University of Virginia Library

previous section The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere
next section
103

III. PART III.

105

Prologue.

PARVULI EJUS.

In the night, in the night, O my Country, the stream calls out from afar:
So swells thy voice through the ages, sonorous and vast:
In the night, in the night, O my Country, clear flashes the star:
So flashes on me thy face through the gloom of the past.
I sleep not; I watch: in blows the wind ice-wing'd, and ice-finger'd:
My forehead it cools and slakes the fire in my breast;
Though it sighs o'er the plains where oft thine exiles look'd back, and long linger'd,
And the graves where thy famish'd lie dumb and thine outcasts find rest.
For up from those vales wherein thy brave and thy beautiful moulder,
And on through the homsteads waste and the temples defiled,
106

A voice goes forth on that wind, as old as the Islands and older,
‘God reigns: at His feet earth's Destiny sleeps like a child.’

IN RUIN RECONCILED.

A.D. 1660.

I heard a Woman's voice that wailed
Between the sandhills and the sea:
The famished sea-bird past me sailed
Into the dim infinity.
I saw on boundless rainy moors
Far off I saw a great Rock loom;
The grey dawn smote its iron doors;
And then I knew it for a Tomb.
Two queenly shapes before the grate
Watched, couchant on the barren ground;
Two regal Shades in ruined state,
One Gael; one Norman; both discrowned.

THE CHANGED MUSIC.

I

The shock of meeting clans is o'er:
The knightly or the native shout
Pursues no more by field or shore
From rath to cairne, the ruined rout.
107

O'er dusty stalls old banners trail
In mouldering fanes: while far beneath
At last the Norman and the Gael
Lie wedded in the caves of death.

II

No more the Bard-song! dead the strains
That mixed defiance, grief, and laugh:
Old legends haunt no more the plains,
Half saintly and barbaric half.
Changed is the music. Sad and slow
Beyond the horizon's tearful verge
The elegiac wailings flow
The fragments of the broken dirge.

THE MINSTREL OF THE LATER DAY.

I

What art thou, O thou Loved and Lost
That, fading from me, leav'st me bare?
The last trump of a vanquished host
Far off expiring on the air
So cheats in death the listener's ear
As thou dost cheat this aching heart:—
To me thy Past looked strangely near;
Distant and dim seems that thou art.

II

O Eire! the things I loved in thee
Were dead long years ere I was born:
108

Yet still their shadows lived for me
An evening twilight like the morn;
But daily now with vulgarer hand
The Present sweeps those phantoms by:—
Like annals of an alien land
Thy history's self appears to die.

ODE. THE ‘CURSE OF CROMWELL’;

OR, THE DESOLATION OF THE WEST.

In trance I roamed that Land forlorn,
By battle first, then famine worn;
I walked in gloom and dread:
The Land remained: the hills were there:
The vales: but few remained to share
That realm untenanted.
Far-circling wastes, far-bending skies;
Clouds as at Nature's obsequies
Slow trailing scarf and pall:
In whistling winds on creaked the crane:
Grey lakes upstared from moor and plain
Like eyes on God that call.
Turn where I might, no blade of green
Diversified the tawny scene:
Bushless the waste, and bare:
A dusky red the hills as though
Some deluge ebbing years ago
Had left but seaweed there.
109

Dark red the vales: that single hue
O'er rotting swamps an aspect threw
Monotonous yet grand:
Long-feared—for centuries in decay—
Like a maimed lion there it lay,
What once had been a Land.
Yet, day by day, as dropt the sun
A furnace glare through vapours dun
Illumed each mountain's head:
Old tower and keep their crowns of flame
That hour assumed; old years of shame
Like fiends exorcised, fled.
That hour, from sorrow's trance awaking,
My soul, like day from darkness breaking
With might prophetic fired
To those red hills and setting suns
Returned antiphonal response
As gleam by gleam expired.
And in my spirit grew and gathered
Knowledge that Ireland's worst was weathered
Her last dread penance paid;
Conviction that for earthly scath
In world-wide victories of her Faith
Atonement should be made.
That hour as one who walks in vision
Of God's ‘New Heavens’ I had fruition
And saw, and inly burned:
And I beheld the multitude
Of those whose robes were washed in blood
Saw chains to sceptres turned!
110

And I saw Thrones, and Seers thereon
Judging, and Tribes like snow that shone
And diamond towers high-piled,
Towers of that City theirs at last
Through tribulations who have passed,
And theirs, the undefiled.
A Land became a Monument!
Man works; but God's concealed intent
Converts his worst to best:
The first of Altars was a Tomb—
Ireland! thy grave-stone shall become
God's Altar in the West!

PEACE.

Seraph that from the blue abyss
O'erlook'st the storms round earth that roll
While we, by fragments wildered, miss
The dread perfection of the whole
Draw near at last! A moment lean
Upon that earth's tumultuous breast
Thy hand heart-healing, and serene
And grant the anguished planet rest!
111

THE BALLAD OF THE LADY TURNED BEGGAR.

[_]

The Irish who fought for Charles I., and whose estates were confiscated on that account, looked in vain, with a few exceptions, for their restoration on the accession of Charles II. The widow of one of these Royalists, Lord Roche, in her old age used to be seen begging in the streets of Cork.

