Who that dwells by Mooni yet,
Feels in flowerful forest arches
Smiting wings and breath that parches
Where strong Summer’s path of march is,
And the suns in thunder set!
Housed beneath the gracious kirtle
Of the shadowy water-myrtle—
Winds may kiss with heat and hurtle,
He is safe by Mooni yet!
Days there were when he who sings
(Dumb so long through passion’s losses)
Stood where Mooni’s water crosses
Shining tracks of green-hair’d mosses,
Like a soul with radiant wings:
Then the psalm the wind rehearses—
Then the song the stream disperses—
Lent a beauty to his verses,
Who to-night of Mooni sings.
Ah, the theme—the sad, gray theme!
Certain days are not above me,
Certain hearts have ceased to love me,
Certain fancies fail to move me,
Like the effluent morning dream.
Head whereon the white is stealing,
Heart whose hurts are past all healing,
Where is now the first, pure feeling?
Ah, the theme—the sad, gray theme!
. . .
Still to be by Mooni cool—
Where the water-blossoms glister,
And by gleaming vale and vista
Sits the English April’s sister,
Soft and sweet and wonderful!
Just to rest beneath the burning
Outer world—its sneers and spurning—
Ah, my heart—my heart is yearning
Still to be by Mooni cool!
ARTHUR WILLIAM EDGAR O’SHAUGHNESSY
1844-1881
Ode
WE are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.