Family

There runs a crisscross pattern of small leaves
Espalier, in a fading summer air,
And there Ophelia walks, an azure flower,
Whom wind, and snowflakes, and the sudden rain
Of love's wild skies have purified to heaven.
There is a beauty past all weeping now
In that sweet, crooked mouth, that vacant smile;
Only a lonely grey in those mad eyes,
Which never on earth shall learn their loneliness.
And when amid startled birds she sings lament,
Mocking in hope the long voice of the stream,
It seems her heart's lute hath a broken string.
Ivy she hath, that to old ruin clings;
And rosemary, that sees remembrance fade;
And pansies, deeper than the gloom of dreams;
But ah! if utterable, would this earth
Remain the base, unreal thing it is?
Better be out of sight of p...

Roots and leaves themselves alone are these;
Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods, and from the pond-side,
Breast-sorrel and pinks of love--fingers that wind around tighter than vines,
Gushes from the throats of birds, hid in the foliage of trees, as the sun is risen;
Breezes of land and love--breezes set from living shores out to you on the living sea--to you, O sailors!
Frost-mellow'd berries, and Third-month twigs, offer'd fresh to young persons wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up,
Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are,
Buds to be unfolded on the old terms;
If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring form, color, perfume, to you;
If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits, tall blanche...

Five years ago! you cannot choose
But know the face of change,
Though July sleeps and Spring renews
The gloss in gorge and range.

Five years ago! I hardly know
How they have slipped away,
Since here we watched at ebb and flow
The waters of the Bay;

And saw, with eyes of little faith,
From cumbered summits fade
The rainbow and the rainbow wraith,
That shadow of a shade.

For Love and Youth were vext with doubt,
Like ships on driving seas,
And in those days the heart gave out
Unthankful similes.

But let it be! I’ve often said
His lot was hardly cast
Who never turned a happy head
To an unhappy Past

Who never turned a face of light
To cares beyond recall:
He only fares in sorer plight
Who hath no Past...

Around me the images of thirty years:
An ambush; pilgrims at the water-side;
Casement upon trial, half hidden by the bars,
Guarded; Griffith staring in hysterical pride;
Kevin O'Higgins' countenance that wears
A gentle questioning look that cannot hide
A soul incapable of remorse or rest;
A revolutionary soldier kneeling to be blessed;
An Abbot or Archbishop with an upraised hand
Blessing the Tricolour. "This is not,' I say,
"The dead Ireland of my youth, but an Ireland
The poets have imagined, terrible and gay.'
Before a woman's portrait suddenly I stand,
Beautiful and gentle in her Venetian way.
I met her all but fifty years ago
For twenty minutes in some studio.

III
Heart-smitten with emotion I Sink down,
My heart recovering with covered eye...

When winter winds are piercing chill
    And through the hawthorn blows the gale,
With solemn feet I tread the hill,
    That overbrows the lonely vale.

O'er the bare upland, and away
    Through the long reach of desert woods,
The embracing sunbeams chastely play,
    And gladden these deep solitudes.

Where, twisted round the barren oak,
    The summer vine in beauty clung,
And summer winds the stillness broke,
    The crystal icicle is hung.

Where, from their frozen urns, mute springs
    Pour out the river's gradual tide,
Shrilly the skater's iron rings,
    And voices fill the woodland side.

Alas! how changed from the fair scene,
    When birds sang out their mellow lay,
And winds were soft, and woods were green,
    ...

While not a leaf seems faded; while the fields,
With ripening harvest prodigally fair,
In brightest sunshine bask; this nipping air,
Sent from some distant clime where Winter wields
His icy scimitar, a foretaste yields
Of bitter change, and bids the flowers beware;
And whispers to the silent birds, "Prepare
Against the threatening foe your trustiest shields."
For me, who under kindlier laws belong
To Nature's tuneful quire, this rustling dry
Through leaves yet green, and yon crystalline sky,
Announce a season potent to renew,
'Mid frost and snow, the instinctive joys of song,
And nobler cares than listless summer knew.

I wish this world and its green hills were mine,
But it is not; the wandering shepherd star
Is not more distant, gazing from afar
On the unreapèd pastures of the sea,
Than I am from the world, the world from me.
At night the stars on milky way that shine
Seem things one might possess, but this round green
Is for the cows that rest, these and the sheep:
To them the slopes and pastures offer sleep;
My sleep I draw from the far fields of blue,
Whence cold winds come and go among the few
Bright stars we see and many more unseen.

Birds sing on earth all day among the flowers,
Taking no thought of any other thing
But their own hearts, for out of them they sing:
Their songs are kindred to the blossom heads,
Faint as the petals which the blackthorn sheds,
A...

Two fairies it was
On a still summer day
Came forth in the woods
With the flowers to play.
The flowers they plucked
They cast on the ground
For others, and those
For still others they found.
Flower-guided it was
That they came as they ran
On something that lay
In the shape of a man.
The snow must have made
The feathery bed
When this one fell
On the sleep of the dead.
But the snow was gone
A long time ago,
And the body he wore
Nigh gone with the snow.
The fairies drew near
And keenly espied
A ring on his hand
And a chain at his side.
They knelt in the leaves
And eerily played
With the glittering things,
And were not afraid.
And when they went home
To hide in their burrow,
They took them along...