I.

‘Drop an alms on shrunken fingers,’ faintly with a smile she said;
But the smile was not of pleasure, and unroselike was the red:
‘Fasts wear thin the pride fantastic;—one I left at home lacks bread.’

II.

Lady! hard is the beginning—so they say—of shameless sinning:
Ah but, loss disguised in winning, easier grows it day by day,
May thy shamefaced, sinless pleading to the unhearing or the unheeding
Lacerate less an inly bleeding bosom ere those locks grow grey;
Locks whose midnight once was lighted with the diamond's changeful ray!

III.

Silks worn bare with work's abusing; cheek made wan with hailstorm's bruising;
Eye its splendour slowly losing; state less stately in decay;
112

Chanting ballad or old ditty year by year she roam'd the city:
Love at first is kin to pity; pity to contempt, men say;
Wonder lessen'd, reverence slacken'd, as the raven locks grew grey.

IV.

What is that makes sadness sadder? What is that makes madness madder?
Shame, a sharper-venomed adder, gnaws when looks once kind betray!
‘She is poor: the poor are common! 'Twas a countess: 'tis a woman;
Looks she has at times scarce human: England! there should be her stay:
'Twas for Charles the old lord battled—Charles and England—so men say.’

V.

Charles! Whitehall! the wine, the revel! No, she sinks not to that level!
Mime or pander; king or devil; she will die on Ireland's shore!
Ne'er, till Portsmouth's brazen forehead grows with virtuous blushes florid
Will she pass that gate abhorrèd, climb that staircase, tread that floor;
Let that forehead wear the diamond which Lord Roche's widow wore!
113

VI.

Critic guest through Ireland wending, careless praise with cavil blending,
Wonder not, in old man bending, or in beggar boys at play,
Wonder not at aspect regal, princely front or eye of eagle:
Common these where baying beagle, or the wirehair'd wolf-hound grey
Chased old nobles once through woodlands which the ignoble made their prey.
Centuries three that sport renewed they—thrice a century—so men say.

THE IRISH SLAVE IN BARBADOES.

Beside our shieling spread an oak,
Close by, a beech, its brother:
Between them rose the pale blue smoke;
They mingled each with other.
The gold mead stretched before our door
Beyond the church-tower taper;
The river wound into the moor
In distance lost and vapour.
Amid green hazels, cradle-swung,
Our babe with rapture dancing,
Watched furry shapes the roots among,
With beaded eyes forth glancing.
114

Ah, years of blessing! Rich no more
Yet grateful and contented,
The lands that Stafford from us tore
No longer we lamented.
So fared it till that night of woe
When, from the mountains blaring,
The deep horns rang ‘The foe, the foe!’
And fires were round us glaring.
He went: next day our hearth was cold,
Then came that week of slaughter:—
I woke within the ship's black hold
And heard the rushing water.
Ah! those that seemed our life can die
Yet we live on and wither!
Fling out thy fires, thou Indian sky:
Toss all thy torches hither!
Send, salt morass and swamps of cane
Send forth your ambushed fever!
O death, unstrain at last my chain
And bid me rest for ever!

ARCHBISHOP PLUNKET.

(THE LAST VICTIM OF THE ‘POPISH PLOT.’)

July 11, A.D. 1681.

[_]

‘The Earl of Essex went to the king (Charles II.) to apply for a pardon, and told his Majesty “the witnesses must needs be perjured, as what they swore could not possibly be true.” But his Majesty answered in a passion, “Why did you not declare this, then, at the trial? I dare pardon nobody— his blood be upon your head, and not mine!”’—Haverty's History of Ireland. See also Cardinal Moran's Life of Archbishop Plunket.

115

Why crowd ye windows thus, and doors?
Why climb ye tower and steeple?
What lures you forth, O senators?
What goads you here, O people?
Here there is nothing worth your note—
'Tis but an old man dying:
The noblest stag this season caught
And in the old nets lying!
Sirs, there are marvels, but not here:
Here's but the threadbare fable
Whose sense nor sage discerns, nor seer;
Unwilling is unable!
That prince who lurk'd in bush and brake
While bloodhounds bay'd behind him
Now, to his father's throne brought back,
In pleasure's mesh doth wind him.
The primate of that race, whose sword
Stream'd last to save that father,
To-day is reaping such reward
As Irish virtues gather.
His Faith King Charles partakes—and hides!
Ah, caitiff crowned, and craven!
Not his to breast the rough sea tides;
He rocks in peaceful haven.
Great heart! Pray well in heaven this night
From dungeon loosed, and hovel,
For souls that blacken in God's light,
That know the Truth, yet grovel.
116

A BALLAD OF SARSFIELD;

OR, THE BURSTING OF THE GUNS.

A.D. 1690.

