Inspirational

Far in the purple valleys of illusion
I see her waiting, like the soul of music,
With deep eyes, lovelier than cerulean pansies,
Shadow and fire, yet merciless as poison;
With red lips sweeter than Arabian storax,
Yet bitterer than myrrh. O tears and kisses!
O eyes and lips, that haunt my soul for ever!
Again Spring walks transcendent on the mountains:
The woods are hushed: the vales are blue with shadows:
Above the heights, steeped in a thousand splendours,
Like some vast canvas of the gods, hangs burning
The sunset's wild sciography: and slowly
The moon treads heaven's proscenium, night's stately
White queen of love and tragedy and madness.
Again I know forgotten dreams and longings;
Ideals lost; desires dead and buried
Beside the altar sacrifice erected

"Here Man more purely lives, less oft doth fall,
"More promptly rises, walks with stricter heed,
"More safely rests, dies happier, is freed
"Earlier from cleansing fires, and gains withal
"A brighter crown." On yon Cistertian wall
'That' confident assurance may be read;
And, to like shelter, from the world have fled
Increasing multitudes. The potent call
Doubtless shall cheat full oft the heart's desires;
Yet, while the rugged Age on pliant knee
Vows to rapt Fancy humble fealty,
A gentler life spreads round the holy spires;
Where'er they rise, the sylvan waste retires,
And aery harvests crown the fertile lea.

IN MEMORY OF EVA GORE-BOOTH AND CON MARKIEWICZ

The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
But a raving autumn shears
Blossom from the summer's wreath;
The older is condemned to death,
Pardoned, drags out lonely years
Conspiring among the ignorant.
I know not what the younger dreams --
Some vague Utopia -- and she seems,
When withered old and skeleton-gaunt,
An image of such politics.
Many a time I think to seek
One or the other out and speak
Of that old Georgian mansion, mix
pictures of the mind, recall
That table and the talk of youth,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
Dear shadows, now you know it all,
All the folly of ...

I love the naked ages long ago
When statues were gilded by Apollo,
When men and women of agility
Could play without lies and anxiety,
And the sky lovingly caressed their spines,
As it exercised its noble machine.
Fertile Cybele, mother of nature, then,
Would not place on her daughters a burden,
But, she-wolf sharing her heart with the people,
Would feed creation from her brown nipples.
Men, elegant and strong, would have the right
To be proud to have beauty named their king;
Virgin fruit free of blemish and cracking,
Whose flesh smooth and firm would summon a bite!
The Poet today, when he would convey
This native grandeur, would not be swept away
By man free and woman natural,
But would feel darkness envelop his soul
Before this black tableau full of...

Nature, thou accept the song,
To thee the simple lines belong,
Inspir'd as brushing hill and dell
I stroll'd the way to Holywell.
Though 'neath young April's watery sky,
The sun gleam'd warm, and roads were dry;
And though the valleys, bush, and tree
Still naked stood, yet on the lea
A flush of green, and fresh'ning glow
In melting patches 'gan to show
That swelling buds would soon again
In summer's livery bless the plain.
The thrushes too 'gan clear their throats,
And got by heart some two 'r three notes
Of their intended summer-song,
To cheer me as I stroll'd along.
The wild heath triumph'd in its scenes
Of goss and ling's perpetual greens;
And just to say that spring was come,
The violet left its woodland home,
And, hermit-like, from sto...

I.

My life is full of weary days,
But good things have not kept aloof,
Nor wander’d into other ways:
I have not lack’d thy mild reproof,
Nor golden largess of thy praise.

And now shake hands across the brink
Of that deep grave to which I go:
Shake hands once more: I cannot sink
So far–far down, but I shall know
Thy voice, and answer from below.


II.

When in the darkness over me
The four-handed mole shall scrape,
Plant thou no dusky cypress-tree,
Nor wreathe thy cap with doleful crape,
But pledge me in the flowing grape.

And when the sappy field and wood
Grow green beneath the showery gray,
And rugged barks begin to bud,
And thro’ damp holts new-flush’d with may,
Ring sudden scritches of the jay,
...

