I begin through the grass once again to be bound to the Lord;

I can see, through a face that has faded, the face full of rest

Of the earth, of the mother, my heart with her heart in accord,

As I lie mid the cool green tresses that mantle her breast

I begin with the grass once again to be bound to the Lord.

By the hand of a child I am led to the throne of the King

For a touch that now fevers me not is forgotten and

I have wept a million tears:

Pure and proud one, where are thine,

What the gain though all thy years

In unbroken beauty shine?

All your beauty cannot win

Truth we learn in pain and sighs:

You can never enter in

To the circle of the wise.

They are but the slaves of light

Who have never known the gloom,

And between the dark and bright

Willed in freedom their own doom.

Think not in your pureness there,

That our pain but follows sin:

There are fires for those who dare

Seek the throne of might to win.

Pure one, from your pride refrain:

Dark and lost amid the strife

I am myriad years of pain

Nearer to the fount of life.

When defiance fierce is thrown

At the god to whom you bow,

Rest the lips of the Unknown

Tenderest upon my brow.

The blue dusk ran between the streets: my love was winged within my mind,

It left to-day and yesterday and thrice a thousand years behind.

To-day was past and dead for me, for from to-day my feet had run

Through thrice a thousand years to walk the ways of ancient Babylon.

On temple top and palace roof the burnished gold flung back the rays

Of a red sunset that was dead and lost beyond a million days.

The tower of heaven turns darker blue, a starry sparkle now begins;

The mystery and magnificence, the myriad beauty and the sins

Come back to me. I walk beneath the shadowy multitude of towers;

Within the gloom the fountain jets its pallid mist in lily flowers.

The waters lull me and the scent of many gardens, and I hear

Familiar voices, and the voice I love is whispering in my ear.

Oh real as in dream all this; and then a hand on mine is laid:

The wave of phantom time withdraws; and that young Babylonian maid,

One drop of beauty left behind from all the flowing of that tide,

Is looking with the self-same eyes, and here in Ireland by my side.

Oh light our life in Babylon, but Babylon has taken wings,

While we are in the calm and proud procession of eternal things.

"Soon!" says the Snowdrop, and smiles at the motherly earth,

"Soon!—for the Spring with her languors comes stealthily on

Snow was my cradle, and chill winds sang at my birth;

Winter is over—and I must make haste to be gone!"

"Soon," says the Swallow, and dips to the wind-ruffled stream,

"Grain is all garnered—the Summer is over and done;

Bleak to the eastward the icy battalions gleam,

Summer is over—and I must make haste to be gone!"

"Soon—ah, too soon!" says the Soul, with a pitiful gaze,

"Soon!—for I rose like a star, and for aye would have shone!

See the pale shuddering dawn, that must wither my rays,

Leaps from the mountains—and I must make haste to be gone!"

At morn I saw the level plain

So rich and small beneath my feet,

A sapphire sea without a stain,

And fields of golden-waving wheat;

Lingering I said, "At noon I'll be

At peace by that sweet-scented tide.

How far, how fair my course shall be,

Before I come to the Eventide!"

Where is it fled, that radiant plain?

I stumble now in miry ways;

Dark clouds drift landward, big with rain,

And lonely moors their summits raise.

On, on with hurrying feet I range,

And left and right in the dumb hillside

Grey gorges open, drear and strange,

And so I come to the Eventide!

Birds, that cry so loud in the old, green bowery garden,

Your song is of Love! Love! Love!

Will ye weary not nor cease?

For the loveless soul grows sick, the heart that the grey days harden;

I know too well that ye love! I would ye should hold your peace.

I too have seen Love rise, like a star; I have marked his setting;

I dreamed in my folly and pride that Life without Love were peace.

But if Love should await me yet, in the land of sleep and forgetting—

Ah, bird, could you sing me this, I would not your song should cease!

I knew a land whose streams did wind

More winningly than these,

Where finer shadows played behind

The clean-stemmed beechen trees.

The maidens there were deeper eyed,

The lads more swift and fair,

And angels walked at each one's side—

Would God that I were there!

Here daffodils are dressed in gold,

But there they wore the sun,

And here the blooms are bought and sold,

But there God gave each one.

There all roads led to fairyland

That here do lead to care,

And stars were lamps on Heaven's strand—

Would God, that I were there!

Here worship crawls upon her course

That there with larks would cope,

And here her voice with doubt is hoarse

That there was sweet with hope.

O land of Peace! my spirit dies

For thy once tasted air,

O earliest loss! O latest prize!

Would God that I were there!

From Life's enchantments,

Desire of place,

From lust of getting

Turn thou away, and set thy face

Toward the wilderness.

The tents of Jacob

As valleys spread,

As goodly cedars,

Or fair lign aloes, white and red,

Shall share thy wilderness.

With awful judgments,

The law, the rod,

With soft allurements

And comfortable words, will God

Pass o'er the wilderness.

The bitter waters

Are healed and sweet,

The ample heavens

Pour angel's bread about thy feet

Throughout the wilderness.

And Carmel's glory

Thou thoughtest gone,

And Sharon's roses,

The excellency of Lebanon

Delight thy wilderness.

Who passeth Jordan

Perfumed with myrrh,

With myrrh and incense?

Lo! on his arm Love leadeth her

Who trod the wilderness.

Some folks as can afford,

So I've heard say,

Sets up a sort of cross

Right in the garden way

To mind 'em of the Lord.

But I, when I do see

Thic apple tree

An' stoopin' limb

All spread wi' moss,

I think of Him

And how he talks wi' me.