Sarsfield rode out the Dutch to rout,
And to take and break their cannon;
To mass went he at half-past three,
And at four he cross'd the Shannon.
Tirconnel slept. In dream his thoughts
Old fields of victory ran on;
And the chieftains of Thomond in Limerick's towers
Slept well by the banks of Shannon.
He rode ten miles and he cross'd the ford,
And couch'd in the wood and waited;
Till, left and right, on march'd in sight
That host which the true men hated.
‘Charge!’ Sarsfield cried; and the green hill-side
As they charged replied in thunder;
They rode o'er the plain and they rode o'er the slain,
And the rebel rout lay under!
He burn'd the gear the knaves held dear,
For his King he fought, not plunder;
With powder he cramm'd the guns, and ramm'd
Their mouths the red soil under.
The spark flash'd out like a nation's shout
The sound into heaven ascended;
The hosts of the sky made to earth reply
And the thunders twain were blended!
117

Sarsfield rode out the Dutch to rout,
And to take and break their cannon;—
A century after, Sarsfield's laughter
Was echoed from Dungannon.

A BALLAD OF ATHLONE;

OR, HOW THEY BROKE DOWN THE BRIDGE.

Does any man dream that a Gael can fear?
Of a thousand deeds let him learn but one!
The Shannon swept onward, broad and clear
Between the leaguers and worn Athlone.
‘Break down the bridge!’ Six warriors rushed
Through the storm of shot and the storm of shell:
With late, but certain, victory flushed
The grim Dutch gunners eyed them well.
They wrenched at the planks 'mid a hail of fire:
They fell in death, their work half done:
The bridge stood fast; and nigh and nigher
The foe swarmed darkly, densely on.
‘O who for Erin will strike a stroke?
Who hurl yon planks where the waters roar?’
Six warriors forth from their comrades broke
And flung them upon that bridge once more.
Again at the rocking planks they dashed;
And four dropped dead; and two remained:
The huge beams groaned, and the arch downcrashed;—
Two stalwart swimmers the margin gained.
118

St. Ruth in his stirrups stood up and cried,
‘I have seen no deed like that in France!’
With a toss of his head Sarsfield replied
‘They had luck, the dogs! 'Twas a merry chance!’
O many a year upon Shannon's side
They sang upon moor and they sang upon heath
Of the twain that breasted that raging tide,
And the ten that shook bloody hands with Death!

THE REQUITAL.

I

We too had our day; it was brief: it is ended—
When a King dwelt among us; no strange King but ours!
When the shout of a People delivered ascended
And shook the broad banner that hung on his towers.
We saw it like trees in a summer breeze shiver;
We read the gold legend that blazoned it o'er:
‘To-day; now or never! To-day and for ever!’
O God, have we seen it to see it no more?

II

How fared it that season, our lords and our masters,
In that spring of our freedom how fared it with you?
Did we trample your Faith? Did we mock your disasters?
We restored but his own to the leal and the true.
119

Ye had fallen? 'Twas a season of tempest and troubles:
But against you we drew not that knife ye had drawn;
In the war-field we met; but your prelates and nobles
Stood up 'mid the senate in ermine and lawn!

THE LAST MAC CARTHYMORE.

Ön thy woody heaths, Muskerry—Carbery, on thy famish'd shore,
Hands hurl'd upwards, wordless wailings, clamour for Mac Carthymore!
He is gone; and never, never shall return to wild or wood
Till the sun burns out in blackness and the moon descends in blood.
He, of lineage older, nobler, at the latest Stuart's side
Drew once more his father's sword for Charles in blood of traitors dyed:
Once again the stranger fattens where Mac Carthys ruled of old,
For a later Cromwell triumphs in the Dutchman's muddier mould.
Broken boat and barge around him, sea-gulls piping loud and shrill,
Sits the chief where bursts the breaker, and laments the sea-wind chill
120

In a barren northern island dinn'd by ocean's endless roar
Where the Elbe with all his waters streams between the willows hoar.
Earth is wide in hill and valley; palace courts and convent piles
Centuries since received thine outcasts, Ireland, oft with tears and smiles:
Wherefore builds this grey-hair'd Exile on a rockisle's weedy neck?
Ocean unto ocean calleth; inly yearneth wreck to wreck!
He and his, his Church and Country, King and kinsmen, house and home,
Wrecks they are like broken galleys strangled by the yeasty foam:
Nations past and nations present are or shall be soon as these—
Words of peace to him come only from the breast of raging seas.
Clouds and sea-birds inland drifting o'er the sea-bar and sand-plain;
Belts of mists for weeks unshifting; plunge of devastating rain;
Icebergs as they pass uplifting aguish gleams through vapours frore,
These, long years, were thy companions, O thou last Mac Carthymore!
When a rising tide at midnight rush'd against the downward stream
Rush'd not then the clans embattled meeting in the Chieftain's dream?
121

When once more that tide exhausted died in murmurs towards the main
Died not then once more his slogan, ebbing far o'er hosts of slain?
Pious river! let us rather hope the low monotonies
Of thy broad stream seaward toiling and the willowbending breeze
Charm'd at times a midday slumber, tranquillised tempestuous breath,
Music last when harp was broken, requiem sad and sole in death.

A HUNDRED YEARS;

OR, RELIGIO NOVISSIMA.

