Identity

Best beloved of ancient stories
Are our Diarmid's woes to me.
Like a mist, by breezes broken,
So this tale of olden glories
Floats in fragments, as a token
Of the song of Ireland's sea.

Through long centuries repeated
Lived the legend told in Erse,
But a change comes swift or slowly
Fades the language, and defeated
Flies the faith, once counted holy,
Old-world ways, and oral verse.

Not from men of note or learning
May we gather now these tales,
Heard beneath the cotter's rafter,
Or where smithy sparks are burning,
Or at sea, when hushed the laughter
Of the breeze on hull and sails.

Then with Ossian's rhythmic Measure
Comes upon the fancy's sight,
One with golden locks; resplendent,
Great and strong with eyes of azure,...

Lais when young, and all her charms in flower,
    Lais, whose beauty was the fateful light
    That led great ships to anchor in the night
And bring their priceless cargoes to her bower,
Lais yet found her cup of sweet turned sour.
    Great Plato's pupil, from his lofty height,
    Zenocrates, unmoved, had seen the white
Sweet wonder of her, and defied her power.

She snared the world in nets of subtle wiles:
    The proud, the famed, all clamoured at her gate;
    Dictators plead, inside her portico;
Wisdom sought madness, in her favouring smiles;
    Now was she made the laughing-stock of fate:
    One loosed her clinging arms, and bade her go.

I

A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings;
The eye reads omens where it goes,
And speaks all languages the rose;
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.

II

The rounded world is fair to see,
Nine times folded in mystery:
Though baffled seers cannot impart
The secret of its laboring heart,
Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast,
And all is clear from east to west.
Spirit that lurks each form within
Beckons to spirit of its kin;
Self-kindled every atom glows
And hints the future which it owes.

O! what a nameless feeling of delight
Stole o'er my wondering spirit, like a gleam
From opening heaven! dost thou, then, Fancy, deign
Once more to visit me? thou dost! thou dost!
That breath of extacy, that heavenly light,
Flow'd from the wafture of thy angel wings,
And from thy smiling eyes: divinest Power!
Welcome, thrice welcome! O vouchsafe to make
My breast thy temple, and my heart thy shrine!
Still will I worship thee, and thou shalt keep,
In peace, thy new abode, nor fear the approach
Of aught profane or hostile, to disturb
Thy holy mysteries; for I will chase
Far from the hallow'd precincts where thou dwell'st
Each worldly passion, every grovelling thought,
And all the train of Vice; striving to make
The shrine well-worthy its celestial guest.
Sti...

Ants colonized it
-    huge abodes littered with the dead
(leaves, sticks, the occasional granulated insect
piled high, totemic-fashion)
reaping a fortune in scenery,
though probably not food Ojibways were next    -
their tell-tale encampment by
pocket-sized waterfall,
inlets off a winding cataract
& moss, loam-thick with black soil
a future arboreal dream
inching over rock, darling crevice
for northern orchid, then kiss
of red death the hybrid trillium
& more sinister cousin,
jack-in-the-pulpit
for Indian foragers.

Animistic limestone shone hands,
poked thru the forest with stealth,
petroglyphic lava beds
-    a cougar pouncing    -
runic carvings the cold in the
Giant's stone nostrils billowing
off the lake li...

Who knows what days I answer for to-day:
    Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow
    This yet unfaded and a faded brow;
Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.

Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way,
    Give one repose to pain I know not now,
    One leaven to joy that comes, I guess not how.
I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey.

Oh, rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat.
    I fold to-day at altars far apart
Hands trembling with what toils? In their retreat
    I seal my love to-be, my folded art.
I light the tapers at my head and feet,
    And lay the crucifix on this silent heart.

So all things come to our mind at last,
He is close by your side in the twilight gloom,
And you two are alone in the dim old room,
Yet he is mute, as you bade him be, time past.

You bade him to weary you, never again
With his idle love, in truth he was wise,
For he spake no more, although in his eyes
You read, you fancied, a language of pain.

But this is past, and vex you he never will,
With loving glance, or look of sad reproach;
His lips move not, smile not at your approach;
The flowers he clasps are not more calm and still.

Your favorite flowers he has heard you praise,
Purple pansies, and lilies creamy white;
But he offers them not to you to-night,
He troubles you not, he has learned "his place."

You wished to teach him that lesson,...

Were there lovers in the lanes of Atlantis:
Meeting lips and twining fingers
In the mild Atlantis springtime?
                How should I know
If there were lovers in the lanes of Atlantis
When the dark sea drowned her mountains
                Many ages ago?

Were there poets in the paths of Atlantis:
Eager poets, seeking beauty
To adorn the women they worshipped?
                How can I say
If there were poets in the paths of Atlantis?
For the waters that drowned her mountains
                Washed their beauty away.

Were there women in the ways of Atlantis:
Foolish women, who loved, as I do,
Dreaming that mortal love was deathless?
                Ask me not now
If there were women in the ways of Atlantis:
There was no woman in...

O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure,

That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer'd years
To one that with us works, and trust,

With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,
And all we flow from, soul in soul.

O true and tried, so well and long,
Demand not thou a marriage lay;
In that it is thy marriage day
Is music more than any song.

Nor have I felt so much of bliss
Since first he told me that he loved
A daughter of our house; nor proved
Since that dark day a day like this;

Tho' I since then have numb...