I think of God

And how he trod

That garden long ago:

He walked, I reckon, to and fro

And then sat down

Upon the groun'

Or some low limb

What suited Him

Same as you see

On many a tree,

And on this very one

Where I at set o' sun

Do sit and talk wi' He.

An' mornings, too, I rise an' come

An' sit down where the branch be low;

A bird do sing, a bee do hum,

The flowers in the border blow,

An' all my heart's so glad an' clear

As pools be when the sun do peer:

As pools a laughin' in the light

When mornin' air is swep' an' bright,

As pools what got all Heaven in sight

So's my heart's cheer

When He be near.

He never pushed the garden door,

He left no footmark on the floor;

I never heard 'Un stir nor tread

An' yet His Hand do bless my head,

And when 'tis time for work to start

I takes Him with me in my heart.

And when I die, pray God I see

At very last thic apple tree

An' stoopin' limb,

An' think o' Him

And all He been to me.

I know you. You will hail the huge release,

Saying the sheathing of a thousand swords,

In silence and injustice, well accords

With Christmas bells. And you will gild with grease

The papers, the employers, the police,

And vomit up the void your windy words

To your new Christ; who bears no whip of cords

For them that traffic in the doves of peace.

The feast of friends, the candle-fruited tree,

I have not failed to honour. And I say

It would be better for such men as we

And we be nearer Bethlehem, if we lay

Shot dead on snows scarlet for Liberty,

Dead in the daylight; upon Christmas Day.

When I came back to Fleet Street,

Through a sunset-nook at night,

And saw the old Green Dragon

With the windows all alight,

And hailed the old Green Dragon

And the Cock I used to know,

Where all the good fellows were my friends

A little while ago.

I had been long in meadows,

And the trees took hold of me,

And the still towns in the beech-woods,

Where men were meant to be;

But old things held; the laughter,

The long unnatural night,

And all the truth the talk in hell,

And all the lies they write.

For I came back to Fleet Street,

And not in peace I came;

A cloven pride was in my heart,

And half my love was shame.

I came to fight in fairy tale,

Whose end shall no man know—

To fight the old Green Dragon

Until the Cock shall crow!

Under the broad bright windows

Of men I serve no more,

The groaning of the old great wheels

Thickened to a throttled roar;

All buried things broke upwards;

And peered from its retreat,

Ugly and silent, like an elf,

The secret of the street.

They did not break the padlocks,

Or clear the wall away.

The men in debt that drank of old

Still drink in debt to-day;

Chained to the rich by ruin,

Cheerful in chains, as then

When old unbroken Pickwick walked

Among the broken men.

Still he that dreams and rambles

Through his own elfin air,

Knows that the street's a prison,

Knows that the gates are there:

Still he that scorns or struggles,

Sees frightful and afar

All that they leave of rebels

Rot high on Temple Bar.

All that I loved and hated,

All that I shunned and knew,

Clears in broad battle lightening;

Where they, and I, and you,

Run high the barricade that breaks

The barriers of the Street,

And shout to them that shrink within,

The Prisoners of the Fleet!

Passionate peace is in the sky

And on the snow in silver sealed

The beasts are perfect in the field

And men seem men so suddenly

But take ten swords, and ten times ten,

And blow the bugle in praising men

For we are for all men under the sun

And they are against us every one

And misers haggle, and mad men clutch

And there is peril in praising much

And we have the terrible tongues un-curled

That praise the world to the sons of the world.

The idle humble hill and wood

Are bowed about the sacred Birth

And for one little while the earth

Is lazy with the love of good

But ready are you and ready am I

If the battle blow and the guns go by

For we are for all men under the sun

And they are against us every one

For the men that hate herd altogether

To pride and gold and the great white feather

And the thing is graven in star and stone

That the men that love are all alone.

Hunger is hard and time is tough

But bless the beggars and kiss the kings

For hope has broken the heart of things

And nothing was ever praised enough

But hold the shield for a sudden swing

And point the sword in praising a thing

For we are for all men under the sun

And they are against us every one

And mime and merchant, thane and thrall,

Hate us because we love them all

Only till Christmas time goes by

Passionate peace is in the sky.

As I looked out one May morning,

I saw the tree-tops green;

I said: "My crown I will lay down

And live no more a queen."

Then I tripped down my golden steps

All in my silken gown,

And when I stood in the open wood,

I met some gipsies brown.

"O gentle, gentle gipsies,

That roam the wide world through,

The dandelion is brave and gay,

And loves to grow beside the way;

A braver thing was never seen

To praise the grass for growing green;

You never saw a gayer thing,

To sit and smile and praise the Spring.

The children with their simple hearts,

The lazy men that come in carts,

The little dogs that lollop by,

They all have seen its shining eye:

And every one of them would say,

They never saw a thing so gay.

Like to islands in the seas,

Stand our personalities—

Islands where we always face

One another's watering-place.

When we promenade our sands

We can hear each other's bands,

We can see on festal nights

Red and green and purple lights,

Gilt pavilions in a row,

Stucco houses built for show.

But our eyes can never reach

Further than the tawdry beach,

Never can they hope to win

To the wonders far within:

Jagged rocks against the sky

Where the eagles haunt and cry,

Forests full of running rills,

Darkest forests, sunny hills,

Hollows where a dragon lowers,

Sweet and unimagined flowers.

Here lies a most beautiful lady,

Light of step and heart was she:

I think she was the most beautiful lady

That ever was in the West Country.

But beauty vanishes; beauty passes;

However rare—rare it be;

And when I crumble who will remember

This lady of the West Country?