XXXVI.
’Twas thus--and thus, when thrice a year had sped
King Fergus of his blemish happed to know:--
“I go to mine ablutions (so he said
Unto his bond-maid), girl, the task you know
Of preparation. Haste you, for I go
On mighty mission!” P’r’aps ’twas Fate’s decree
The maiden’s arm in service seemed full slow,
And Fergus, strained of nerve, was swift to see
In microscopic faults, some slight of majesty.
XXXVII.
Howbeit,--the fire to firelike will give blaze,
And progeny of one small word or deed
Count thousand-thousand. Half in wide amaze,
And half in wild vexation that slow heed
The maiden gave to that his will decreed,
He strode into her presence: then on high
He raised the stinging lash his stout-skinned steed
Oft felt, and flinched, and, drawing swiftly nigh,
Its serpent hiss was drowned in the smit’ maiden’s cry.
XXXVIII.
“A curse upon your laggard form!” he hissed.
The smitten girl swift raised her flashing eyes
In scarlet indignation, nor was missed
The blemish on the Monarch’s face. She cries:
“King Fergus, heartless coward! I loathe, despise
Your craven hand, nor e’en a word would deign,
But that I deem your spirit’s shape and size
Must match your brute-like visage.” Purpling plain
With rage, he drew his sword and cut the maid in twain.
XXXIX.
A maddened moment’s deed! And when the storm
Was past, the King in calm the wreck surveyed
Of his own making. Towering o’er the form
Prostrate and purple, holding still the blade
Wet with her life, he stood as sore dismayed,
Muttering: “Visage! Visage!” still the word
Beat inward on his ’wildered brain, nor stayed
Till that grim truth, long hid, to sight restored,
Burst on his mind. He turned, still clasping tight the sword.
XL.
Three steps beyond the portal of the room
Where lay the maid, he stopped and cast a look
Backward,--a look portentous of dark doom
To all beneath its ban. Aloft he shook
The bleeding blade; then cried, till every nook,
E’en to the farthest of the farthest halls,
Trembled; and, as he called, his way he took
Down corridors that held his foot’s swift falls
Till cry and footfall blent without the castle walls.
XLI.
The cry was: “Visage! Visage! Death and blood
To what has wrought the ruin of yon maid,--
That hideous habitant of Rory’s flood
Who plies--mayhap not long--his secret trade;
And mine ambition that such depths essayed
As strained the strength of me. Yet, not for nought
The fiend was found, tho’ fled I sore dismayed:
Some lesson yet is there, tho’ anguish-taught;
Some profit yet remains, tho’ it in blood be bought.
XLII.
One falleth--that foul spirit: then is past
Temptation of ambition; but, perchance
Mine arm may fail: sobeit, then is cast
Away the secret.” On did he advance.
And one who saw his eyeballs’ lightning glance,
And marked his mood and manner, thro’ the crowd
Spread rumouring words, keen, swift as strong-threwn lance,
That drew them forth, a multitude, all browed
With wonderment that grew with each swift stride, till, loud
XLIII.
And deep before them, Rory swells and swings.
Behold! the King nor pauses, nor aside
Turns in his track.--Not mine to tell of things
Run riot in those minds that edged the tide,
Where late the billows did King Fergus hide,
Nor gave of him a token, save the swell
Of giant strivings in the waters wide,
And one wild wave that, as from heart of Hell,
Leaped for the shore and ’mong the wondering warriors fell.
XLIV.
And thereupon arose confusion, such
As ne’er was seen before, and ne’er again
Shall e’er be seen. With tops that seemed to touch
The heights of Heaven arose the strenuous main
In wild tumultuous strivings, till the brain
Of those beholders whirled, and they that spake
In terror seemed all voiceless, for in vain
Speech called at its own ears. All heaven did make
Sound at whose dreadful voice all earth did seem to shake.
XLV.
And far across the world a tempest bore
Sounds of a conflict such as never yet
Man’s eyes beheld,--e’en to the cloudy shore
Of distant Britain: there did they beget
Vague words of wonder. Ere the sun had set
Within a stormy west nor man nor maid
Of all Ultonia but with spray was wet
As, lo! from each far hill, each distant glade
Long thousands shoreward drew with wide-eyed wonder swayed.
XLVI.
And when it seemed as if the heavens swam
In wild bewilderment,--each starry sphere
Would topple earthward, straightway fell a calm
That laid a hush upon the heart of fear,
And soothed both sea and sky, till softest tear
Would drop with sound of cataracts in the glen.
