Maurya’S Song

Rushes that grow by the black water When will I see you more? When will the sorrowful heart forget you, Land of the green, green shore? When will the field and the small cabin See us more In the old country?

What is to me all the gold yonder? She that bore me is gone. Knees that dandled and hands that blessed me Colder than any stone; Stranger to me than the face of strangers Are my own In the old country.

Vein o’ my heart, from the lone mountain The smoke of the turf will die And the stream that sang to the young childer Run down alone from the sky: On the door-stone, grass,—and the cloud lying Where they lie In the old country.

Tired with the day’s monotony of dreaméd joys I turn to a requickening voice, A voice whose low tone devastates with nightly thrill The cities I have wrought at will: Stone forts depart, and armies heroic flee away Like the wild snow of spray. Deep down the green Broceliande’s branch’d corridors That voice of April pours; Light as a bird’s light shadow fled across my pages A touch disturbs the ages, And the crags and spears of Troy and the courts of Charlemain, Odin, and the splendid strain Of Cuchullain’s self, that with his heart’s high brother strove,— Fade, at the low voice I love.