These times strike monied worldlings with dismay:
Even rich men, brave by nature, taint the air
With words of apprehension and despair:
While tens of thousands, thinking on the affray,
Men unto whom sufficient for the day
And minds not stinted or untilled are given,
Sound, healthy, children of the God of heaven,
Are cheerful as the rising sun in May.
What do we gather hence but firmer faith
That every gift of noble origin
Is breathed upon by Hope’s perpetual breath;
That virtue and the faculties within
Are vital, and that riches are akin
To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death?

1
The kind of a man for you and me!
He faces the world unflinchingly,
And smites, as long as the wrong resists,
With a knuckled faith and force like fists:
He lives the life he is preaching of,
And loves where most is the need of love;
His voice is clear to the deaf man's ears,
And his face sublime through the blind man's tears;
The light shines out where the clouds were dim,
And the widow's prayer goes up for him;
The latch is clicked at the hovel door
And the sick man sees the sun once more,
And out o'er the barren fields he sees
Springing blossoms and waving trees,
Feeling as only the dying may,
That God's own servant has come that way,
Smoothing the path as it still winds on
Through the golden gate where his loved have gone.

2
The...

Enough of thought, philosopher!
Too long hast thou been dreaming
Unlightened, in this chamber drear,
While summer's sun is beaming!
Space-sweeping soul, what sad refrain
Concludes thy musings once again?

"Oh, for the time when I shall sleep
Without identity.
And never care how rain may steep,
Or snow may cover me!
No promised heaven, these wild desires
Could all, or half fulfil;
No threatened hell, with quenchless fires,
Subdue this quenchless will!"

"So said I, and still say the same;
Still, to my death, will say,
Three gods, within this little frame,
Are warring night; and day;
Heaven could not hold them all, and yet
They all are held in me;
And must be mine till I forget
My present entity!
Oh, for the time, when in ...

Like boys that run behind the loaded wain
For the mere joy of riding back again,
When summer from the meadow carts the hay
And school hours leave them half a day to play;
So I with leisure on three sides a sheet
Of foolscap dance with poesy's measured feet,
Just to ride post upon the wings of time
And kill a care, to friendship turned in rhyme.
The muse's gallop hurries me in sport
With much to read and little to divert,
And I, amused, with less of wit than will,
Run till I tire.--And so to cheat her still.
Like children running races who shall be
First in to touch the orchard wall or tree,
The last half way behind, by distance vext,
Turns short, determined to be first the next;
So now the muse has run me hard and long--
I'll leave at once her races and h...

Lo! Victress on the peaks!
Where thou, with mighty brow, regarding the world,
(The world, O Libertad, that vainly conspired against thee;)
Out of its countless beleaguering toils, after thwarting them all;
Dominant, with the dazzling sun around thee,
Flauntest now unharm'd, in immortal soundness and bloom - lo! in these hours supreme,
No poem proud, I, chanting, bring to thee - nor mastery's rapturous verse;
But a book, containing night's darkness, and blood-dripping wounds,
And psalms of the dead.

Subtly conscious, all awake,
Let us clear our eyes, and break
Through the cloudy chrysalis,
See the wonder as it is.
Down a narrow alley, blind,
Touch and vision, heart and mind;
Turned sharply inward, still we plod,
Till the calmly smiling god
Leaves us, and our spirits grow
More thin, more acrid, as we go.
Creeping by the sullen wall,
We forego the power to see,
The threads that bind us to the All,
God or the Immensity;
Whereof on the eternal road
Man is but a passing mode.

Too blind we are, too little see
Of the magic pageantry,
Every minute, every hour,
From the cloudflake to the flower,
Forever old, forever strange,
Issuing in perpetual change
From the rainbow gates of Time.

But he who through this common air...

Wan-Visaged thing! thy virgin leaf
To me looks more than deadly pale,
Unknowing what may stain thee yet, -
A poem or a tale.

Who can thy unborn meaning scan?
Can Seer or Sibyl read thee now?
No, - seek to trace the fate of man
Writ on his infant brow.

