Ii

Mine was the mood that shows the dearest face Thro’ a long avenue, and voices kind Idle, and indeterminate, and blind As rumors from a very distant place; Yet, even so, it gathered the first chase Of the first swallows where the lane ’s inclined, An ebb of wavy wings to serve my mind For round Spring’s vision. Ah, some equal grace (The calm sense of seen beauty without sight) Befell thee, honorable heart! no less In patient stupor walking from the dawn; Albeit thou too wert loser of life’s light, Like fallen Adam in the wilderness, Aware of naught but of the thing withdrawn.

A Song of the Lilac

ABOVE the wall that ’s broken, And from the coppice thinned, So sacred and so sweet The lilac in the wind! And when by night the May wind blows The lilac-blooms apart, The memory of his first love Is shaken on his heart.

In tears it long was buried, And trances wrapt it round; O how they wake it now, The fragrance and the sound! For when by night the May wind blows The lilac-blooms apart, The memory of his first love Is shaken on his heart.

In a Ruin, after a Thunder-Storm

KEEP of the Norman, old to flood and cloud! Thou dost reproach me with thy sunset look, That in our common menace, I forsook Hope, the last fear, and stood impartial proud: Almost, almost, while ether spake aloud, Death from the smoking stones my spirit shook Into thy hollow as leaves into a brook, No more than they by heaven’s assassins cowed.

But now thy thousand-scarrèd steep is flecked With the calm kisses of the light delayed, Breathe on me better valor: to subject My soul to greed of life, and grow afraid Lest, ere her fight’s full term, the Architect See downfall of the stronghold that He made.

The Cherry Bough

IN a new poet’s and a new friend’s honor, Forth from the scornèd town and her gold-getting, Come men with lutes and bowls, and find a welcome Here in my garden,

Find bowers and deep shade and windy grasses, And by the south wall, wet and forward-jutting, One early branch fire-tipped with Roman cherries. O naught is absent,

O naught but you, kind head that far in prison Sunk on a weary arm, feels no god’s pity Stroking and sighing where the kingly laurels Were once so plenty,

Nor dreams, from revels and strange faces turning, How on the strength of my fair tree that knew you, I lean to-day, when most my heart is laden With your rich verses!

Since, long ago, in other gentler weather Ere wrath and exile were, you lay beneath it, (Your symbol then, your innocent wild brother, Glad with your gladness,)

What has befallen in the world of wonder, That still it puts forth bubbles of sweet color, And you, and you that burst our eyes with beauty, Are sapped and rotten?

Alas! When my young guests have done with singing, I break it, leaf and fruit, my garden’s glory, And hold it high among them, and say after: “O my poor Ovid,

“Years pass, and loves pass too; and yet remember For the clear time when we were boys together, These tears at home are shed; and with you also Your bough is dying.”

Two Irish Peasant Songs