Works

As when of old some sorceress threw
O'er the moon's face a sable hue,
To drive unseen her magic chair,
At midnight, through the darken'd air;
Wise people, who believed with reason...

Tune - "Rinn Meudial mo Mhealladh."


I.

As I was a-wand'ring ae midsummer e'enin',
The pipers and youngsters were making their game;
Amang them I spied my faithless fause lover,...

A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,
With doors that none but the wind ever closes,
Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;
It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.
...

Long, long ago, in that heroic time
When I, a coy and modest youth, was shot
Out on this dust-heap of careers and crime
To try and learn what's what,

I had a servitor, a swarthy knave,...

The heart of the rulers is sick, and the high-priest covers his head:
For this is the song of the quick that is heard in the ears of the dead.

The poor and the halt and the blind are keen and mighty and fleet:...

Now praise the Gods of Time and Chance
That bring a heart's desire,
And lay the joyous roads of France
Once more beneath the tyre,
So numbered by Napoleon,
The veriest ass can spy...

Fair Freedom's ship, too long adrift -
Of every wind the sport -
Now rigged and manned, her course well planned,
Sails proudly out of port;
And fluttering gaily from the mast
This motto is unfurled,...

The world may rage without,
Quiet is here;
Statesmen may toil and shout,
Cynics may sneer;
The great world - let it go -
June warmth be March's snow,
I care not - be it so
Since I am here....

'Tis time to sing of roses: of roses all ablow,
To every vagrant passing breeze they dip a courtesy low,
'Tis time to sing of roses! for June is here, you know.
...

Sons of the South, awake! arise!
Sons of the South, and do.
Banish from under your bonny skies
Those old-world errors and wrongs and lies.
Making a hell in a Paradise
That belongs to your sons and you....

I.

Whatever the path may be, my dear,
Let us follow it far away from here,
Let us follow it back to Yester-Year,
Whatever the path may be:
Again let us dream where the land lies sunny,...

Oh would I were the roses, that lie against her hands,
The heavy burning roses she touches as she stands!
Dear hands that hold the roses, where mine would love to be,...

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither doth stray...

A Specimen of Clare's rough drafts

In a huge cloud of mountain hue
The sun sets dark nor shudders through
One single beam to shine again
Tis night already in the lane
...

That hour when thou and Grief were first acquainted
Thou wrotest, "Come, for I have lookt on death."
Piteous I held my indeterminate breath
And sought thee out, and saw how he had painted...

Captive! Is there a hell to him like this?
A taunt more galling than the Huron's hiss?
He - proud and scornful, he - who laughed at law,
He - scion of the deadly Iroquois,...

The treacherous sands had caught our boat,
And held it with a strong embrace
And death at our imprisoned crew
Was sternly looking face to face.

With anxious hearts, but failing strength,...

A Poem On The Happy Restoration And Return Of His Sacred Majesty Charles Ii., 1660.

"Jam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna."--VIRG.

"The last great age, foretold by sacred rhymes,...

The quiet August noon has come,
A slumberous silence fills the sky,
The fields are still, the woods are dumb,
In glassy sleep the waters lie.

And mark yon soft white clouds that rest...

As we look back at our lost Used-to-Be,
'The light that never was on land or sea'
Touches the distant mountain peaks with gold,
And through the glass of memory we behold
Such blossoms as grow not on any lea....