Dreams

    Greet the days -
        greet the moon,
            gather the stars.. .
    Man is not at one with himself -
    collars the infidel ways of his
    race under pressure domes of widening silence.

    I scan the horizon barely cognizant
    of the metallic bits that pierce
    the night's crown - no
    jewelled orb stabs this queen's spectre.
    I am running and lost. . . ever slow
    to breech this reasoning.

    Honeysuckle mist with armfuls
    of orange lilies with scent stronger
    than the carriage needed in their gathering.

    Place the constellations upon their heads,
    the colour so transcends.
    And then there are the bludgeoned
    stars fallen into the eyes of
    my farmhouse scene.
    The sphin...

No ray, no will-o'-wisp, no firefly gleam;
Nothing but night around
The only sound the sobbing of a stream
Within the hush profound.

Then suddenly the chanting of a bird,
Plaintive, appealing, far
And in my heart the murmur of a word,
And high in heaven a star.

A star, that shone out suddenly and seemed
A herald of the light,
The dawn, that cried within me, "Lo! you dreamed
That 'twould be always night!

"If night be here, dawn is not far away,
However dark the sky.
And in the heart whatever doubts betray,
Faith still stands smiling by.

"Put trust in God, and hold to your one aim.
And though it is to be
Failure at last, then let it seem the same
As victory."

The sun is sinking where the western hills
    The vision bounds with rugged summits old,
And with his latest beam he brightly gilds
    And crowns with amethyst and gold.

The distant music of a tinkling bell
    Is floating o'er the meadow's gentle sweep--
No discords mar the magic of the spell,
    And stealthily the twilight shadows creep.

And gently falls upon the listening ear--
    Like tones from voices of the long-ago--
The cadence of the murmuring waters near--
    With rhythmic ripplings soft and low.

Now grow apace the shadows' slanting shapes
    And fade the rugged hills to misty gray,
As dying day its calm departure takes
    And yields to coming night her sable sway.

The vaulted dome above now glows afar
    With man...

O memory, take my hand to-day
And lead me thro' the darkened bridge
Washed by the wild Atlantic spray
And spanning many a wind-swept ridge
Of sorrow, grief, of love and joy,
Of youthful hopes and manly fears!
O! let me cross the bridge of years
And see myself again a boy!

The shadows pass- I see the light,
O morning light, how clear and strong!
My native skies are smiling bright,
No more I grope my way along,
It comes, the murmur of the tide
Upon my ear - I hear the cry
Of wandering sea birds as they fly
In trooping squadrons far and near.

The breeze that blows o'er Mullaghmore
I feel against my boyish cheek
The white-walled huts that strew the shore
From Castlegal to old Belleek,
The fisher folk of Donegal,
Kindly of heart...

I sometimes sit beneath a tree
And read my own sweet songs;
Though naught they may to others be,
Each humble line prolongs
A tone that might have passed away
But for that scarce remembered lay.

I keep them like a lock or leaf
That some dear girl has given;
Frail record of an hour, as brief
As sunset clouds in heaven,
But spreading purple twilight still
High over memory's shadowed hill.

They lie upon my pathway bleak,
Those flowers that once ran wild,
As on a father's careworn cheek
The ringlets of his child;
The golden mingling with the gray,
And stealing half its snows away.

What care I though the dust is spread
Around these yellow leaves,
Or o'er them his sarcastic thread
Oblivion's insect weaves
Though weeds a...

I have been pondering what our teachers call
    The mystery of Pain; and lo! my thought
    After it's half-blind reaching out has caught
This truth and held it fast. We may not fall
    Beyond our mounting; stung by life's annoy,
    Deeper we feel the mystery of Joy.

Sometimes they steal across us like a breath
    Of Eastern perfume in a darkened room,
    These joys of ours; we grope on through the gloom
Seeking some common thing, and from its sheath
    Unloose, unknowing, some bewildering scent
    Of spice-thronged memories of the Orient.