There is an Order by a northern sea,
Far in the West, of rule and life more strict
Than that which Basil reared in Galilee,
In Egypt Paul, in Umbria Benedict.
Discalced it walks; a stony land of tombs
A strange Petræa of late days, it treads!
Within its court no high-tossed censer fumes;
The night-rain beats its cells, the wind its beds.
Before its eyes no brass-bound, blazon'd tome
Reflects the splendour of a lamp high-hung:
Knowledge is banish'd from her earliest home
Like wealth: it whispers psalms that once it sung.
It is not bound by the vow celibate
Lest, through its ceasing, anguish too might cease;
122

In sorrow it brings forth; and Death and Fate
Watch at Life's gate, and tithe the unripe increase.
It wears not the Franciscan's cord or gown;
The cord that binds it is the Stranger's chain:
Scarce seen for scorn, in fields of old renown
It breaks the cold; another reaps the grain.
Year after year it fasts; each third or fourth
So fasts that fasts of men to it are feast;
Then of its brethren many in the earth
Are laid unrequiem'd like the mountain-beast.
Where are its cloisters? Where the felon sleeps!
Where its novitiate? Where the last wolf died!
From sea to sea its vigil long it keeps—
Stern Foundress! is its Rule not mortified?
Thou that hast laid so many an Order waste,
A Nation is thine Order! It was thine
Wide as a realm that Order's seed to cast,
And undispensed sustain its discipline.

QUOMODO SEDET SOLA.

How sits the City lonely and uncrowned;
(Thus the old Priests renewed that Hebrew song)
She sits a widowed queen in weepings drowned;
Her friends revile her who should mourn her wrong.
Behold, her streets are silent and her gate;
And as the sea her sorrows are increased.
123

The Daughter of my People, desolate;
And no man mounteth to her solemn feast.
To them that brought her comfort she hath said,
‘My children strove, and each by each is slain:
I turned from Him to Whom my youth was wed:
Therefore the heathen hosts my courts profane.
‘The bruised reed He brake not; neither cried,
Nor strove, nor smote: He set the prisoners free:
But sons of mine oppressed His poor, and lied,
Nor walked in judgment and in equity.’
Thus sang the Priests, and ended, ‘Christ was led
Lamb-like to death. His mouth He opened not:
He gave His life to raise from death the dead:
That God Who sends our penance shared our lot.’
 

‘The Lamentations.’

SPES UNICA.

I

Between two mountains' granite walls one star
Shines in this sea-lake quiet as the grave;
The ocean moans against its rocky bar;
That star no reflex finds in foam or wave.

II

Saints of our country: if—no more a Nation—
Vain are henceforth her struggles, from on high
Fix in the bosom of her desolation
So much the more that Hope which cannot die!
124

SEDERUNT IN TERRA.

‘The Lord hath spread His net about her feet
And down hath hurled her wall in heaps around;’
Thus sang her Elders, as their breasts they beat,
Her virgins with their garlands on the ground.
‘The head of Sion to the dust is brought:
Her Kings are slain or scattered by the sword:
Her ancient Law is made a thing of nought:
Her Prophets find not Vision from the Lord.
‘Because they showed thee not thy sin of old,
Servants this day have lordship o'er thy race:
From thine own wells thou draw'st thy drink for gold;
And Gentile standards mock thy Holy Place.
‘Thy little children made an idle quest—
“Where—where is bread?” As wounded men they lay
In every street. Upon their mothers' breast
At last they breathed their souls in death away.’
The Priests made answer, ‘Christ on Olivet
Prayed to His Father. Pray thou well this day.
His chalice passed Him not. Therefore thy debt
Is cancelled. Watch with Him one hour, and pray.’
125

DEEP CRIETH UNTO DEEP.

I

Beside that Eastern sea—there first exalted—
Thus sang, not Bard, but Priest, ‘The Cross lies low!’
Sad St. Sophia, 'neath thy roofs gold-vaulted
Who kneels this hour? the blind and turban'd Foe!

II

O Eire! a sister hast thou in thy sorrow!
If thine the earlier, hers the bitterer moan:
She weeps to-day; great Rome may weep tomorrow!
Claim not that o'er-proud boast—to weep alone.

ADHÆSIT LINGUA LACTANTIS.

‘Thy woes have made thy heart as iron hard:
Lo! the sea-monsters yield their young the breast;
But thou the gates of thine increase hast barred;
And scorn'st to grant thine offspring bread or rest.
‘Thy lordly ones within thy womb conceived
And nursed in scarlet, wither is thy drouth;
The tongue of him, thy suckling babe, hath cleaved
To that dry skin which roofed his milkless mouth.
‘Put down thy lips into the road-side dust;
And whisper softly through that dust, and say,
“Although He slay me, yet in God I trust;
He made, and can re-make me. Let Him slay!”
126

‘Behold! to tarry for the Lord is good;
His faithfulness for ever shall remain;
His mercies as the mornings are renewed:
The man that waits Him shall not wait in vain.
‘Within thy bones He made His fire to burn
That thou might'st hate the paths thy feet have trod:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, return;’
Thus sang the Priests. ‘Thy refuge is thy God.’

THE PROMISE.