And thus they waited what should next appear,
Uncounted thousands of full-armëd men,
Bards, chieftans, clansmen, women, maids, youths, children:--then
XLVII.
As if the sea had stolen half the glow
Of the sunk sun, the quiet Loch flushed red,
And lengthened day, e’en tho’ the day did go
To other lands. “Some portent this,” they said,
“Of the fight’s finish: one hath joined the dead--
Which, shall appear full soon.”--Lo! on the sea
What form is yon that waves a hideous head
Within its hand? They gaze, they shout: “’Tis he,
Fergus, Ultonia’s King. Fergus hath victory!”
XLVIII.
Then that red glory brightened, and they scanned
The King’s marred visage--marred?--nay, pure and bright
As erst in youth! He called: “With this right hand
Nerved with the fury of revengeful might,
I fought--and won! I’ve lived my day; now night
Doth wrap its blackness round me: I but pay
The price of mine own deed.” And from their sight
He sank beneath the waters of the bay
Which rolled in waves of blood for many a devious day!
The Legend of St. Mahee
of Endrim.
The Legend of Saint Mahee of Endrim.
TO J. A. GREGG.
[NOTE.--Saint Mahee ([Illustration: Gaelic]) was born about 420 A.D.,
founded the Abbey of Endrim ([Illustration: Gaelic]--the single ridge),
on the beautiful island bearing that name, about 450, and died in the
year 496 or 497. For several centuries the Abbey, in which education and
religion were combined, occupied a prominent position, and turned out a
number of subsequent founders of similar institutions. Between 974 and
1178 history is silent in regard to it, but it is certain that, from its
position on Cuan ([Illustration: Gaelic]--a lough, now Strangford),
which was infested by Danish marauders, it came in for a large share of
their devastating attentions. From the date of its affiliation with an
English educational establishment, 1178, it seems to have fallen on evil
days, and in 1450 it is simply noted as a Parish Church in the charge of
the Bishop of Down.
The Island of Endrim--or, as it is now called, in memory of its Patron
Saint, Mahee--is situated most picturesquely on Strangford Lough, about
seven miles from Comber, Co. Down, and is approachable on foot or car by
a modern causeway-road, which crosses an intervening island. On the
shoreward end of the island may be seen many remnants of the stone
buildings which superseded the original wooden structures. These
remnants include the stump of a round tower; traces of extensive
foundations once laid bare by the late Bishop Reeves, but now almost
entirely hidden from view; the site of the harbour where anchored “ships
from Britain;” evidences of a hallowed God’s-acre, and a fairly complete
castle of a later period. The circuit of the island can be made on foot
leisurely in a couple of hours, and the walk affords a view of the
extensive waters of the once Dane-infested lough, the distant hoary
walls of Greyabbey, the haunts of Saint Patrick, the reputed scene of
the death of Ollav Fola ([Illustration: Gaelic], the lawgiver of Erin),
and the martial deeds of De Courcey.
Ballydrain, about half-way between Comber and Mahee Island, is so-called
from [Illustration: Gaelic], a townland, and [Illustration: Gaelic], a
blackthorn tree; and the reader will observe the connection between this
place and the Island of Mahee. No trace of a church has yet been
discovered at Ballydrain.
The idea contained in the Legend has been variously rendered by several
eminent authors. The incident in which it is here embodied may, however,
be fairly claimed as the oldest version--the original, in fact.--THE
AUTHOR.]
Lo! right and left, in calm repose,
Are spread unnumbered isles,
Between whose shores the bluff breeze blows,
And sungilt Strangford smiles.
The shoreward way our feet have left
Below, still winds along
Where strenuous waves, in eddy and cleft,
Croon low their iterant song.
II.
Bright in the passionate, tremulous rays
From cloudy towers of day,
Yon crumbling castle seems to gaze
At castles far away,
Like parted friends of other years
Who meet, nor waste a word,
But wondering stand, and smile thro’ tears
From depths unfathomed stirred.
III.
Here may we rest, and make our seat
On this high rock-strewn mound,
“Put off our shoes from off our feet”--
We tread on holy ground
The haunts where many a sandalled sole
Trod out life’s lust and woe,
And, stedfast set to one high goal,
Went down in dust below.
IV.
No stone is theirs engraven large
With record born of strife,
No gilded scroll, no carven marge,
No legend loud with life.
