Out of the mid-wood's twilight
Into the meadow's dawn,
Ivory limbed and brown-eyed,
Flashes my Faun!

He skips through the copses singing,
And his shadow dances along,
And I know not which I should follow,
Shadow or song!

O Hunter, snare me his shadow!
O Nightingale, catch me his strain!
Else moonstruck with music and madness
I track him in vain!

How often have the critics, trained
    To look upon the sky
Through telescopes securely chained,
    Forgot the naked eye.

Within the compass of their glass
    Each smallest star they knew,
And not a meteor could pass
    But they were looking through.

When a new planet shed its rays
    Beyond their field of vision,
And simple folk ran out to gaze,
    They laughed in high derision.

They railed upon the senseless throng
    Who cheered the brave new light.
And yet the learned men were wrong,
    The simple folk were right.

    O life has its seasons joyous and drear,
    Its summer sun and its winter snow,
    But the fairest of all, I tell you, dear,
    Was the sweet old spring of the long ago -
            The ever and ever so long ago -

    When we walked together among the flowers,
    When the world with beauty was all aglow.
    O the rain and dew! O the shine and showers
    Of the sweet old spring of the long ago!
            The ever and ever so long ago.

    A hunger for all of the past delight
    Is stirred by the winds that softly blow.
    Can you spare me a thought from heaven to-night
    For the sweet old spring of the long ago? -
            The ever and ever so long ago.

My love, and not I, is the egoist.
My love for thee loves itself more than thee;
Ay, more than me, in whom it doth exist,
And makes me live that it may feed on me.
In the country of bridges the bridge is
More real than the shores it doth unsever;
So in our world, all of Relation, this
Is true--that truer is Love than either lover.
This thought therefore comes lightly to Doubt's door--
If we, seeing substance of this world, are not
Mere Intervals, God's Absence and no more,
Hollows in real Consciousness and Thought.
    And if 'tis possible to Thought to bear this fruit,
    Why should it not be possible to Truth?

    Of that dear vale where you and I have lain
    Scanning the mysteries of life and death
    I dreamed, though how impassable the space
    Of time between the present and the past!
    This was the vision that possessed my mind;
    I thought the weird and gusty days of March
    Had eased themselves in melody and peace.
    Pale lights, swift shadows, lucent stalks, clear streams,
    Cool, rosy eves behind the penciled mesh
    Of hazel thickets, and the huge feathered boughs
    Of walnut trees stretched singing to the blast;
    And the first pleasantries of sheep and kine;
    The cautioned twitterings of hidden birds;
    The flight of geese among the scattered clouds;
    Night's weeping stars and all the pageantries
    Of awakened life had blossomed i...

Only one old post is standing,
Solid yet, but only one,
Where the milking, and the branding,
And the slaughtering were done.
Later years have brought dejection,
Care, and sorrow; but we knew
Happy days on that selection
Underneath old Bukaroo.

Then the light of day commencing
Found us at the gully's head,
Splitting timber for the fencing,
Stripping bark to roof the shed.
Hands and hearts the labour strengthened;
Weariness we never knew,
Even when the shadows lengthened
Round the base of Bukaroo.

There for days below the paddock
How the wilderness would yield
To the spade, and pick, and mattock,
While we toiled to win the field.
Bronzed hands we used to sully
Till they were of darkest hue,
`Burning off' down in the gull...

The sunlight fell with a golden gleam
    On the waves of the rippling rill;
The pansies nodded their purple heads;
    But the proud queen-rose stood still.
She loved the light and she loved the sun,
And the peaceful night when the day was done,
But the faithless sun in his careless way
Had broken her heart on that summer's day.

She had bathed her soul in his warm sweet, rays,
    She had given her life to him;
And her crimson heart--it was his alone--
    Of love it was full to the brim.
But a fairer bud in the garden of love
Had conquered the heart of the king above;
And the proud queen-rose on that summer's day
Had given a love that was thrown away.

The pansies laughed in the summer breeze,
    For they were so happy and free;
And the...

Where sunless rivers weep
Their waves into the deep,
She sleeps a charmèd sleep:
    Awake her not.
Led by a single star,
She came from very far
To seek where shadows are
    Her pleasant lot.

She left the rosy morn,
She left the fields of corn,
For twilight cold and lorn
    And water springs.
Through sleep, as through a veil,
She sees the sky look pale,
And hears the nightingale
    That sadly sings.

Rest, rest, a perfect rest
Shed over brow and breast;
Her face is toward the west,
    The purple land.
She cannot see the grain
Ripening on hill and plain;
She cannot feel the rain
    Upon her hand.

Rest, rest, for evermore
Upon a mossy shore;
Rest, rest at the heart's core
    Till time ...

Written for the Art Autograph during the Irish Famine, 1880.



Heartsome Ireland, winsome Ireland,
Charmer of the sun and sea,
Bright beguiler of old anguish,
How could Famine frown on thee?

As our Gulf-Stream, drawn to thee-ward,
Turns him from his northward flow,
And our wintry western headlands
Send thee summer from their snow,

Thus the main and cordial current
Of our love sets over sea, -
Tender, comely, valiant Ireland,
Songful, soulful, sorrowful Ireland, -
Streaming warm to comfort thee.


