I never felt my own essay "On saying Good-Bye" so profoundly aux tréfonds du coeur. The sun was a clear globe of blood which we caught hanging over Ben Edar, with a trail of pure blood vibrating to us across the waves. It dropped into darkness before we left the deck. Some lines came to me, suggested by a friend who thought the mood cynical.
As the sun died in blood, and hill and sea
Grew to an altar, red with mystery,
One came who knew me (it may be over-much)
Seeking the cynical and staining touch,
But I, against the great sun's burial
Thought only of bayonet-flash and bugle-call,
And saw him as God's eye upon the deep,
Closed in the dream in which no women weep,
And knew that even I shall fall on sleep.
EPIGRAM
If grief, like fire, smoked up against our sight,
The Earth were scarfèd in eternal night.
EARLY POEMS
TO YOUNG IRELAND
(WRITTEN IN 1899)
Dead! art thou dead or sleepest, in this blank, twilight time,
When hearts are sere and pithless? Land of the sword and lyre!
Thy waxen lips are silent, thy brow is bound with rime,
Hast thou late wed with winter, child of earth's primal fire?
The sheathèd blade rusts foully, through bitter, barren years,
And harp and pen are bond slaves, thralls to thy children's shame.
We garner cockle harvests, vain words and little fleers.
From waste lands sown with rancour, search them with proving flame!
We droop'd, stark sons of warfare, we blushed and slunk from day,
While Love and Truth and Honour died in mere fretful fume.
Free brain, free brawn, is given us, then sweep we from our way
These shamers of our mother, this idle, noisome spume.
For, lo! an army gathers around a standard clean;
I gird me dinted armour, and press to touch the throng.
Hark! Hark! The minstrels' war-hymn in very strength serene,
My harp is harsh of utterance, yet take a pupil's song.
Then stout heart join our battle! who hail an eastern sun,
Our toil shall set this people upon earth's purest height.
Then faint heart join our battle! and if our sands be run,
At least we caoin a swan-lay upon the edge of night.
SOWING
(WRITTEN IN 1899)