Far other deeds than men applaud
Their holy hands essayed,
In life viceregent here of God,
In death still undismayed.
V.
No fluctuant favours--servile spouse
Of princes’ transient smile--
Did e’er bedeck their sacred brows,
Their saintly souls defile:
No life-warm lips their own had kissed
(Earth’s hope-inspiring dove)--
Their life was one long Eucharist
Eternalised in love.
VI.
The workers went; the works remain.
Time here small kingship owns.
Thro’ ’whelming winds, thro’ sun and rain,
Have lived these lichened stones,
And that brief tower upreared by those
Whose dread was from the deep,--
In strife their strength, in peace repose,
Their guardian now in sleep.
VII.
Thine eyes, old tower, have scanned the scroll
And palimpsest of Earth,
And fain would we thy thoughts unroll
Thro’ years of bliss or dearth,
For thou from thy calm height dost look
With sage, dispassionate eye,
To where the star of day-dawn shook
Within a youthful sky.
VIII.
We deem thee old; but age is not
A toll of hours and days,--
Mean measure of our little lot
And arbitrary ways.
We run our little round of change
Thro’ years of less or more,
But Time to thee holds nought of strange,
Unheard, unseen before.
IX.
Down paths of night no starrier balls
No new Milanion throws;
Thro’ no transfigured day’s high halls
Th’ itinerant breeze still blows;
Belligerent ever, baffled still,
Th’ importunate surges swing;
Still dear as dawn th’ ecstatic thrill
And prophet power of Spring.
X.
Wrapt in a dream of ancient days
Thou stand’st aloof from ours,
Yet nought hast thou of battle’s blaze
Or blighting iron showers;
For well-beloved art thou of moon,
And sun, and winds, and stars,
Forever in thy heart attune
To every statelier bars
XI.
Than aught my highest hope could know
In this inspiring breath
Where wilding blossoms bloom and blow,
As life blooms out of death;
Yet fain, withal, my lips would wed
To song, for modern ears,
This chord from lyric days long dead,
This dream from epic years:
THE LEGEND.
Quoth good Saint Mahee of Endrim,
“I shall build for Christ my master
Here a church, and here defend him
And His cause from all disaster.”
Seven score youths cut beam and wattle,
Seven score hands unseared in battle
Their unstinted aid did lend him,
Fast and ever faster.
But tho’ arm, and voice loud-ringing,
To a test of toil defied him,
Right and left the wattles flinging,
Not a tongue could dare deride him
For, before them all, he stood
Finished, waiting. Not a rood
From the spot a bird was singing
In a thorn beside him.
Sang no bird in ancient story
Half so sweet or loud a strain:
Seaward to the Lough of Rory,
Landward then, and back again,
Swelled the song, and trilled and trembled
O’er the toiling youths assembled,
Rang around ’mid Summer glory
There at Ballydrain.
Far more beautiful the bird was
Than the bright-plumed Bird of Bliss
And the Abbot’s feeling stirred was
To its deepest depths, I wis;
’Till, as from the fiery splendour
Moses saw, in accents tender
Spake the bird, and lo, the word was:
“Goodly work is this!”
“True,” quoth Saint Mahee of Endrim,
“’Tis required by Christ my master
Here to build, and here defend Him
And His cause from all disaster;
But my blood mounts high with weening
Of this goodly word the meaning?”
Nearer then the bird did tend him,
Fast and even faster.
“I shall answer. I descended
From mine angel-soul’s compeers,
From my home serene and splendid
To this haunt of toil and tears;
Came to cheer thee with a note
From an angel’s silvern throat.”
Then he sang three songs: each, ended,
Made a hundred years.
There, thro’ days that dawned and darkened,
With his wattles by his side,
Stood the island Saint and hearkened
To that silvery-flowing tide
Stood entranced, and ever wondr’éd,
Till had circled thrice a hundred
Years o’er fields, life-lade or stark, and
Strangford’s waters wide.
Then when came the final number,
Ceased the angel-bird its strain,
And, unheld by ills that cumber
Mortals, sought the heavenly plain.
Then the Saint, in mute amaze,
Round him turned an anxious gaze,
And from that far land of slumber
Came to Earth again.
Low his load, mid weed and flower,
Lay beside him all unbroken,
Till, with thrice augmented power,
From his holy dream awoken,
Up he bore it to his shoulder--
Broad and not a hand’s breath older.
Scarce, thought he, had passed an hour
Since the bird had spoken.