Baltimore, 1880.

1.
Thy country's curse is on thee, darkest crest
Of that foul, knotted, many-headed worm
Which rends our Mother's bosom - Priestly Pest!
Masked Resurrection of a buried Form!

2.
Thy country's curse is on thee! Justice sold,
Truth trampled, Nature's landmarks overthrown,
And heaps of fraud-accumulated gold,
Plead, loud as thunder, at Destruction's throne.

3.
And whilst that sure slow Angel which aye stands
Watching the beck of Mutability
Delays to execute her high commands,
And, though a nation weeps, spares thine and thee,

4.
Oh, let a father's curse be on thy soul,
And let a daughter's hope be on thy tomb;
Be both, on thy gray head, a leaden cowl
To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom.

5.
I curse thee by ...

The eyrie clung to the shattered cliff
    That the glacier's torrent thundered under;
And the unfledged eaglet's lifted eye
Looked out on the world of peak and sky
            In silent wonder.

The mountain daisy, dainty white,
    That grew by the side of the lofty eyrie,
Saw the young wings beat on the eagle's breast,
And the restless eyes in the fagot-nest
            Grow grim and fiery.

The days went by and the wings grew strong,
    And the crag-built home was at last deserted;
But, close to the nest that her love had left,
The daisy clung to the rocky cleft,
            Half broken-hearted.

The days went by and the wan, white flower
    Waited and watched in the autumn weather;
Far down the valley, far up the height,
The for...

The tiny crocus is so bold
        It peeps its head above the mould,
        Before the flowers awaken,
To say that spring is coming, dear,
With sunshine and that winter drear
        Will soon be overtaken.

I say that Roger Casement
Did what he had to do.
He died upon the gallows,
But that is nothing new.

Afraid they might be beaten
Before the bench of Time,
They turned a trick by forgery
And blackened his good name.

A perjurer stood ready
To prove their forgery true;
They gave it out to all the world,
And that is something new;

For Spring Rice had to whisper it,
Being their Ambassador,
And then the speakers got it
And writers by the score.

Come Tom and Dick, come all the troop
That cried it far and wide,
Come from the forger and his desk,
Desert the perjurer's side;

Come speak your bit in public
That some amends be made
To this most gallant gentleman
That is in quicklime laid.

        [A north-country song.]

    Says t'auld man tit oak tree,
    Young and lusty was I when I kenn'd thee;
    I was young and lusty, I was fair and clear,
    Young and lusty was I mony a lang year;
    But sair fail'd am I, sair fail'd now,
    Sair fail'd am I sen I kenn'd thou.

I.

A woman, fair to look upon,
Where waters whiten with the moon;
While down the glimmer of the lawn
The white moths swoon.

A mouth of music; eyes of love;
And hands of blended snow and scent,
That touch the pearl-pale shadow of
An instrument.

And low and sweet that song of sleep
After the song of love is hushed;
While all the longing, here, to weep,
Is held and crushed.

Then leafy silence, that is musk
With breath of the magnolia-tree,
While dwindles, moon-white, through the dusk
Her drapery.

Let me remember how a heart,
Romantic, wrote upon that night!
My soul still helps me read each part
Of it aright.

And like a dead leaf shut between
A book's dull chapters, stained and dark,
That page,...

Sacred Religion! "mother of form and fear,"
Dread arbitress of mutable respect,
New rites ordaining when the old are wrecked,
Or cease to please the fickle worshiper;
Mother of Love! (that name best suits thee here)
Mother of Love! for this deep vale, protect
Truth's holy lamp, pure source of bright effect,
Gifted to purge the vapoury atmosphere
That seeks to stifle it; as in those days
When this low Pile a Gospel Teacher knew,
Whose good works formed an endless retinue:
A Pastor such as Chaucer's verse portrays;
Such as the heaven-taught skill of Herbert drew;
And tender Goldsmith crowned with deathless praise!

In our hearts is the Great One of Avon
Engraven,
And we climb the cold summits once built on
By Milton.

But at times not the air that is rarest
Is fairest,
And we long in the valley to follow
Apollo.

Then we drop from the heights atmospheric
To Herrick,
Or we pour the Greek honey, grown blander,
Of Landor;

Or our cosiest nook in the shade is
Where Praed is,
Or we toss the light bells of the mocker
With Locker.

Oh, the song where not one of the Graces
Tight-laces,--
Where we woo the sweet Muses not starchly,
But archly,--

Where the verse, like a piper a-Maying,
Comes playing,--
And the rhyme is as gay as a dancer
In answer,--

It will last till men weary of pleasure
In measure!

William.


The day is now dawning, love,
Fled is the night--
I go like the morning, love,
Cheerful and bright.
Then adieu, dearest Ellen:
When evening is near,
I'll visit thy dwelling,
For true love is here.


Ellen.


Oh, come where the fountain, love,
Tranquilly flows;
Beneath the green mountain, love,
Seek for repose;
There the days of our childhood,
In love's golden beam,
'Mong the blue-bells and wildwood,
Passed on like a dream.


William.


Oh, linger awhile, love!


Ellen.


            I must away.


William.


Oh, grant me thy smile, love,
'Tis Hope's cheering ray--
With evening expect me.


Ellen.
...