Sometimes they dart across our turbid sky
    Like a quick flash after a heated day.
    A moment, where the sombrous shadows lay
We see a glory. Though it passed us by
    No earthly power can filch that ...

The flag is listless, limp. It dances not.
        As deep the sea breathes from a gentle breast
As any bride who dreams at love's behest,
        And wakes and sighs, then casts with dreams her lot.
Sails hang upon the masts--useless-forgot--
        Like folded standards which the warriors wrest
And bring home broken from the battle's crest.
        The sailors rest them in some sheltered spot.

O Sea! within your unknown deeps concealed,
        When storms are wild, your monsters dream and sleep,
And all their cruelty for the sunlight keep.
        Thus, Soul of Mine, in your sad deeps concealed
The monsters sleep--when wild are storms. They start
        From out some blue sky's peace to seize my heart.

Sitting alone, as one forsook,
Close by a silver-shedding brook,
With hands held up to love, I wept;
And after sorrows spent I slept:
Then in a vision I did see
A glorious form appear to me:
A virgin's face she had; her dress
Was like a sprightly Spartaness.
A silver bow, with green silk strung,
Down from her comely shoulders hung:
And as she stood, the wanton air
Dangled the ringlets of her hair.
Her legs were such Diana shows
When, tucked up, she a-hunting goes;
With buskins shortened to descry
The happy dawning of her thigh:
Which when I saw, I made access
To kiss that tempting nakedness:
But she forbade me with a wand
Of myrtle she had in her hand:
And, chiding me, said: Hence, remove,
Herrick, thou art too coarse to love.

’Tis said that when
The hands of men
Tamed this primeval wood,
And hoary trees with groans of woe,
Like warriors by an unknown foe,
Were in their strength subdued,
The virgin Earth
Gave instant birth
To springs that ne’er did flow
That in the sun
Did rivulets run,
And all around rare flowers did blow
The wild rose pale
Perfumed the gale
And the queenly lily adown the dale
(Whom the sun and the dew
And the winds did woo),
With the gourd and the grape luxuriant grew.

So when in tears
The love of years
Is wasted like the snow,
And the fine fibrils of its life
By the rude wrong of instant strife
Are broken at a blow
Within the heart
Do springs upstart
Of which it doth now know,
And strange, sweet dreams,...

Still towards the steep Parnassian way
The moon-led pilgrims wend,
Ah, who of all that start to-day
Shall ever reach the end?

Year after year a dream-fed band
That scorn the vales below,
And scorn the fatness of the land
To win those heights of snow, -

Leave barns and kine and flocks behind,
And count their fortune fair,
If they a dozen leaves may bind
Of laurel in their hair.

Like us, dear Poet, once you trod
That sweet moon-smitten way,
With mouth of silver sought the god
All night and all the day;

Sought singing, till in rosy fire
The white Apollo came,
And touched your brow, and wreathed your lyre,
And named you by his name;

And led you, loving, by the hand
To those grave laurelled bowers,
Where k...

Her languid pulses thrill with sudden hope,
    That will not be forgot nor cast aside,
And life in statelier vistas seems to ope,
    Illimitably lofty, long, and wide.
What doth she know?    She is subdued and mild,
Quiet and docile "as a weaned child."


If grief came in such unimagined wise,
    How may joy dawn?    In what undreamed-of hour,
May the light break with splendor of surprise,
    Disclosing all the mercy and the power?
A baseless hope, yet vivid, keen, and bright,
As the wild lightning in the starless night.


She knows not whence it came, nor where it passed,
    But it revealed, in one brief flash of flame,
A heaven so high, a world so rich and vast,
    That, full of meek contrition and mute shame,
In patient silence hop...

    We rode, we rode against the wind.
    The countless lights along the town
    Made the town blacker for their fire,
    And you were always looking down.

