pfirst">TO YOUNG IRELAND

(WRITTEN IN 1899)

Dead! art thou dead or sleepest, in this blank, twilight time,

When hearts are sere and pithless? Land of the sword and lyre!

Thy waxen lips are silent, thy brow is bound with rime,

Hast thou late wed with winter, child of earth's primal fire?

 

The sheathèd blade rusts foully, through bitter, barren years,

And harp and pen are bond slaves, thralls to thy children's shame.

We garner cockle harvests, vain words and little fleers.

From waste lands sown with rancour, search them with proving flame!

 

We droop'd, stark sons of warfare, we blushed and slunk from day,

While Love and Truth and Honour died in mere fretful fume.

Free brain, free brawn, is given us, then sweep we from our way

These shamers of our mother, this idle, noisome spume.

 

For, lo! an army gathers around a standard clean;

I gird me dinted armour, and press to touch the throng.

Hark! Hark! The minstrels' war-hymn in very strength serene,

My harp is harsh of utterance, yet take a pupil's song.

 

Then stout heart join our battle! who hail an eastern sun,

Our toil shall set this people upon earth's purest height.

Then faint heart join our battle! and if our sands be run,

At least we caoin a swan-lay upon the edge of night.

SOWING

(WRITTEN IN 1899)

One mocked: "Thy brain is mad with wine;

The fairies spin the threads of night,

And pour their vials of sour blight

About the roots of health, yet thine

And thou, ye garner into verse

Bright flowers to trick a solemn hearse:

The cowslip, maiden-love of spring,

The burning incense of the rose,

The austere lily, her that blows

By winter's marge--each gracious thing

Past or unborn. Weak, trusting fool!

Old Time shall file thee in his school."

 

"I know not Time, his last or first;

With master hands I despoil all

His hoarded sweetness and his gall.

I crush the aeons for my thirst,

And so am mad. Pencils of fire

Limn visions of soul-large desire.

 

In Faith I cast on frozen ground

An obscure life of sweat and tears;

In the far Autumn of the years

Men reap full harvests, springing round,

And judge them gifts of kindly chance,

My deed laughs through each mellow lance."

DREAMS AND DUTY

Life is an inconstant April laughing into May,

Weeping with the aftergust of March storms laid away,

Light o' love! Her mood is gracious, fondling sunbeams stray

Out across the cloud-smoke purple of her cloud robes gray.

Let us dream among the daisies, troll a roundelay

Where the gorse gold is lavished, and the lilies pray,

Mary's nuns, whose stainless gift is Heaven's chaliced ray,

Let us twine a wreath of science, let us play our play,

Ere we fight the fight of ages, one sweet prelude-day.

*      *      *      *      *

The stranger heard and mocked us from the usurped throne,

Reeled in his scornful laughter, eater of hearts, blood-blown.

But the Lord God heard and heeded, therefore we do not moan;

For He has whispered to us, 'The secret shuttles fly,

Ye know not warp or weaver, yet neither swerve or sigh,

The eater of hearts shall wither, the drinker of blood shall die.

I have set you labour, work it; I will give you increase,

For first is winter-ploughing, after, my guerdon, peace;

Ye shall pluck strength from sorrow, ripe when the sorrows cease;

Ye shall win strength and wisdom to break the stranger's rule,

But if ye slink and babble ye are but as the fools,

Ye are but as the stranger, fit for the thorny schools."

A SONG OF VENGEANCE

FOR COMMANDANT SCHEEPERS
(Murdered January 18, 1902)

It is done inexpiably; thrust him deep in shameful clay,

Charge his name with every foulness, rule the world's ear as you may--

But the shadow at your banquet that you cannot put away!

 

Weak you thought him, sickness-vanquished, given to your eager hate.

So you played him and you slew him with your feline shows of state,

Weak--and lo! the sanctifying touch of death has made him great.

 

As a seed