VILLAGE CHERUB

Up at the church at the edge of the moor,
Flat on the pathway that leads to the door,
Worn by the tread of the mourning and poor,
There is a face that is fit for God’s floor.

How could a mason create in his brain
Just such a cherub to sob in the rain?
How could the pride of the dying but vain
Want such a cherub to blow a refrain?

This one had ankles with which he could run—
Is it a fact that a cherub has none?
This one had love-locks that flashed in the sun,
Yes, and his lips often pouted in fun.

Who was the angel that played on the street;
Whose was the face I can’t soil with my feet?
Nobody knows; but I hope I shall meet
One such a cherub in front of God’s seat.

VIII
LADY DAY NEAR BIGNOR

South-Eastward where the waving line of hills
Bears up the clouds that speed like passing boats,
On one sweet spot which distant sunlight fills
A sudden silver haze descends and floats.

The trees below like lace veil glistening streams,
The gorse puts on its tiny gloves of gold,
The cattle move as though they fed in dreams,
And timid lambs are bleating in the fold.

Though tangled bracken like an old man’s beard
Blends autumn’s ruddy brown with winter’s grey,
Soft blows the breeze that through the pines is heard,
Green moss and yellow primrose deck the way.

The Roman villa level on the grass,
With wrestling cupids on the floor within;
The church where first a Norman priest said mass,
The ivied chimneys of the Georgian inn:

These have their message.  All things tell the change
Of seasons, races, and of man’s estate:
All bid us mark within how small a range
There moves a story tragically great.

The hills abide, and that mysterious Breath
Which brooded on the slowly shaping earth,
And came to-day like dew to Nazareth
To fashion our Redeemer’s Virgin-birth.

IX
A COTTAGE INSCRIPTION

“Time trieth troth.”  Who carved the text
Above the narrow cottage door?
Two hundred years of storm have vexed
The words which front the western moor.

Was it a hind who loved the king
That held his court beyond the sea,
A hind who taught his child to sing
Of Stuart rose and Stuart tree?

Was it a swain whose soul adored
A maid who went to London town?
And did she choose some spangled lord
And coldly flout her country clown?

“Time trieth troth.”  And was he true
Whose chisel carved that rugged line?
And was he loyal till the yew
O’erarched his heart’s now silent shrine?

Then, though bereft of king or love,
He found the poet’s secret gain,
The sympathy of suns above,
The friendship of the falling rain.

X
A MEMORY OF IRELAND

Where the saints of Holy Ireland sleep
   No chancels pen them round,
But the waving trees their vigils keep
   Above each verdant mound.

Here they climbed no lofty marble beds
   To find a frigid rest,
But a canopy of golden threads
   Hangs o’er them in the west.

When the larks have ceased their thankful hymn,
   The ocean booms his bell,
And the lamps of heaven swing o’er the rim
   Of every holy well.

May the Lord bring back that race of men
   Whom charity enticed
To desert the world for some poor glen
   And give the people Christ.

XI
“TÍR NAN ÓG” [19]

When thou didst die, they say a fairy’s pipe
   Was heard outside the castle door,
And wee folk thick as August corn that’s ripe
   Came trooping down the moor,
And bore thy soul with laughter and with light
   O’er glen and heathered height.

Friends waked thee till the dawn thrice slanted by
   To quench the tapers round thy bier,
And countless decades of the rosary
   They numbered with a tear;
But yet they whispered, “She is now a queen,
   And clad in rainbow green.”

They set thy form near blessed Finnan’s side,
   And wailed the Gaelic death-lament;
But they believed thee happy as a bride
   With long-dreamed joys content
Within the land they name with wistful tongue,
   “The land where all are young.”

XII
A HIGHLAND DAY
WITHIN SIGHT OF CULLODEN

The snow-white borders of the grey-green sea
Peep through the mist that veils the strait with dew,
The sun grows bold and smites the landscape free,
The burn, the woods, the rocks of rose-red hue.

The world lies warm upon the heart of day,
The callants push their boat from off the shore,
The white gulls sail and flutter through the bay,
The jet-black daws are calling evermore.

The doves fly wheeling past their mountain wall,
The whispering pine trees weave a ceiling cool,
The rowans redden o’er the foaming fall,
The ferns keep guard around the fairies’ pool.

The distant moorland where the tribesmen bled
To win their wandering prince a royal home,
Now wraps a deeper purple on their bed,
While he sleeps cold below St. Peter’s dome.

The waves turn opal in the waning light,
The rocks exchange for grey their rose-red bloom,
The finite sinks into the infinite,
And sea and sky are wedded in the gloom.

XIII
TO THE FIRS

I LOVE the oak-grove where the Druid’s knife
Cut down the mistletoe in days of old;
I love the elms around the convent fold
Where souls escape the dust of highway life.

I love to watch the tiny milk-white spires
That on the chestnut branches lift their head;
I love to see the rowan growing red
With clusters bright as frosty winter fires.

But better still I love you, firs that crest
The lonely hill above the moaning firth,
Beside the path where bluebells gently nod.

To your grey arms, ere sunset leaves the West,
I can confide each