    To 'scape the blustering breath of March,
    Or was it for your mind's disguise?
    Still I could shut my eyes and see
    The turquoise color of your eyes.

    Surely your ermine furs were warm,
    And warm your flowing cloak of red;
    Was it the wild wind kept you thus
    Pensive and with averted head?

    I scarcely spoke, my words were swept
    Like winged things in the wind's despite.
    We rode, and with what shadow speed
    Across the darkness of the night!

    Without a word, without a look.
    What was the charm and what the spell
    That made one...

If we dream that desire of the distance above us
Should be fettered by fear of the shadows that seem,
If we wake, to be nought, but to hate or to love us
If we dream,
Night sinks on the soul, and the stars as they gleam
Speak menace or mourning, with tongues to reprove us
That we deemed of them better than terror may deem.
But if hope may not lure us, if fear may not move us,
Thought lightens the darkness wherein the supreme
Pure presence of death shall assure us, and prove us
If we dream.

Love, do not count your labour lost
    Though I turn sullen, grim, retired
Even at your side; my thought is crossed
    With fancies by old longings fired.

And when I answer you, some days
    Vaguely and wildly, do not fear
That my love walks forbidden ways,
    Breaking the ties that hold it here.

If I speak gruffly, this mood is
    Mere indignation at my own
Shortcomings, plagues, uncertainties;
    I forget the gentler tone.

'You,' now that you have come to be
    My one beginning, prime and end,
I count at last as wholly 'me,'
    Lover no longer nor yet friend.

Friendship is flattery, though close hid;
    Must I then flatter my own mind?
And must (which laws of shame forbid)
    Blind love of you make self-love b...

Falls from her heaven the Moon, and stars sink burning
Into the sea where blackness rims the sea,
Silently quenched. Faint light that the waves hold
Is only light remaining; yet still gleam
The sands where those now-sleeping young moon-bathers
Came dripping out of the sea and from their arms
Shook flakes of light, dancing on the foamy edge
Of quiet waves. They were all things of light
Tossed from the sea to dance under the Moon,
Her nuns, dancing within her dying round,
Clear limbs and breasts silvered with Moon and waves
And quick with windlike mood and body's joy,
Withdrawn from alien vows, by wave and wind
Lightly absolved and lightly all forgetting.

An hour ago they left. Remains the gleam
Of their late motion on the salt sea-meadow,
As loveliest hue...

How is it that I am now so softly awakened,
My leaves shaken down with music?
Darling, I love you.
It is not your mouth, for I have known mouths before,
Though your mouth is more alive than roses,
Roses singing softly
To green leaves after rain.
It is not your eyes, for I have dived often in eyes,
Though your eyes, even in the yellow glare of footlights,
Are windows into eternal dusk.
Nor is it the live white flashing of your feet,
Nor your gay hands, catching at motes in the spotlight;
Nor the abrupt thick music of your laughter,
When, against the hideous backdrop,
With all its crudities brilliantly lighted,
Suddenly you catch sight of your alarming shadow,
Whirling and contracting.
How is it, then, that I am so keenly aware,
So sensitive to the sur...

'Tis love that blinds my heart and eyes, -
    I sometimes say in doubting dreams, -
    The face that near me perfect seems
Cold Memory paints in fainter dyes.

'Twas but love's dazzled eyes - I say -
    That made her seem so strangely bright;
    The face I worshipped yesternight,
I dread to meet it changed to-day.

As, when dies out some song's refrain,
    And leaves your eyes in happy tears,
    Awake the same fond idle fears, -
It cannot sound so sweet again.

You wait and say with vague annoy,
    "It will not sound so sweet again,"
    Until comes back the wild refrain
That floods your soul with treble joy.

So when I see my love again
    Fades the unquiet doubt away,
    While shines her beauty like the day
Over my...

    As you enter into dream -
    its the unconsciousness
    which stifles,
    the thin embers
    called flame
    that outdistance
    the controlled rubric
    of desire.