Love may light on thy snowy cheek,
And shake his Eden-breathing plumes;
Then shalt thou tell how Lelia smiles,
Or Angelina blooms.

Satire may lift his bearded lance,
Forestalling Time's slow-moving scythe,
And, scattered on thy little field,
Disjointed bards may writhe.

Perchance a vision of the night,
Some grizzled spectre, gaunt and thin,
Or sheeted corpse, may stalk along,
Or skeleton may grin.

If it should be in pensive hour
Some sorrow-moving theme I try...

In broad daylight, and at noon,
Yesterday I saw the moon
Sailing high, but faint and white,
As a school-boy's paper kite.

In broad daylight, yesterday,
I read a Poet's mystic lay;
And it seemed to me at most
As a phantom, or a ghost.

But at length the feverish day
Like a passion died away,
And the night, serene and still,
Fell on village, vale, and hill.

Then the moon, in all her pride,
Like a spirit glorified,
Filled and overflowed the night
With revelations of her light.

And the Poet's song again
Passed like music through my brain;
Night interpreted to me
All its grace and mystery.

I think I never passed so sad an hour,
    Dear friend, as that one at the church to-night.
The edifice from basement to the tower
    Was one resplendent blaze of coloured light.
Up through broad aisles the stylish crowd was thronging,
    Each richly robed like some king's bidden guest.
"Here will I bring my sorrow and my longing,"
    I said, "and here find rest."

I heard the heavenly organ's voice of thunder,
    It seemed to give me infinite relief.
I wept.    Strange eyes looked on in well-bred wonder.
    I dried my tears:    their gaze profaned my grief.
Wrapt in the costly furs, and silks, and laces,
    Beat alien hearts, that had no part with me.
I could not read, in all those proud cold faces,
    One thought of sympathy.

I watched them...

I

An age hath been when Earth was proud
Of lustre too intense
To be sustained; and Mortals bowed
The front in self-defence.
Who 'then', if Dian's crescent gleamed,
Or Cupid's sparkling arrow streamed
While on the wing the Urchin played,
Could fearlessly approach the shade?
Enough for one soft vernal day,
If I, a bard of ebbing time,
And nurtured in a fickle clime,
May haunt this horned bay;
Whose amorous water multiplies
The flitting halcyon's vivid dyes;
And smooths her liquid breast to show
These swan-like specks of mountain snow,
White as the pair that slid along the plains
Of heaven, when Venus held the reins!

II

In youth we love the darksome lawn
Brushed by the owlet's wing;
Then, Twilight is preferred to Da...

Round white clouds roll slowly above the housetops,
Over the clear red roofs they flow and pass.
A flock of pigeons rises with blue wings flashing,
Rises with whistle of wings, hovers an instant,
And settles slowly again on the tarnished grass.

And one old man looks down from a dusty window
And sees the pigeons circling about the fountain
And desires once more to walk among those trees.
Lovers walk in the noontime by that fountain.
Pigeons dip their beaks to drink from the water.
And soon the pond must freeze.

The light wind blows to his ears a sound of laughter,
Young men shuffle their feet, loaf in the sunlight;
A girl’s laugh rings like a silver bell.
But clearer than all these sounds is a sound he hears
More in his secret heart than in his ears,

Sweet resting place! that long hath been
A boon Elysian 'mid the din
    Of city life, 'mid city smoke;
Where weary ones who toil and spin
Have turned aside as to an inn
    Whose swinging sign a welcome spoke;
Where misanthropes find medicine
In peals of laughter that begin
    With ancient, resurrected joke,
Or ready wit of harlequin;
Where children, free from discipline,
    Take on Diversion's easy yoke.

Fair oasis! to view aright
Its charming paths, its sloping height,
    Its beautiful and broad expanse,
Must one approach in witching night
When, like abodes of airy sprite
    Revealed unto the wondering glance,
O'erflooded with electric light
Than Luna's beams more dazzling bright,
    Illumined nooks the scene enhance;
Whi...