A Song Of The Lilac
Above the wall that's broken,
And from the coppice thinned,
So sacred and so sweet
The lilac in the wind!
And when by night the May wind blows
The lilac-blooms apart,
The memory of his first love
Is shaken on his heart.
In tears it long was buried,
And trances wrapt it round;
O how they wake it now,
The fragrance and the sound!
For when by night the May wind blows
The lilac-blooms apart,
The memory of his first love
Is shaken on his heart.
Irish Peasant Song
I try to knead and spin, but my life is low the while.
Oh, I long to be alone, and walk abroad a mile;
Yet if I walk alone, and think of naught at all,
Why from me that's young should the wild tears fall?
The shower-sodden earth, the earth-colored streams,
They breathe on me awake, and moan to me in dreams,
And yonder ivy fondling the broke castle-wall,
It pulls upon my heart till the wild tears fall.
The cabin-door looks down a furze-lighted hill,
And far as Leighlin Cross the fields are green and still;
But once I hear the blackbird in Leighlin hedges call,
The foolishness is on me, and the wild tears fall!
A Seventeenth-Century Song
She alone of Shepherdesses
With her blue disdayning eyes,
Wo'd not hark a Kyng that dresses
All his lute in sighes:
Yet to winne
Katheryn,
I elect for mine Emprise.
None is like her, none above her,
Who so lifts my youth in me,
That a littel more to love her
Were to leave her free!
But to winne
Katheryn,
Is mine utmost love's degree.
Distaunce, cold, delay, and danger,
Build the four walles of her bower;
She's noe Sweete for any stranger,
She's noe valley flower:
And to winne
Katheryn,
To her height my heart can Tower!
Uppe to Beautie's promontory
I will climb, not loudlie call
Perfect and escaping glory
Folly, if I fall:
Well to winne
Katheryn!
To be worth her is my all.
A Footnote To A Famous Lyric
TRUE love’s own talisman, which here
Shakespeare and Sidney failed to teach,
A steel-and-velvet Cavalier
Gave to our Saxon speech:
Chief miracle of theme and touch
That upstart enviers adore:
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.
No critic born since Charles was king
But sighed in smiling, as he read:
“Here ’s theft of the supremest thing
A poet might have said!”
Young knight and wit and beau, who won,
Mid war’s adventure, ladies’ praise,
Was ’t well of you, ere you had done,
To blight our modern bays?
O yet to you, whose random hand
Struck from the dark whole gems like these,
Archaic beauty, never planned
Nor reared by wan degrees,
Which leaves an artist poor, and art
An earldom richer all her years;
To you, dead on your shield apart,
Be “Ave!” passed in tears.
How shall this singing era spurn
Her master, and in lauds be loath?
Your worth, your work, bid us discern
Light exquisite in both.
’T was virtue’s breath inflamed your lyre,
Heroic from the heart it ran;
Nor for the shedding of such fire
Lives since a manlier man.
And till your strophe sweet and bold
So lovely aye, so lonely long,
Love’s self outdo, dear Lovelace! hold
The pinnacles of song.
A Friend's Song For Simoisius
The breath of dew, and twilight's grace,
Be on the lonely battle-place;
And to so young, so kind a face,
The long, protecting grasses cling!
(Alas, alas,
The one inexorable thing!)
In rocky hollows cool and deep,
The bees our boyhood hunted sleep;
The early moon from Ida's steep
Comes to the empty wrestling-ring.
(Alas, alas,
The one inexorable thing!)
Upon the widowed wind recede
No echoes of the shepherd's reed,
And children without laughter lead
The war-horse to the watering.
(Alas, alas,
The one inexorable thing!)
Thou stranger Ajax Telamon!
What to the loveliest hast thou done,
That ne'er with him a maid may run
Across the marigolds in spring?
(Alas, alas,
The one inexorable thing!)
With footstep separate and slow
The father and the mother go,
Not now upon an urn they know
To mingle tears for comforting.
(Alas, alas,
The one inexorable thing!)
The world to me has nothing dear
Beyond the namesake river here:
O Simois is wild and clear!
And to his brink my heart I bring;
(Alas, alas,
The one inexorable thing!)
My heart no more, if that might be
Would stay his waters from the sea,
To cover Troy, to cover me,
To save us from the perishing.
(Alas, alas,
The one inexorable thing!)