I had been almost happy for an hour,
Lost to the world that knew me in the park
Among strange faces; while my little girl
Leaped with the squirrels, chirruped with the birds
And with the sunlight glowed.    She was so dear,
So beautiful, so sweet; and for the time
The rose of love, shorn of its thorn of shame,
Bloomed in my heart.    Then suddenly you passed.
I sat alone upon the public bench;
You, with your lawful husband, rode in state;
And when your eyes fell on me and my child,
They were not eyes, but daggers, poison tipped.

God! how good women slaughter with a look!
And, like cold steel, your glance cut through my heart,
Struck every petal from the rose of love
And left the ragged stalk alive with thorns.

My little one came running to my side<...

Two roadways lead from this land to That, and one is the road of Prayer;
And one is the road of Old-time Songs, and every note is a stair.

A shabby old man with a music machine on the sordid city street;
But suddenly earth seemed Arcady, and life grew young and sweet.
For the city street fled, and the world was green, and a little house stood by the sea;
And she came singing a martial air (she who was peace itself);
She brought back with her the old, strange charm, of mingled pathos and glee -

With her eyes of a child in a woman's face, and her soul of a saint in an elf.
She had been gone for many a year.    They tell us it is not far -
That silent place where the dear ones go, but it might as well be a star.
Yes, it might as well be a distant star as a beautiful Near-by Land,<...

O! that you were your self; but, love you are
No longer yours, than you your self here live:
Against this coming end you should prepare,
And your sweet semblance to some other give:
So should that beauty which you hold in lease
Find no determination; then you were
Yourself again, after yourself’s decease,
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
Which husbandry in honour might uphold,
Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day
And barren rage of death’s eternal cold?
O! none but unthrifts. Dear my love, you know,
You had a father: let your son say so.

        (HE EXPLAINS.)

        Oh, just burning up some old papers,
            They do make a good deal of smoke:
        That's right, Dolly, open the window;
            They'll blaze if you give them a poke.
        I've got a lot more in the closet;
            Just look at the dust! What a mess!
        Why, read it, of course, if you want to,
            It's only a letter, I guess.


        (SHE READS.)

        Just me, and my pipe, and the fire-light,
            Whose mystical circles of red
        Protect me alone with the shadows;
            The smoke-wreaths engarland my head;
        And the strains of a waltz, half forgotten,
            The favorite waltz of the year,
        Played softly by fairy musicians,
     ...

Raze these long blocks of brick and stone,
These huge mill-monsters overgrown;
Blot out the humbler piles as well,
Where, moved like living shuttles, dwell
The weaving genii of the bell;
Tear from the wild Cocheco's track
The dams that hold its torrents back;
And let the loud-rejoicing fall
Plunge, roaring, down its rocky wall;
And let the Indian's paddle play
On the unbridged Piscataqua!
Wide over hill and valley spread
Once more the forest, dusk and dread,
With here and there a clearing cut
From the walled shadows round it shut;
Each with its farm-house builded rude,
By English yeoman squared and hewed,
And the grim, flankered block-house bound
With bristling palisades around.
So, haply shall before thine eyes
The dusty veil of centuries ...

A clamour by day and a whisper by night,
And the Summer comes with the shining noons,
With the ripple of leaves, and the passionate light
Of the falling suns and the rising moons.

And the ripple of leaves and the purple and red
Die for the grapes and the gleam of the wheat,
And then you may pause with the splendours, or tread
On the yellow of Autumn with lingering feet.

You may halt with the face to a flying sea,
Or stand like a gloom in the gloom of things,
When the moon drops down and the desolate lea
Is troubled with thunder and desolate wings.

But alas for the grey of the wintering eves,
And the pondering storms and the ruin of rains;
And alas for the Spring like a flame in the leaves,
And the green of the woods and the gold of the lanes!

What needs complaints,
When she a place
Has with the race
Of saints?
In endless mirth,
She thinks not on
What's said or done
In earth:
She sees no tears,
Or any tone
Of thy deep groan
She hears;
Nor does she mind,
Or think on't now,
That ever thou
Wast kind:
But changed above,
She likes not there,
As she did here,
Thy love.
Forbear, therefore,
And lull asleep
Thy woes, and weep
No more.

O muse that swayest the sad Northern Song,
Thy right hand full of smiting & of wrong,
Thy left hand holding pity; & thy breast
Heaving with hope of that so certain rest:
Thou, with the grey eyes kind and unafraid,
The soft lips trembling not, though they have said
The doom of the World and those that dwell therein.
The lips that smile not though thy children win
The fated Love that draws the fated Death.
O, borne adown the fresh stream of thy breath,
Let some word reach my ears and touch my heart,
That, if it may be, I may have a part
In that great sorrow of thy children dead
That vexed the brow, and bowed adown the head,
Whitened the hair, made life a wondrous dream,
And death the murmur of a restful stream,
But left no stain upon those souls of thine...

I count my treasures o'er with care.--
The little toy my darling knew,
A little sock of faded hue,
A little lock of golden hair.

Long years ago this holy time,
My little one--my all to me--
Sat robed in white upon my knee
And heard the merry Christmas chime.

"Tell me, my little golden-head,
If Santa Claus should come to-night,
What shall he bring my baby bright,--
What treasure for my boy?" I said.

And then he named this little toy,
While in his round and mournful eyes
There came a look of sweet surprise,
That spake his quiet, trustful joy.

And as he lisped his evening prayer
He asked the boon with childish grace;
Then, toddling to the chimney-place,
He hung this little stocking there.

That night, while lengthe...

SAILING TO BYZANTIUM

I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
-- Those dying generations -- at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come ...