Toward his island church he bore it.
Lo, an oratory gleaming,
And “To Saint Mahee,” writ o’er it!
“Now,” quoth he, “in faith I’m dreaming!
Say, good monk, at whose consistory
Shall I solve this mighty mystery,
And to form of fact restore it
From this shadowy seeming?”
Thus he spake to one who faced him
With a look of mild surprise,
One who swiftly brought and placed him
’Neath the Abbot’s searching eyes.--
Leave him there: not mine to rhyme of
Deeds that filled the latter time of
Him who, fain tho’ years would waste him,
Ages not, nor dies.
. . . . . .
Such the wondrous old-time story
Of the bird’s long, lethal strain
Sung thro’ Summers hot and hoary,
Winters white on mount and main
And the monks, to mark the mission
Of the bird,--so tells tradition,--
Built a church to God’s great glory
There at Ballydrain.
XII.
The song has ceased, the dream is done,
Lo, nought but shattered shrine
And weed-clad walls greet now the sun
That sparkles in the brine;
Yet these no remnant are of dead
Insalutary days,
Vicarious blood of morning, shed
For more than Memphian haze.
XIII.
The fires of worship, and of war,
De Courcey’s marshalled hosts,
The rude sea-rovers from afar
Have vanished from our coasts;
And out of these an ampler field
Found Freedom, mind and hand,
Toward unattempted ends to wield
A world-enchanting wand.
XIV.
What tho’ in oft ignoble cause
The wave of war still rolls,
The hate of sects, the clutching claws,
The strife of armoured souls;
What tho’ the thousands, born to fail,
In darkness come and go,
Be ours no pessimistic wail
Of fear for larger woe;
XV.
For even now the dawn doth give
Some promissory gleams,
Tho’ most ’tis ours in night to live,
Participant in dreams
Of some broad-beamed and brighter morn,
Some elemental balm,
Some purer peace, of battle born,
Some tempest-cradled calm!
[Illustration: text decoration]
[Illustration: text decoration]
Miscellaneous Poems.
Song of Decadence.
I wonder if there still remain
Some echoes from the songs of old;
Or what the measure of the strain
The future shall unfold?
The voice that breathed across the years,
And came, and went, and passed the bar,
And sang the battle song of tears,
Sounds small, and faint, and far;
And men have found another chord,
An offspring, not of heart, but head;
And gold is God, and lust is Lord,
And Love lies stricken dead!
Ah, me! the race goes blindly on
And leaves the old familiar ways;
And still, earth-weighted, flowers the dawn
To still ignoble days;
And men, as sheep within their folds,
Grope round their world with great sad eyes;
And hate the hand that still withholds
The secret of the skies;
Or, deeming God an idle tale
Withdrawn from lore of ancient shelves,
Themselves would reckon by the scale
And measure of themselves!
How mean the stature of the song
Of our inglorious--glorious time,
Attenuating, as along
It moves from that great prime
When Milton, in the midnight hours,
Lay waiting for the mystic breath
Of God to touch his soul to flowers
Of song that smile at Death.
O singers of the years to come!
Be yours the large and liberal scope:
Sing sweetly--or for aye be dumb--
Of God, and Love, and Hope,
Encircled by no little line
Of gain or loss, of time or sense,
Nor, bent at Mammon’s soulless shrine,
Your birth-right part for pence;
But bend an arm across the past,
And finger all the vibrant years,
Till sunlight, on our shadows cast,
Makes rainbows of our tears.
The Railway Arch.
There it stands, as it has stood--
Theme for bards, and theme for seers--
Mute to sun and tempests rude,
To the swift express of years;
Stretched across from bank to bank
Where the rabbits flash and go,
Where the fir-trees, rank by rank,
Gaze upon the track below
As the train, at man’s behest,
In the calm or tempest’s teeth,
Speeds with lightning in its breast,
And the thunder underneath.
There in many a rift and rent,
Many a bird finds friendly cover;
And the toiler, homeward bent,
Whistles as he passes over;
And the children from the town
Climb its parapets and strain
Half a hundred throats to drown
With a cheer the passing train.
Yet how many children, toilers,
List’ to what that arch would say
To the thousands of earth’s moilers?--
Dull of ear and listless they!
Ah! adown the track of time,
In the world’s great sidings lying,
Many a theme for many a rhyme
Is unmarked by thousands, flying
After all the fen-fires, darting
In the damps and swamps of life;
Fires of meeting and of parting,
Hate and love, and strain and strife!
