Caesar's gardens blow, -
And a quince in hand, - not one
Is set upon your boughs below;
Not set, because their buds not spring;
Spring not, 'cause world is wintering.

But these were found in the East and South
Where Winter is the clime forgot. -
The dewdrop on the larkspur's mouth
O should it then be quenchèd not?
In starry water-meads they drew
These drops: which be they? stars or dew?

Had she a quince in hand? Yet gaze:
Rather it is the sizing moon.
Lo, linked heavens with milky w...

Amidst the clamour of exulting joys,
Which triumph forces from the patriot heart,
Grief dares to mingle her soul-piercing voice,
And quells the raptures which from pleasures start.

O WOLFE! to thee a streaming flood of woe,
Sighing we pay, and think e'en conquest dear;
QUEBEC in vain shall teach our breast to glow,
Whilst thy sad fate extorts the heart-wrung tear.

Alive the foe thy dreadful vigour fled,
And saw thee fall with joy-pronouncing eyes:
Yet they shall know thou conquerest, though dead
Since from thy tomb a thousand heroes rise!

    What asks the POET, when he pours
His first libation in the Delphic Bowers?
    Duteous before the altar standing,
    With lively hope his soul expanding,
O! what demands he, when the crimson wine
Flows sparkling from the vase, and laves the golden shrine?

    Not the rich and swelling grain
    That yellows o'er Sardinia's isle;
Nor snowy herds, slow winding thro' the plain,
When warm Calabria's rosy mornings smile;
    Nor gold, nor gems, that India yields,
    Nor yet those fair and fertile fields,
Which, thro' their flow'ry banks as calm he glides,
The silent [1]Liris' azure stream divides.

    Let those, for whom kind fortune still
Leads lavish tendrils o'er the sloping hill,
    Let such, with care their vineyard dressing,
    Their...

I.

    Adown winding Nith I did wander,
        To mark the sweet flowers as they spring;
    Adown winding Nith I did wander,
        Of Phillis to muse and to sing.
    Awa wi' your belles and your beauties,
        They never wi' her can compare:
    Whaever has met wi' my Phillis,
        Has met wi' the queen o' the fair.

II.

    The daisy amus'd my fond fancy,
        So artless, so simple, so wild;
    Thou emblem, said I, o' my Phillis,
        For she is simplicity's child.

III.

    The rose-bud's the blush o' my charmer,
        Her sweet balmy lip when 'tis prest:
    How fair and how pure is the lily,
        But fairer and purer her breast.

IV.

    Yon knot of gay flowers in the arbour,...

The moon in the East is glowing;
I sit by the moaning sea;
The mists down the sea are blowing,
Down the sea all dewily.

The sands at my feet are shaking,
The stars in the sky are wan;
The mists for the shore are making,
With a glimmer drifting on.

From the mist comes a song, sweet wailing
In the voice of a love-lorn maid,
And I hear her gown soft trailing
As she doth lightly wade.

The night hangs pale above me
Upon her starry throne,
And I know the maid doth love me
Who maketh such sweet moan.

From out the mist comes tripping
A Mermaiden full fair,
Across the white sea skipping
With locks of tawny hair.

Her locks with sea-ooze dripping
She wrings with a snowy hand;
Her dress is thinly clipping
Tw...

She looks out in the blue morning
and sees a whole wonderful world
she looks out in the morning
and sees a whole world

She leans out of the window
and this is what she sees
a wet rose singing to the sun
with a chorus of red bees

She leans out of the window
and laughs for the window is high
she is in it like a bird on a perch
and they scoop the blue sky

She and the window scooping
the morning as if it were air
scooping a green wave of leaves
above a stone stair

And an urn hung with leaden garlands
and girls holding hands in a ring
and raindrops on an iron railing
shining like a harp string

An old man draws with his ferrule
in wet sand a map of Spain
the marble soldier on his pedestal
draws a stiff...

The clouds are pushing in grey reluctance slowly northward to you,
While north of them all, at the farthest ends, stands one bright-bosomed, aglance
With fire as it guards the wild north cloud-coasts, red-fire seas running through
The rocks where ravens flying to windward melt as a well-shot lance.

You should be out by the orchard, where violets secretly darken the earth,
Or there in the woods of the twilight, with northern wind-flowers shaken astir.
Think of me here in the library, trying and trying a song that is worth
Tears and swords to my heart, arrows no armour will turn or deter.

You tell me the lambs have come, they lie like daisies white in the grass
Of the dark-green hills; new calves in shed; peewits turn after the plough -
It is well for you. For me the navvies work...

A lily-girl, not made for this world's pain,
With brown, soft hair close braided by her ears,
And longing eyes half veiled by slumberous tears
Like bluest water seen through mists of rain:
Pale cheeks whereon no love hath left its stain,
Red underlip drawn in for fear of love,
And white throat, whiter than the silvered dove,
Through whose wan marble creeps one purple vein.
Yet, though my lips shall praise her without cease,
Even to kiss her feet I am not bold,
Being o'ershadowed by the wings of awe,
Like Dante, when he stood with Beatrice
Beneath the flaming Lion's breast, and saw
The seventh Crystal, and the Stair of Gold.

    If I could only weep,
I think sweet help with my salt tears would come,
To ease the cruel pain that is so dumb,
    And will not let me sleep.

    Down in my heart, down deep
A poisoned arrow burns.    It would fall out
And tears would wash the wound, I have no doubt,
    If I could only weep.

    Maybe my pulse would leap,
And bring one thrill back, of a vanished day,
Instead of throbbing in this dull, dead way,
    If I could only weep.

    O silent Fates who steep
Nectar or gall for us through all the years,
Take what thou wilt, but give me back my tears,
    And let me weep and weep.

Often, beneath a street lamp's reddish light,
Where wind torments the glass and flame by night,
Where mankind swarms in stormy turbulence
Within a suburb's muddy labyrinth,

One comes upon a shaking ragman, who
Staggers against the walls, as poets do,
And disregardful of policemen's spies,
Pours from his heart some glorious enterprise.

Swearing his oaths, he dictates laws he's made
To vanquish evil, bring the victims aid,
And there beneath the sky, a canopy,
Grows drunk upon his own sublimity.

Yes, and these men harassed by household strife,
Tortured by age, bruised by the blows of life,
Under their heaps of rubbish burdened down,
The dregs, the vomit of this teeming town,

Appear again, redolent of the jar,
With their companions, bl...

No new delights to our desire
    The singers of the past can yield.
    I lift mine eyes to hill and field,
And see in them your yet dumb lyre,
    Poets unborn and unrevealed.

Singers to come, what thoughts will start
    To song? what words of yours be sent
    Through man's soul, and with earth be blent?
These worlds of nature and the heart
    Await you like an instrument.

Who knows what musical flocks of words
    Upon these pine-tree tops will light,
    And crown these towers in circling flight
And cross these seas like summer birds,
    And give a voice to the day and night?

Something of you already is ours;
    Some mystic part of you belongs
    To us whose dreams your future throngs,
Who look on hills, and trees, and flo...

I thought of your beauty, and this arrow,
Made out of a wild thought, is in my marrow.
There's no man may look upon her, no man,
As when newly grown to be a woman,
Tall and noble but with face and bosom
Delicate in colour as apple blossom.
This beauty's kinder, yet for a reason
I could weep that the old is out of season.