Rose o’ the world, they may talk their fill,
But dreams are good, and my life stands still
While the neighbours talk by their fires astir:
But my fiddle knows: and I talk to her.
April in Ireland.
She hath a woven garland all of the sighing sedge,
And all her flowers are snowdrops grown on the winter’s edge:
The golden looms of Tir na n’ Og wove all the winter through
Her gown of mist and raindrops shot with a cloudy blue.
Sunlight she holds in one hand, and rain she scatters after,
And through the rainy twilight we hear her fitful laughter.
She shakes down on her flowers the snows less white than they,
Then quicken with her kisses the folded “knots o’ May.”
She seeks the summer-lover that never shall be hers,
Fain for gold leaves of autumn she passes by the furze,
Though buried gold it hideth: she scorns her sedgy crown,
And pressing blindly sunwards she treads her snowdrops down.
Her gifts are all a fardel of wayward smiles and tears,
Yet hope she also holdeth, this daughter of the years—
A hope that blossoms faintly set upon sorrow’s edge:
She hath a woven garland of all the sighing sedge.
The Wind Among the Reeds.
NORA HOPPER
Mavrone, Mavrone! the wind among the reeds.
It calls and cries, and will not let me be;
And all its cry is of forgotten deeds
When men were loved of all the Daoine-Sidhe.
O Shee that have forgotten how to love,
And Shee that have forgotten how to hate,
Asleep ’neath quicken boughs that no winds move,
Come back to us ere yet it be too late.