There it stands--O! how I love it;
For it speaks of weal, and woe,
For the thousands pass above it;
For the thousands rush below;
And, attune to whirr and clatter,
Wide and wider does it span,
High o’er time and sense and matter,
High o’er life and death and man,
Stretched from age to age unborn;
And above it in a stream
Pass, unceasing, night and morn,
Shapes like those in Jacob’s dream
All the souls of all the ages,
All the ghosts of all the years,
Priests and prophets, saints and sages,
Sweet-breathed bards and broad-browed seers,
Who from many a cloudy station
List’ the whirring of the wheels
Bounding on without cessation,
Dragging progress at their heels;
Who, as children from the town,
Throng the parapets, and strain
Form and voice in flashing down
Warning signals to the train
Speeding on, at man’s behest,
In the calm, or tempest’s teeth,
With the lightning in its breast,
And the thunder underneath!
Schakhe.
(A Ballad of Armenia.)
They had fought, they had failed, those women and now,
in a wild-eyed throng,
They fled from the red destroyer, and they cried: “O Lord, how long?--
How long, O Lord, till the ending of the ghastly sounds and sights,
Till the dripping days be finished, and the thrice red-running nights,--
Till the last cold corpse falls, severed from the last Armenian head,
Till the last maid be dishonoured, and the last hot tear be shed?”
They had fled from the red destroyer, but he hastens around their track,
Till the fate they had flown is before them, and they turn
in their pathway back.
But, Northward and Southward and Eastward and Westward,
and round and round,
Come the gleam of the steely lightning, and the wild,
soul-harrowing sound,
As mother and sister and daughter, and the child at its mother’s breast
Go down in the surge of slaughter and the wreck of the great Opprest.
And now they are huddled together, as the death-cries rise and swell,
Where the rock runs up to Heaven, and the gulf goes down to Hell,--
On the edge of a beetling hillock; when, lo! from the ’wildered crowd,
On a peak of the rock steps Schakhe, and calls to her sisters, loud:--
“O sisters in nameless sorrow, baptised in a life of tears;
Before you two paths lie open: behind you a thousand years
Fade far in the dusky distance, one long, broad stream of blood,
That flows by the wreck and ruin of sword and fire and flood!
Before you two paths lie open: one leads where dangers lurk,
And the pain and the dumb dishonour from the merciless hand of the Turk.
Choose ye! Will ye thread that pathway, prove false to the men ye love;
Prove false to the children ye bore them; prove false to the God above?
Will ye sell yourselves to the spoilers of father and mother and child,
Who butchered and then, like devils, at their cries for mercy smiled?
Do ye think of the thousands rotting, flung down in a ghastly heap
Unblessed; whose dust commingles in their last unhallowed sleep?
Do ye think of the blood, the sorrow, the wild, sky-rending cries,
As the scarce-born babe was mangled to feast their fiendish eyes?
Do you think of the brute defilement when, full in the flare of day,
Ye were robbed of your dear-prized honour, and made the Moslem’s prey?
Will ye choose that path, O sisters? ’Tis a path ye have often trod;
Or throw yourselves on the mercy of the great, all-powerful God?
What though He is veiled in silence, and behind our clouds grown dim;
If He come not down to help us, then we will go to Him.
See! there is the other pathway, down, down to the home of Night.
Jump! long ere the body be broken, the soul will have taken flight.
He will give His charge to His angels: in their hands
they will bear thee up,
As ye tread the Saviour’s pathway, and drink the Saviour’s cup.
There,--lean on my breast, sweet infant, and good-bye to Earth and woe.
Now, sisters, the way lies open: I am weary and long to go!”
They had fought: they had failed; and they followed
brave Schakhe, a martyr throng;--
And soft o’er the corpse-strewn valley the winds sigh: “Lord, how long?”
In the Giant’s Ring, Belfast.
No Shakespeare girdle this, whose girth
Would compass with its arms
The sounding seas and snows of earth,
The fruitful fields and farms.[A]
Here priestly power has thrown around
A circuit wide and high,
A bar where waves of human sound
Beat vainly, drop, and die.
“Who dreams of war in such a scene
Of undisturbed repose?
Who babbles here of spite and spleen?
Who rhymes of human woes?
Nought here is heard of mingling cries,
Of life’s unlovely jars
Nought here is seen but yonder skies,
And circling suns and stars!”