I was looking a long while for a clue to the history of the past for myself, and for these chants - and now I have found it;
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject;)
It is no more in the legends than in all else;
It is in the present - it is this earth to-day;
It is in Democracy - (the purport and aim of all the past;)
It is the life of one man or one woman to-day - the average man of to-day;
It is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts;
It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations,
All for the average man of to-day.

When all is done, and my last word is said,
And ye who loved me murmur, "He is dead,"
Let no one weep, for fear that I should know,
And sorrow too that ye should sorrow so.

When all is done and in the oozing clay,
Ye lay this cast-off hull of mine away,
Pray not for me, for, after long despair,
The quiet of the grave will be a prayer.

For I have suffered loss and grievous pain,
The hurts of hatred and the world's disdain,
And wounds so deep that love, well-tried and pure,
Had not the pow'r to ease them or to cure.

When all is done, say not my day is o'er,
And that thro' night I seek a dimmer shore:
Say rather that my morn has just begun,--
I greet the dawn and not a setting sun,
    When all is done.

‘Although I’d lie lapped up in linen
A deal I’d sweat and little earn
If I should live as live the neighbours,’
Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne;
‘Stretch bones till the daylight come
On great-grandfather’s battered tomb.’

Upon a grey old battered tombstone
In Glendalough beside the stream,
Where the O’Byrnes and Byrnes are buried,
He stretched his bones and fell in a dream
Of sun and moon that a good hour
Bellowed and pranced in the round tower;

Of golden king and silver lady,
Bellowing up and bellowing round,
Till toes mastered a sweet measure,
Mouth mastered a sweet sound,
Prancing round and prancing up
Until they pranced upon the top.

That golden king and that wild lady
Sang till stars began to fade,
Hands gripped in hand...

Picture a beauty, shoulders rich and fine,
Letting her long hair trail into her wine.
Talons of love, the poison tooth of sin
Slip and are dulled against her granite skin.
She laughs at Death and flouts Debauchery;
Those fiends who in their heavy pleasantries
Gouge and destroy, still keep a strange regard
For majesty - her body strong and hard.
A goddess, or a sultan's regal wife
A faithful Paynim of voluptuous life
Her eyes call mortal beings to the charms
Of ready breasts, between her open arms.
She feels, she knows - this maid, this barren girl
By our desire fit to move the world
The gift of body's beauty is sublime
And draws forgiveness out of every crime.
She knows no Hell, or any afterlife,
And when her time shall come to face the Night
She'll ...

All the long day the vapours played
    At blindfold in the city streets,
Their elfin fingers caught and stayed
    The sunbeams, as they wound their sheets
Into a filmy barricade
    'Twixt earth and where the sunlight beats.

A vagrant band of mischiefs these,
    With wings of grey and cobweb gown;
They live along the edge of seas,
    And creeping out on foot of down,
They chase and frolic, frisk and tease
    At blind-man's buff with all the town.

And when at eventide the sun
    Breaks with a glory through their grey,
The vapour-fairies, one by one,
Outspread their wings and float away
In clouds of colouring, that run
    Wine-like along the rim of day.

Athwart the beauty and the breast
    Of purpling airs they twirl and ...

You who have gone gathering
Cornflowers and meadowsweet,
Heard the hazels glancing down
On September eves,
Seen the homeward rooks on wing
Over fields of golden wheat,
And the silver cups that crown
Water-lily leaves;

You who know the tenderness
Of old men at eve-tide,
Coming from the hedgerows,
Coming from the plough,
And the wandering caress
Of winds upon the woodside,
When the crying yaffle goes
Underneath the bough;

You who mark the flowing
Of sap upon the May-time,
And the waters welling
From the watershed,
You who count the growing
Of harvest and hay-time,
Knowing these the telling
Of your daily bread;

You who cherish courtesy
With your fellows at your gate,
And about your hearthstone si...

I

The face, which, duly as the sun,
Rose up for me with life begun,
To mark all bright hours of the day
With hourly love, is dimmed away
And yet my days go on, go on.

II

The tongue which, like a stream, could run
Smooth music from the roughest stone,
And every morning with 'Good day'
Make each day good, is hushed away,
And yet my days go on, go on.

III

The heart which, like a staff, was one
For mine to lean and rest upon,
The strongest on the longest day
With steadfast love, is caught away,
And yet my days go on, go on.

IV

And cold before my summer's done,
And deaf in Nature's general tune,
And fallen too low for special fear,
And here, with hope no longer here,
While the tears drop, ...

Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with, take warning--I am surely far different from what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this façade--this smooth and tolerant manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?
Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion?

They come from the highways of labour,
From labour and leisure they come;
But not to the sound of the tabor,
And not to the beating of drum.

By thousands the people assemble
With faces of shadow and flame,
And spirits that sicken and tremble
Because of their sorrow and shame!

Their voice is the voice of a nation;
But lo, it is muffled and mute,
For the sword of a strong tribulation
Hath stricken their peace to the root.

The beautiful tokens of pity
Have utterly fled from their eyes,
For the demon who darkened the city
Is curst in the breaking of sighs.

Their thoughts are as one; and together
They band in their terrible ire,
Like legions of wind in fierce weather
Whose footsteps are thunder and fire.

But for eve...