Fires
The little fires that Nature lights -
The scilla's lamp, the daffodil -
She quenches, when of stormy nights
Her anger whips the hill.
The fires she lifts against the cloud -
The irised bow, the burning tree -
She batters down with curses loud,
Nor cares that death should be.
The fire she kindles in the soul -
The poet's mood, the rebel's thought -
She cannot master, for their coal
In other mines is wrought
The Blind Man At The Fair
O TO be blind!
To know the darkness that I know.
The stir I hear is empty wind,
The people idly come and go.
The sun is black, tho’ warm and kind,
The horsemen ride, the streamers blow
Vainly in the fluky wind,
For all is darkness where I go.
The cattle bellow to their kind,
The mummers dance, the jugglers throw,
The thimble-rigger speaks his mind—
But all is darkness where I go.
I feel the touch of womankind,
Their dresses flow as white as snow;
But beauty is a withered rind
For all is darkness where I go.
Last night the moon of Lammas shined,
Rising high and setting low;
But light is nothing to the blind—
All, all is darkness where they go.
White roads I walk with vacant mind,
White cloud-shapes round me drifting slow,
White lilies waving in the wind—
And darkness everywhere I go.
On Waking
SLEEP, gray brother of death,
Has touched me,
And passed on.
I arise, facing the east—
Pearl-doored sanctuary
From which the light,
Hand-linked with dew and fire,
Dances.
Hail, essence, hail!
Fill the windows of my soul
With beauty:
Pierce and renew my bones:
Pour knowledge into my heart
As wine.
Cualann is bright before thee.
Its rocks melt and swim:
The secret they have kept
From the ancient nights of darkness
Flies like a bird.
What mourns?
Cualann’s secret flying.
A lost voice
In endless fields.
What rejoices?
My voice lifted praising thee.
Praise! Praise! Praise!
Praise out of the trumpets, whose brass
Is the unyoked strength of bulls;
Praise upon the harp, whose strings
Are the light movement of birds;
Praise of leaf, praise of blossom,
Praise of the red-fibred clay;
Praise of grass,
Fire-woven veil of the temple;
Praise of the shapes of clouds;
Praise of the shadows of wells;
Praise of worms, of fetal things,
And of things in time’s thought
Not yet begotten.
To thee, queller of sleep,
Looser of the snare of death.
