Works

WRITTEN AT THE CASTLE OF DUBLIN, 1699


My Lord,[1] to find out who must deal,
Delivers cards about,
But the first knave does seldom fail
To find the doctor out.
...

The Raven croak'd as she sate at her meal,
And the Old Woman knew what he said,
And she grew pale at the Raven's tale,
And sicken'd and went to her bed.
...

[1]

WRITTEN IN AUGUST, 1702


I

Once on a time, as old stories rehearse,
A friar would need show his talent in Latin;
But was sorely put to 't in the midst of a verse,...

Dawn

On skies still and starlit
White lustres take hold,
And grey flushes scarlet,
And red flashes gold.
And sun-glories cover
The rose shed above her,
Like lover and lover...

One tree, storm-twisted, like an evil hag,
The sea-wind in its hair, beside a path
Waves frantic arms, as if in wild-witch wrath
At all the world. Gigantic, grey as slag,...

[PARIS, 1896]


Oh, damsel fair at the Porte Maillot,
With the soft blue eyes that haunt me so,
Pray what should I do
When a girl like you
Bestows her smile, her glance, and her sigh...

As I near my lonely cottage,
At the close of weary day,
There's a little bit of gladness
Comes to meet me on the way:
Dimpled, tanned, and petticoated,
Innocent as angels are,...

We met her on the hillside green
Below old Castle Blarney;
Her name, she whispered, was Eileen,
Her home it was Killarney.

I see her yet, her Irish eyes
Blue gray as seas in summer,...

O Patrick Sarsfield, health be to you, since you went to France and your camps were loosened; making your sighs along with the king, and you left poor Ireland and the Gael defeated--Och ochone! O Patrick Sarsfield, it is a man ...

When first I saw our banner wave
Above the nation's council-hall,
I heard beneath its marble wall
The clanking fetters of the slave!
In the foul market-place I stood,
And saw the Christian mother sold,...

PART I.


I.

I lay and dreamed. The Master came,
In seamless garment drest;
I stood in bonds 'twixt love and shame,
Not ready to be blest.
...

A Broken rainbow on the skies of May,
Touching the dripping roses and low clouds,
And in wet clouds its scattered glories lost:
So in the sorrow of her soul the ghost
Of one great love, of iridescent ray,...

Absent from thee I languish still;
Then ask me not, when I return?
The straying fool 'twill plainly kill
To wish all day, all night to mourn.

Dear! from thine arms then let me fly,...

1. Come, blitheful neatherds, let us lay
A wager who the best shall play,
Of thee or I, the roundelay
That fits the business of the day.

Chor. And Lalage the judge shall be,...

Roses ruddy and roses white,
What are the joys that my heart discloses?
Sitting alone in the fading light
Memories come to me here tonight
With the wonderful scent of the big red roses.
...

TO ---

You like the trifling triolet:
Well, here are three or four.
Unless your likings I forget,
You like the trifling triolet.
Against my conscience I abet
A taste which I deplore;...

Too many, Lord, abuse thy grace,
In this licentious day;
And while they boast they see thy face,
They turn their own away.


Thy book displays a gracious light
That can the blind restore;...

That night, that night,
That song, that song!
Will such again be evened quite
Through lifetimes long?

No mirth was shown
To outer seers,
But mood to match has not been known...

Tarry thou yet, late lingerer in the twilight's glory:
Gay are the hills with song: earth's faery children leave
More dim abodes to roam the primrose-hearted eve,...

O the precipice Titanic
Of the congregated Fall,
And the angle oceanic
Where the deepening thunders call -
And the Gorge so grim,
And the firmamental rim!
Multitudinously thronging...