Blessed the Dead in Spirit, our brave dead
Not passed, but perfected:
Who tower up to mystical full bloom
From self, as from a known alchemic tomb;
Who out of wrong
Run forth with laughter and a broken thong;
Who win from pain their strange and flawless grant
Of peace anticipant;
Who cerements lately wore of sin, but now,
Unbound from foot to brow,
Gleam in and out of cities, beautiful
As sun-born colours of a forest pool
Where Autumn sees
The splash of walnuts from her thinning trees.
Though wondered-at of some, yea, feared almost
As any chantry ghost,
How sight of these, in hermitage or mart,
Makes glad a wistful heart!
For life's apologetics read most true
In spirits risen anew,
Like larks in air
To whom flat earth is all a heavenward stair,
And who from yonder parapet
Scorn every mortal fret,
And rain their sweet bewildering staves
Upon our furrow of fresh-delvèd graves.
If thus to have trod and left the wormy way
Makes men so wondrous gay,
So stripped and free and potently alive,
Who would not his infirmity survive,
And bathe in victory, and come to be
As blithe as ye,
Saints of the ended wars? Ah, greeting give;
Turn not away, too fugitive:
But hastening towards us, hallow the foul street,
And sit with us at meat,
And of your courtesy, on us unwise
Fix oft those purer eyes,
Till in ourselves who love them dwell
The same sure light ineffable:
Till they who walk with us in after years
Forgetting time and tears
(As we with you), shall sing all day instead:
"How blessed are the Dead!"
[Two Irish Peasant Songs]
I. IN LEINSTER
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-coloured 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!
II. IN ULSTER
'Tis the time o' the year, if the quicken-bough be staunch,
The green like a breaker rolls steady up the branch,
And surges in the spaces, and floods the trunk, and heaves
In jets of angry spray that is the under-white of leaves;
And from the thorn in companies the foamy petals fall,
And waves of jolly ivy wink along a windy wall.
'Tis the time o' the year the marsh is full of sound,
And good and glorious it is to smell the living ground.
The crimson-headed catkin shakes above the pasture-bars,
The daisy takes the middle field and spangles it with stars,
And down the hedgerow to the lane the primroses do crowd,
All coloured like the twilight moon, and spreading like a cloud!
'Tis the time o' the year, in early light and glad,
The lark has a music to drive a lover mad;
The rocks are dripping nightly, the breathèd damps arise,
Deliciously the freshets cool the grayling's golden eyes,
And lying in a row against the chilly north, the sheep
Inclose a place without a wind for tender lambs to sleep.
'Tis the time o' the year I turn upon the height
To watch from my harrow the dance of going light;
And if before the sun be hid, come slowly up the vale
Honora with her dimpled throat, Honora with her pail,
Hey, but there's many a March for me, and many and many a lass!—
I fall to work and song again, and let Honora pass.