O wise in wisdom of the fool!
O warped in sight and soul!
O Arctic spirit, icy cool
As passions of the Pole!
Is ’t but a dream of babe or bard
That conjures grief and groans?
Or is thy shrunken heart more hard
Than those three standing stones?
I dreamed a dream when last I stood
Within their sombre shade:
Time took my hand full many a rood
Beyond the tides of trade,
Beyond the sacerdotal rite,
And soul-absorbing creeds,
Beyond the narrow skirts of sight
And despicable deeds.
I soared above the brimming Earth;
I peered beneath its breast;
I saw the founts of joy and mirth,
And seats of life’s unrest.
But in the ocean of its thought
One current swelled and grew
And on to seas with blessing fraught
A thousand others drew.
’Twas Love: and Time stood by, and said:
“Behold! a thousand spires
Speak gilded words from hearts as dead
As those old Druid fires.
But love lives on and leavens all
In Earth’s expanding range,
The height and depth, the rise and fall,
The first and last of Change.
“Kings pale and perish, dogmas die,
The world goes slowly on
To greet an all-unclouded sky,
To kiss a purer dawn.
Stript of the garb of mimic worth,
Freed from his brothers’ ban
And circumscribing creeds, steps forth
A newer, nobler man.
“’Twas thus God’s chosen race was bent
Beneath a tyrant yoke:
’Twas thus the hated chains were rent,
The conqueror’s sceptre broke.
Thus Babylon to Persia bowed,
Thus Persia bent to Greece,
Thus Greece gave place to Rome the proud,
The Goth broke Roman peace.”
These mighty stones, this giant ring
Give token of a day
That died, as dies a dreamt-of thing,
And passed in dust away,
Save these, for you--dear heart--and me
To gaze on, muse, and rhyme:
“Time conquers all, both bond and free,
But Love shall conquer Time!”
[Illustration: text decoration]
The Blind Father.
I.
So, my son, you came this morning at the blinking of the day,
“King, and heir for Uther,” riding swiftly shoreward on the spray
That, within my face, comes blowing from a stranger sea and sky,--
Felt, not seen--upon whose margin here, a sightless Merlin, I
Stand, and turn my head and harken to the whisper of the wind
Borne from seaward on to leeward,--dark before and dark behind.
II.
And they say you’re like your father?--How can I know, for I look
With a dead eye into darkness; yet I’ve felt upon a book
Something tell me: “In His form and with His likeness made He man:”
So you’re like your father, and he looks like God--but, ah! the ban,
A Damocles-blade, keeps hanging, as o’er ancient Adam’s head,
O’er last moment’s latest Adam, just arisen from the dead.
III.
Ban! Who banned you? Is it God, or is it man suspends the knife?
God decreed you’d toil for bread, but man decrees you’ll die for life!
IV.
“From the dead.”--You like the phrase not, wife;
yet not from death he’s come,
But from life, of all the ages past the product and the sum.
Thine and mine,--yet neither mine nor thine, but heir of every hour,
Drawing through thee from the world’s breast,--we the
stem and he the flower.
Ours, and yet not ours; the acorn from its parent will be broke,
Drop to earth, from earth to heaven stretch the fingers of the oak.
Acorn--oak, and back to acorn, hedging all the hills of time,
On and on forever, housing birds of every wing and clime.
Thus we die,--and thus we die not; mortal, yet immortal we;
Closely clasping crumbling fingers round the hand of the To Be;
Flingling out along the ages tendrils that will grip, and twine
In a slow attenuation down the long posterior line.
V.
Thus the generations, marching to an universal strain,
Start, and stop; and in the starting from Da Capo sing again.
VI.
Ah! not ours: yet ours the moulding of a future near or far;
Ours to set a sun in heaven,--hurl in space a red-eyed star.--
For I’m told, beyond my curtain there revolveth day and night,
And among the stars there standeth one that winketh red with fight;
And you say the glow that lights upon my cheek is from the sun
Guiding lightning-footed planets as they in their orbits run;
And I’ve heard that all have sprung from atoms crowding God’s abyss,--
Mars, the evil-eyed and warlike; Sol, the pivot-point of bliss.
VII.
Yes, a weakness, sprung from weakness, weaker waxes, and a strength
On from strength to strength goes marching, grasping
God’s right hand at length;
For the mickle at the shoulder means the muckle at the hand,
And the hair’s breadth on the compass means the ship upon the land.
VIII.