I

As the church-bells rolled forth their sonorous Evangel,
Their last ere the Stranger usurped the old pile,
I heard 'mid their clangour the voice of an Angel
Give words to that music which rushed o'er the Isle:
‘In thousand-fold echoes, thy God, unforsaking,
That peal shall send back from the heavenly bourne:
O hearts that are broken, O hearts that are breaking,
Be strong, for the glories gone by shall return.’

II

Thenceforth in the wood and the tempests that din it
In the thunder of mountains the moan of the shore,
That chime I can hear and the clear song within it
The voice of that Angel who sings evermore,
127

‘The Faith shall grow vast though the Faithful grow fewer;
By sorrow uplifted ascendeth their Throne
Who resist the ill deed but not hate the ill-doer,
Who forgive, unpartaking, all sins but their own.’

[Only a reed that sighed—]

Only a reed that sighed—
And the Poplar grove hard by
From a million of babbling mouths replied,
‘Who cares, who cares? Not I!’
Only a dove's low moan—
And the new-gorged raven near
Let fall from the red beak the last white bone,
And answered, half croak, half sneer.
Only the Silk of the Kine
Far driven on the foot that bled:
And only old Argial's bleeding pine;
And the Black Rose that once was red.

ODE.

THE CYCLIC RENOVATION.

I

The unvanquish'd Land puts forth each year
New growth of man and forest;
Her children vanish; but on her,
Stranger, in vain thou warrest!
128

She wrestles, strong through hope sublime,
Thick darkness round her pressing
Wrestles with God's great Angel, Time
And wins, though maim'd, the blessing.

II

As night draws in what day sent forth
As Spring is born of Winter
As flowers that hide in parent earth
Re-issue from the centre,
Our Land takes back her wasted brood,
Our Land in respiration,
Breathes from her deep heart unsubdued
A renovated nation!

III

A Nation dies: a People lives:—
Through Signs Celestial ranging
A Race's Destiny survives
Unchanged, yet ever changing:
The many-centuried Wrath goes by;
But while earth's tumult rages
‘In cœlo quies.’ Burst and die
Thou storm of temporal ages!

IV

Burst, and thine utmost fury wreak
On things that are but seeming!
First kill; then die; that God may speak,
And man surcease from dreaming!
That Love and Justice strong as love
May be the poles unshaken
Round which a world new-born may move
And Truth that slept may waken!
129

THE SPIRITUAL RENOVATION.

I.

The Watchman stood on the turret:
He looked to the south and the east:
But the Kings of the south were sleeping,
And the eastern Kings at feast.
Not yet is thy help: not yet
Hast thou paid the uttermost debt:
Not reached is the worst, thou Weeper:—
Though thy feet—God meteth their tread—
Have dinted the green sea's bed,
There are depths in the mid sea deeper!
Not all God's waves and His billows
As yet have gone over thy head,
That Penance and Faith should be lords o'er Death,
And that Hell should be vanquishèd.

II.

I heard thine Angel that sighed
Three times, ‘Descend to the deep.’
I heard at his side the Archangel that cried
‘To the depth that is under the deep.’
Who made thee and shaped thee of old
It is He in the darkness that lays thee
With the cerements around thee ninefold;
That Earth, when the waking is thine,
May look on His Hand divine,
And answer, ‘None other might raise thee

III.

Noble, and Chieftain and Prince,
They were thine in thy day, and died:
130

The head and the members were scattered long since!—
Shall a sinew, or nerve abide?
So long as of that dead clay
Two atoms together cleave
God's trumpet that calls thee thou canst not obey,
His promise receive and believe.
So long as the seed, the husk,
The body of death, and the prison,
Holds out, undissolved, in the dusk
So long in his pains and his chains
The unglorified Spirit remains;
The New Body unrisen.

A SONG OF THE BRIGADE.

[_]

The Irish Brigade, consisting originally of soldiers of James II., took service with more than one continental sovereign. In many a land it made the name of Ireland famous. The Brigade was recruited from Ireland till the latter part of the eighteenth century, and it is said that, from first to last, nearly 500,000 men belonged to it.

I snatched a stone from the bloodied brook
And hurled it at my household door!
No farewell of my love I took:
I shall see my friend no more.
I dashed across the churchyard bound:
I knelt not by my parents' graves:
There rang from my heart a clarion's sound
That summoned me o'er the waves.
No land to me can native be
That strangers trample and tyrants stain:
131

When the valleys I loved are cleansed and free
They are mine, they are mine again!
Till then, in sunshine or sunless weather,
By Seine and Loire, and the broad Garonne,
My war-horse and I roam on together
Wherever God wills. On! on!

A SONG OF THE BRIGADE.

River that through this purple plain
Toilest—once redder—to the main
Go, kiss for me the banks of Seine;
Tell him I loved, and love for aye,
That his I am though far away,
More his than on the marriage-day.
Tell him thy flowers for him I twine
When first the slow sad mornings shine
In thy dim glass; for he is mine.
Tell him when evening's tearful light
Bathes those dark towers on Aughrim's height
There where he fought in heart I fight.
A freeman's banner o'er him waves!
So be it! I but tend the graves
Where freemen sleep whose sons are slaves.
Tell him I nurse his noble race
Nor weep save o'er one sleeping face
Wherein those looks of his I trace.
132

For him my beads I count when falls
Moonbeam or shower at intervals
Upon our burn'd and blacken'd walls:
And bless him! bless the bold Brigade—
May God go with them, horse and blade,
For Faith's defence, and Ireland's aid!

