University of Virginia Library

Soft slept the beautiful autumn
In the heart, on the face of the Lough—
Its heart, whose pulses were hush'd,
Till you knew the life of the tide
But by a wash on the shore.
A whisper like whispering leaves
In green abysses of forest—
Its face, whose violet melted,
Melted in roseate gold—
Roses and violets dying
Into a tender mystery
Of soft impalpable haze.

Calm lay the woodlands of Fahan:
The summer was gone, yet it lay
On the gently yellowing leaves
Like a beautiful poem, whose tones
Are mute, whose words are forgot,
But its music sleepeth for ever
Within the music of thought.
The robin sang from the ash,
The sunset's pencils of gold
No longer wrote their great lines
On the boles of the odorous limes,
Or bathed the tree-tops in glory,
But a soft strange radiance there hung
In splinters of tenderest light.
And those who look'd from Glengollen
Saw the purple wall of the Scalp,
As if through an old church window
Stain'd with a marvellous blue.

From the snow-white shell strand of Inch
You could not behold the white horses
Lifting their glittering backs,
Tossing their manes on Dunree,
And the battle boom of Macammish
Was lull'd in the delicate air.
As in old pictures the smoke
Goes up from Abraham's pyre,
So the smoke went up from Rathmullen;
And beyond the trail of the smoke
Was a great deep fiery abyss
Of molten gold in the sky,
And it set a far track up the waters
Ablaze with gold like its own.
Over the fire of the sea,
Over the chasm in the sky,
My spirit as by a bridge
Of wonder went wandering on,
And lost its way in the heaven.

The ship is out on the lake,
The fisherman stands on the deck.
Rosy and violet sea;
Delicate haze in the distance;
Woodlands softer than summers;
Great golden eye of intense,
Concentrated, marvellous light;
Mysterious suggestions of thought;
Beautiful yearnings of fancy;
Wonderful imaginations;
Throbs of the being immortal
Who, prison'd deep in the heart,
Looks through the bars of the flesh:—
What recketh he of them all?
So to the reasonless eye
The Master's picture is only
A heap of colouring flat,
A strange confusion of strokes,
And thought, and study, and books,
And fine traditions of taste,
Are the glasses through which we survey
The beauty of natural things,
Till stars come splendidly out
That our eyes would have never beheld;
And cultured association
Hangeth to things that we see,
Hints and prophetical types,
Shadows grand and immortal,
Sacraments dim and delightful,
Of the things that the eye hath not seen.

O this ship and ocean of life!—
I, like the fisherman's boy,
On this awful beautiful sea
Gaze on a glory for ever
That I love not, nor know as I ought—
Sail on a beautiful deep,
Hear the soft washing of waves
That set to the shore of our God—
Look on purpureal hills,
Look on exquisite woods,
Soft, and most solemn and stately—
Sail toward the gate of Heaven,
Yet know it not, nor consider!

Hues more radiant by far
Than the Autumn ever could give
Move round my wondrous existence,
The daily deep of my life;
Prospects of things that shall be
In the country over the waves—
Memories, sorrows, and thoughts—
Noble and beautiful words,
Deeds that darkly reveal
The transparent measureless depth
Of the soul of our nature's Redeemer.
O for the day that shall teach me
To know their meaning at last,
Beyond the lake of this life,
Beyond the gate of the sunset
Upon the hyaline sea!