Aye, wife; now I know the reason why you sighed so since we wed:
You have seen the world hang on you. Don’t you mind, dear, what you read
Out of Cowper?--where he speaks of how the arrow on the wing
Falls at last far out of line though small the error at the string.
IX.
There he’s: take him! You can rhyme of chubby cheeks, and laughy eyes
That have housed far down within them little patches of the skies;
You can paint your glowing pictures, that a tear may wash away
When a future Vandal stumbles through your dream some after day.
Mine are coloured from th’ eternal, set by Love in Fancy’s mould,
Knowing nought of life’s mutations, Summer’s heat or Winter’s cold.
X.
So you’ve only come this morning, courier dove with pinions white?
What’s the news from God, what message from the hidden heart of Night?
[Illustration: text decoration]
Sundry Songs
and Sonnets.
The Southern Cross.
Afar from his wife and his sons and his daughters,
The fisherman grapples for gain or loss;
Beneath him the silent midnight waters;
Above him the blaze of the Southern Cross:
And ever his thoughts on the breeze hie homeward,
As he calls to the watcher again and again,--
“O what of the night: is it dark or bright?”
And ever there cometh the old refrain,--
“The skies are clearing, the dawn is nearing,
The midnight shadows fly.
The Cross is bending, the night is ending,
The day is drawing nigh.”
Again, on the storm-swept winter waters,
He battles the billows that tumble and toss;
And he thinks of the weeping of wives and daughters,
As the clouds fly over the Southern Cross.
Ah, then in the hour of his heart’s despairing,
When sheets are rending and cables strain,
How sweet to his ear come the words of cheer,
And the sound of the watcher’s old refrain,--
“The skies are clearing, the dawn is nearing,
The midnight shadows fly.
The Cross is bending, the night is ending,
The day is drawing nigh.”
. . . . . .
Far out, far out on Life’s wild waters,
Where storms are howling, where breakers toss,
How many of earth’s fair sons and daughters
Are drifting and dragging to gain or loss!
But ever the Stars of Hope are shining,
Through calm and tempest, through wind and rain;
And soft through the night, be it dark or bright,
The heart still echoes the old refrain,--
“The skies are clearing, the dawn is nearing,
The midnight shadows fly.
The Cross is bending, the night is ending.
The day is drawing nigh.”
On the Death of William Morris.
I.
Mine eyes beheld thee--but not nigh: mine ear,
Close to thy page, could feel the beat, beat, beat,
That told thy great, good heart: now strangers’ feet
Have borne thee out. Thee? Nay, I have thee here
Forever young; nor less that eye, so clear,
Beams brotherhood, nor can the years that fleet
Leave me more lonely. No hot tear--full meet
From widowed Friendship--drop I on thy bier.
Some earth-stained page mars oft fair Friendships’s book;
And happier I, who saw thro’ Fancy’s light
Kin only of the sacred singing race,
Blameless of all that mars familiar sight!--
Then wherefore should I weep, who skyward look,
And mark a god move Godward to his place?
II.
Perfume of eld, more sweet than all the scent
Of late-blown roses squandered on the air,
Sweetens the tawny forest of thy hair,
And there shall dwell till all the years be spent.
To thee war’s call with hint of song is blent,
And time sits easy on the brows of care;
Love lifts a white affirming hand to swear
Thee hero of thy heroes,--thou, who went
To the frore Past. Lo! in its eyes did dance
Reflection of a day within the wake
Of some unrisen, kindlier star; and thou
Didst cry: “Behold, with goodlier days the Now
Is great, as forests wave in seeds to break,
And countless thousands pulse in Love’s first glance!”
[Illustration: text decoration]
Copernicus.
They deemed, self-centred souls! that those great eyes
Which star the night, in amorous orbit turned
And, ever boldly bashful, sighed and burned
For one earth kiss, and stood within the skies
Eternally expectant. O most wise
In your great selves! that rude iconoclast
His stones of Truth among your dreamings cast,
And robbed your wisdom of its dear disguise.
He stood, a Sampson of Titanic force,
’Twixt men and God, and swiftly grasped and hurled
His bolts at callow thoughts of centuries,
And pivoted th’ unreckoned universe,
And marked the rhythmic orbit of a world,
And changed chaotic chords to harmonies!
To Algernon Charles Swinburne.
(To remind him that the Genius of Ireland, nigh twenty centuries
ago, taught the dull ears of the world the subtleties and charms of
the rhyme of which he is now acknowledged master.)