SONG.

I

Not always the winter! not always the wail!
The heart heals perforce where the spirit is pure!
The apple smells sweet in the glens of Imayle;
The blackbird sings loud by the Slane and the Suir!
There are princes no more in Kincora and Tara,
But the gold-flower laughs out from the Mague at Athdara;
And the Spring-tide that wakens the leaf in the bud,
Sad Mother, forgive us, shoots joy through our blood!

II

Not always the winter! not always the moan!
Our fathers, they tell us, in old time were free:
Free to-day is the stag in the woods of Idrone,
And the eagle that fleets from Loch Lene o'er the Lee!
The blue-bells rise up where the young May hath trod;
The souls of our martyrs are reigning with God!
Sad Mother, forgive us! yon skylark no choice
Permits us! From heaven he is crying ‘Rejoice!’
133

A SONG OF THE BRIGADE.

A.D. 1706.

I

What sound goes up among the Alps!
The shouts of Irish battle!
The echoes reach their snowy scalps;
From cliff to cliff they rattle!
In vain he strove—the Duke—Eugene:—
That flying host to rally:
The squadrons green, they swept it clean
Beyond Marsiglia's valley.

II

Who fixed their standards on thy wall,
Long-leaguered Barcelona!
Unfallen, who saw the bravest fall?
Reply, betrayed Cremona!
O graves of Sarsfield and of Clare!
O Ramillies and Landen,
Their brand we bear: their faith we share
Their cause we'll ne'er abandon!

III

Years passed: again went by the Bard
The law that banned him braving:
Where blood of old had stained the sward
Summer corn was waving:
134

The tempest of a sudden joy
Uplifting stave and stanza,
The valleys echoed ‘Fontenoy,’
The wild sea-shore ‘Almanza!’
 

O'Brien, Lord Clare, fell at the battle of Ramillies, A.D. 1706; Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan, on the field of Landen, A.D. 1693. Catching in his hand the blood that trickled from his death-wound, he exclaimed, ‘O that this had been for Ireland!’

THE SEA-WATCHER.

I

The crags lay dark in strange eclipse:
From waves late flushed the glow was gone:
The topsails of the far-off ships
Alone in lessening radiance shone:
Against a stranded boat a maid
Stood leaning gunwale to her breast,
As though its pain that pressure stayed:
Her large eyes rested on the west.

II

‘Beyond the sea! beyond the sea!
The weeks, the months, the years go by!
Ah! when will some one say of me
“Beyond the sky! beyond the sky!”
And yet I would not have thee here
To look upon thy country's shame:
For me the tear: for me the bier:
For thee fair field, and honest fame.
135

THE FRIENDLY BLIGHT.

I

A march-wind sang in a frosty wood
'Twas in Oriel's land on a mountain brown
While the woodman stared at the hard black bud,
And the sun through mist went down:
‘Not always,’ it sang, ‘shall triumph the wrong
For God is stronger than man, they say:’
Let no man tell of the March-wind's song,
Till comes the appointed day.

II

‘Sheaf after sheaf upon Moira's plain,
And snow upon snow on the hills of Mourne!
Full many a harvest-moon must wane
Full many a Spring return!
The Right shall triumph at last o'er wrong:
Yet none knows how, and none the day:’—
The March-wind sang; and bit 'mid the song
The little black bud away!

III

‘Blow south-wind on through my vineyard blow!’
So pray'd that land of the palm and vine;
O Eire, 'tis the north wind and wintry snow
That strengthen thine oak and pine!
The storm breaks oft upon Uladh's hills;
Oft bursts the wave on the stones by Saul;
In God's time cometh the thing God wills
For God is the Lord of all!
136

THE NEW RACE.

I

O ye who have vanquish'd the Land and retain it,
How little ye know what ye miss of delight!
There are worlds in her heart, could ye seek it or gain it,
That would clothe a true Noble with glory and might.
What is she, this Isle which ye trample and ravage,
Which ye plough with oppression and reap with the sword,
But a harp, never strung, in the hall of a savage
Or a fair wife embraced by a husband abhorr'd?

II

The chiefs of the Gael were the People embodied;
The chiefs were the blossom, the People the root!
Their conquerors the Normans, high-soul'd, and high-blooded,
Grew Irish at last from the scalp to the foot.
But ye! ye are hirelings and satraps not Nobles!
Your slaves, they detest you; your masters, they scorn!
The river lives on; but its sun-painted bubbles
Pass quick, to the rapids insensibly borne.
137

THE IRISH EXILE AT FIESOLE.

I

Here to thine exile rest is sweet:
Here, Mother-land, thy breath is near him!
Thy pontiff, Donat, raised his seat
On these fair hills that still revere him;
Like him that thrill'd the Helvetian vale,
St. Gall's, with rock-resounded anthem:
For their sakes honour'd is the Gael:
The peace they gave to men God grant them!

