Works

My soul, lost in the music's mist,
Roamed, rapt, 'neath skies of amethyst.
The cheerless streets grew summer meads,
The Son of Phoebus spurred his steeds,
And, wand'ring down the mazy tune,...

That day, in the slipping of torsos and straining flanks on the bloodied ooze of fields plowed by the iron,
And the smoke bluish near earth and bronze in the sunshine floating like cotton-down,...

I heard an old, familiar air
Strummed idly by a careless hand,
Yet in the melody were rare,
Sweet echoings from childhood land.

The well-remembered mother touch,
The wise denials and consents,...

The creek went down with a broken song,
'Neath the sheoaks high;
The waters carried the song along,
And the oaks a sigh.

The song and the sigh went winding by,
Went winding down;...

The first time that Peter denied his Lord
He shrank from the cudgel, the scourge and the cord,
But followed far off to see what they would do,
Till the cock crew, till the cock crew,...

I sang a song at dusking time
Beneath the evening star,
And Terence left his latest rhyme
To answer from afar.

Pierrot laid down his lute to weep,
And sighed, "She sings for me."...

I made a hundred little songs
That told the joy and pain of love,
And sang them blithely, tho' I knew
No whit thereof.

I was a weaver deaf and blind;
A miracle was wrought for me,...

West wind, blow from your prairie nest,
Blow from the mountains, blow from the west.
The sail is idle, the sailor too;
O! wind of the west, we wait for you.
Blow, blow!
I have wooed you so,...

A plummet of the changing universe,
Far-cast, I flare
Through gulfs the sun's uncharted orbits bind,
And spaces bare
That intermediate darks immerse
By road of sun nor world confined....

Now this is the song of a prison, a song of a gaol or jug,
A ballad of quod or of chokey, the ultimate home of the mug.
The yard where the Foolish are drafted; Hell's school where the harmless are taught;...

Low as a lute, my love, beneath the call
Of storm, I hear a melancholy wind;
The memorably mournful wind of yore
Which is the very brother of the one
That wanders, like a hermit, by the mound...

The centuries found me to nations unknown,
My people have crowned me and made me a throne;
My royal regalia is love, truth, and light,
A girl called Australia, I've come to my right.
...

Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts,
Thick breaks the red flame.
All Etna heaves fiercely
Her forest-clothed frame.

Not here, O Apollo!
Are haunts meet for thee....

The God of Fair Beginnings
Hath prospered here my hand,
The cargoes of my lading,
And the keels of my command.
For out of many ventures
That sailed with hope as high,...

Blue-eyed was Elf the minstrel,
With womanish hair and ring,
Yet heavy was his hand on sword,
Though light upon the string.

And as he stirred the strings of the harp
To notes but four or five,...

And you, ye stars,
Who slowly begin to marshal,
As of old, in the fields of heaven,
Your distant, melancholy lines!
Have you, too, survived yourselves?
Are you, too, what I fear to become?...

AT the edge of All the Ages
A Knight sate on his steed,
His armor red and thin with rust
His soul from sorrow freed;
And he lifted up his visor
From a face of skin and bone,...

Silent, oh Moyle, be the roar of thy water,
Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose,
While, murmuring mournfully, Lir's lonely daughter
Tells to the night-star her tale of woes....

By the walk of the willows I pour'd out my theme,
The breath of the evening scarce dimpled the stream;
By the waters I stood, like an image of Woe,
And my tears, like the tide, seem'd to tremble and flow.
...

The sun is rising dimly red,
The wind is wailing low and dread;
From his cliff the eagle sallies,
Leaves the wolf his darksome valleys;
In the mist the ravens hover,
Peep the wild dogs from the cover,...