Moulder of mighty measures and sublime;
Whose flower of song--how dead soe’er the ground--
Blossoms: whose feet, from no great depth profound,
By cloudy slopes to cloudier summits climb!
What though thou art, in this thy world-broad prime,
Great King of Song, sceptred and robed and crowned;
Be it not thine to scorn the narrow round
Whence broadened out the bounds of later time.
Not all the message of that far-off chime
The strident strains of this our day have drowned:
“Forget not, Singer, whence hath sprung thy rhyme,
Or whence thy tongue its lofty power hath found;
Nor squander all thy store in mocking mime,
Niggard of sense and prodigal of sound.”
Heaven and Earth.
_In the beginning the Heaven and the Earth were wedded together, and
then was the golden age of joy and beauty. But something occurred which
destroyed the union, and the Heaven and the Earth were parted amid the
tears of Nature, which men call the dew._--LEGEND OF SOUTH SEA ISLANDS.
Truth in untruth; wisdom on Folly’s tongue,
And substance in a shadow!--Hear ye this:
Erewhile, ’mid transports of primeval bliss,
In starry ears a bridal song was sung,
And Heav’n and Earth, in mutual rapture, strung
Ethereal harps, and took one reeling kiss,
’Till, seated with much joy, Earth grew remiss:
But, love was rife, and, ah! the Earth was young.
O trembling tears of dawn in Nature’s eyes!
Forget your sadness. Lo! methinks the hour
When recreant Love turns loveward, thrills the dome;
Earth lifts mute praying hands in tree and flower,
And Heav’n, in all the windows of the skies,
Hangs nightly lamps to light the wand’rer home!
On Some Twentieth Century forecasts.
O imperturable and silent years,
That reck not all the riot of our time
Whose fevered feet, with inharmonious rhyme,
Royster around thy high phantasmal tiers!
How mean our mockings of the silent seers
To read the riddle of th’ Eternal Soul!
We list’ the thundering life within thy bole,
And count the hidden harvest that anears,
And dream our dreams, and smile to see them wrecked!
Oh, vain insurgence on the unrevealed:
Enough to map the paths our fathers tracked
Not, mother-like, kiss yet the face concealed.
Age ages not the elemental law,
And we are thou in hope, thou we anew,
And still beneath are depths whence Shakspere drew,
And still above are stars that Milton saw!
Ireland.
Somewhat of Autumn’s splendour round her lies;
Yet deem not thou ’tis preface of her death,
For there is that within her heart which saith
This word that buds and blossoms in her eyes:--
“Reck not the portent of the season’s skies,
Nor deem yon darkling clouds aught but a breath
Sundrawn from half a world that offereth
Its votive incense to the year that flies.”
The hand that bevels down the shortening day
Is one with that which quickens leaf and wing,
So prophecy of pregnance in decay
Thou hast, and in thine Autumn germs of Spring;
To vindicate these lips, that late have said:
“They dreamed a lie who deemed thee wholly dead!”
[Illustration: THE LITTLE LIBRARY.
THE FOLLOWING VOLUMES WILL APPEAR IN DUE COURSE:--
1.
The King’s Oak and Other Stories,
By ROBERT CROMIE,
Author of “The Crack of Doom,” “A Plunge into Space,” &c.
These Stories are amongst the best things from the pen of this brilliant
and popular Irish Author.
2.
[_Immediately._
SOCIALISM: ITS STRUCTURAL STUPIDITIES,
By IGNOTUS.
A pungent criticism and confutation of Fabian fallacies.
3.
The Eve of the World’s Tragedy;
OR, THE THOUGHTS OF A WORM,
By LOUIS H. VICTORY,
Author of “Lady Rosalind,” “Collected Verses,” “Poems,” “The Higher
Teaching of Shakespeare,” &c., &c.
4.
A VOLUME OF POEMS
By the world-renowned
SAMUEL K. COWAN, M.A., T.C.D.,
Author of “Poems,” “Roses and Rue,” “Idylls of Ireland,” “Play,” “Laurel
Leaves,” &c., &c.
5.
A BOOK OF PROSE
By one of the greatest Irish Writers of his time,
W. B. YEATS,
Author of “The Countess Kathleen,” “Celtic Twilight,” “The Secret Rose,”
&c., &c.
OTHERS TO FOLLOW.]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote A:
...Put a Girdle round the earth
In forty minutes.
]