II

Far down in pomp the Arno winds
By domes the boast of old Religion;
The eternal azure shining blinds
Serene Ausonia's queenliest region.
Assunta be her name! for bright
She sits, assumed 'mid heavenly glories;
But ah! more dear, though dark like night,
To me, my loved and lost Dolores!

III

The mild Franciscans say—and sigh—
‘Weep not except for Christ's dear Passion!’
They never saw their Florence lie,
Like her I mourn, in desolation!
On this high crest they brood in rest,
The pines their Saint and them embowering,
While centuries blossom round their nest
Like those slow aloes seldom flowering.
138

IV

‘Salvete, flores Martyrum?’
Such was the Roman Philip's greeting
In banner'd streets with myrtles dumb
The grave-eyed English college meeting:
There lived an older martyr-land!
All realms revered her; none would aid her;
Or reaching forth a tardy hand
Enfeebled first, at last betrayed her!

V

Men named that land a ‘younger Rome!’
She lit the north with radiance golden;
Alone survives the Catacomb
Of all that Roman greatness olden!
Her Cathall at Taranto sate:
Virgilius! Saltzburgh was thy mission!
Who sow'd the Faith fast long, feast late;
Who reap'd retain unvex'd fruition.

VI

Peace settles on the whitening hair;
The heart that burned grows cold and colder;
My Resurrection spot is there
Where those Etrurian ruins moulder.
Foot-sore, by yonder pillar's base
My rest I make, unknown and lowly:
And teach the legend-loving race
To weep a Troy than theirs more holy.
139

WINTER SONG.

The high-piled cloud drifts on as in scorn
Like a ghost, half pining, half stately,
Or a white ice-island in silence borne
O'er seas congeal'd but lately.
With nose to the ground like a wilder'd hound
O'er wood-leaves yellow and sodden
On races the wind but cannot find
One sweet track where Spring hath trodden.
The moor is black; with frosty rime
The wither'd brier is beaded;
The sluggard Spring hath o'erslept her time,
The Spring that was never more needed.
What says the oak-leaf in the night-cold noon,
And the beech-stock scoffing and surly?
‘Who comes too soon is a witless loon
Like the clown that is up too early.’
But the moss grows fair when the trees are bare,
The dumb year finds a pillow there;
And beside it the fern with its green crown saith
‘Best bloometh the Hope that is rooted in death.’

GAIETY IN PENAL DAYS.

BEATI IMMACULATI.

‘The storm has roar'd by; and the flowers reappear
Like a babe on the battle-field born, the new year
Through wrecks of the forest looks up on the skies
With a smile like the windflower's, and violet eyes.
140

‘There's warmth in the sunshine; there's song in the wood:
There's faith in the spirit, and life in the blood;
We'll dance though the Stranger inherits the soil:
We'll sow though we reap not! For God be the toil!
‘O Earth that renewest thy beautiful youth!
“The meek shall possess thee!” Unchangeable Truth!
A childhood thou giv'st us 'mid grey hairs reborn
As the gates we approach of perpetual morn!’
In the halls of their fathers an alien held feast;
Their church was a cave and an outlaw their priest;
The birds have their nests and the foxes have holes—
What had these? Like a sunrise God shone in their souls!

DIRGE.

I

Ye trumpets of long-buried hosts
Peal, peal no longer in mine ears!
No more afflict me, wailing ghosts
Of princedoms quell'd and vanished years!
Freeze on my face, forbidden tears:
And thou, O heart whose hopes are dead
Sleep well, like hearts that sleep in lead
Embalmed 'mid royal sepulchres.

II

The stream that one time rolled in blood
A stainless crystal winds to-day:
141

Fresh scions of the branded wood
Detain the flying feet of May:
The linnet chants 'mid ruins grey;
The young lambs bound the graves among:—
O Mother-land! he does thee wrong
Who with thy playmates scorns to play.

UNA.

To the knee she stood 'mid rushes
And the broad, dark stream swept by her:
Smiles went o'er her, smiles and blushes
As the stranger's bark drew nigh her;
Near to Clonmacnoise she stood:
Shannon past her wound in flood.
By her side a wolf-hound wrestled
With a bright boy bold as Mars;
On her breast an infant nestled
Like to her, but none of hers;
A golden iris graced her hand—
All her gold was in that wand.
O'er the misty, moorish margin
Frown'd a ruin'd tower afar;
Some one said, ‘This peasant virgin
Comes from chieftains great in war!
Princes once had bow'd before her:
Now the reeds alone adore her!’
Refluent dropt, that bark on gliding,
The wave it heaved along the bank:
142

Like worldings still with fortune siding
The reed-beds with it backward sank.
Farewell to her! The rushing river
Must have its way. Farewell for ever!

DOUBLE-LIVED;

OR, RACES CROWNED.

I

Before the award, in those bright Halls
That rest upon the rolling spheres,
Like kingly patriarchs God instals
Long-suffering Races proved by years;
They stand, the counterparts sublime
Of shapes that walk this world of woe,
Triumphant there in endless prime
While militant on earth below.

