From the cool and dark-lipped furrows breathes a dim delight
Through the woodland’s purple plumage to the diamond night.
Aureoles of joy encircle every blade of grass
Where the dew-fed creatures silent and enraptured pass:
And the restless ploughman pauses, turns, and wondering
Deep beneath his rustic habit finds himself a king;
For a fiery moment looking with the eyes of God
Over fields a slave at morning bowed him to the sod.
Blind and dense with revelation every moment flies,
And unto the Mighty Mother, gay, eternal, rise
All the hopes we hold, the gladness, dreams of things to be.
One of all thy generations, Mother, hails to thee!
Hail! and hail! and hail for ever: though I turn again
From thy joy unto the human vestiture of pain.
I, thy child, who went forth radiant in the golden prime
Find thee still the mother-hearted through my night in time;
Find in thee the old enchantment, there behind the veil
Where the Gods my brothers linger, Hail! for ever, Hail!
Æolian Harp.
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
O pale green sea,
With long pale purple clouds above—
What lies in me like weight of love?
What dies in me
With utter grief, because there comes no sign
Through the sun-raying West, or the dim sea-line?
O salted air,
Blown round the rocky headlands chill—
What calls me there from cove and hill?
What calls me fair
From Thee, the first-born of the youthful night?
Or in the waves is coming through the dusk twilight?
O yellow Star,
Quivering upon the rippling tide—
Sendest so far to one that sigh’d?
Bendest thou, Star,
Above where shadows of the dead have rest
And constant silence, with a message from the blest?
The Fairies.
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!
Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.