II

As earth-mists build the snowy cloud
So Spirits risen, that conquered Fate,
Age after age up-borne in crowd,
That counterpart Assumed create:
Some form the statue's hand or head:
Some add the sceptre or the crown:
Till the great Image, perfected,
Smiles on its mortal semblance down.

III

There stand the Nations just in act,
Or cleansed by suffering, cleansed not changed:
143

They stand of martyr Souls compact,
Round heaven's crystalline bastions ranged.
Among those Gods Elect art thou,
My Country—loftier hour by hour!
The earthly Erin bleeds below:
The heavenly reigns and rules in power.

ADDUXIT IN TENEBRIS.

They wish thee strong: they wish thee great!
Thy royalty is in thy heart!
Thy children mourn thy widow'd state
In funeral groves. Be what thou art!
Across the world's vainglorious waste,
As o'er Egyptian sands, in thee
God's hieroglyph, His shade is cast,
A bar of black from Calvary.
Around thee many a land and race
Have wealth or sway or name in story;
But on that brow discrown'd we trace
The crown expiatory.

DIRGE.

I

O woods that o'er the waters breathe
A sigh that grows from morn till night;
O waters with your voice like death,
And yet consoling in your might;
144

Ye draw, ye drag me with a charm,
As when a river draws a leaf,
From silken court and citied swarm
To your cold homes of peace in grief.

II

In boyhood's pride I trod the shore
While slowly sank a crimson sun
Revealed at moments, hid once more
By rolling mountains gold or dun:
But now I haunt its marge when day
Hath laid his fulgent sceptre by,
And tremble over waters grey
Long windows of a hueless sky.

IRISH AIRS

I

On darksome hills thy songs I hear:—
Nor growths they seem of minstrel art
Nor wanderers from Urania's sphere,
But voices from thine own deep heart!
They seem thine own sad oracles
Not uttered by thy sons but thee,
Like waters forced through stony cells
Or winds from cave and hollow tree.

II

From thee what forced them? Futile quest!
What draws to widowed eyes the tears?
The milk to Rachel's childless breast?
The blood to wounds unstaunched of years?
145

Long cling the storm-drops—cling yet shake—
On cypress-spire and cedar's fan:
Long rust upon the guilty brake
The heart-drops of the murdered man.

HOPE IN DEATH.

I

Descend, O Sun, o'er yonder waste,
O'er moors and meads and meadows:
Make gold a world but late o'ercast;
With purple tinge the shadows!
Thou goest to bless some happier clime
Than ours; but sinking slowly
To us thou leav'st a hope sublime
Disguised in melancholy.

II

A Love there is that shall restore
What Death and Fate take from us;
A secret Love whose gift is more
Than Faith's authentic promise,
A Love that says, ‘I hide awhile
For sense, that blinds, is round you:’
O well-loved dead! ere now the smile
Of that great Love has found you!
146

THE DECREE.

I

Hate not the Oppressor! He fulfils
Thy destiny decreed—no more:
What cometh, that the Eternal wills:
Be ours to suffer and adore.
O Thou the All-Holy, Thou the All-Just!
Thou fling'st Thy plague upon the blast:
We hide our foreheads 'mid the dust
In penance till the wrath be past.

II

The nations sink, the nations rise
On the dread fount of endless Being,
Bubbles that burst beneath the eyes
Of Him the all-shaping and all-seeing.
Thou breath'st, and they are made! Behold,
Thy breath withdrawn they melt, they cease:
Our fathers were Thy Saints of old,
O grant at last their country peace!

SAINT BRIGID OF THE LEGENDS.

A BARD SONG.

A soft child-saint she lit the shade
With brightness more than human:
Her little hand was soft, they said,
As any breast of woman.
147

Through ways bemired to haunts of woe
She sped, nor hindrance heeded:
Yet still her foot retained its snow;
No stream her white robe needed.
It chanced one eve she moved, foot-bare,
Among the kine sweet-breathing,
With boughs the insect tribe to scare
Their hornèd foreheads wreathing.
Slowly on her their dark eyes grave
They rolled in sleepy pleasure
Like things by music charmed, and gave
Their milk in twofold measure.
That hour there passed a beggar clan
Through sultry fields on faring:
‘Come drink,’ she cried, ‘from pail and pan!’
That small hand was unsparing.
In wrath her Mother near them drew:
Those pails that late held nothing,
Like fountains tapped foamed up anew
And buzzed with milk-floods frothing!
O Saint, the favourite of the poor,
The afflicted, weak, and weary!
Like Mary's was that face she bore:
Men called her ‘Erin's Mary.’
In triple vision God to her
Revealed her country's story:
She saw the cloud its greatness blur
She saw, beyond, its glory!
148

Kildare of Oaks! thy quenchless Faith,
Her gift it was: she taught it!
The shroud Saint Patrick wore in death,
'Twas she, 'twas she that wrought it!
Thus sang they on the sunburnt land
Among the stacks of barley;
And singing, smiled, by breezes fanned
From Erin's dream-land early.

SAINT COLUMBA'S STORK.

A MINSTREL SONG.

Columba dashed into the war:
Heart-stricken then for penance prayed:
‘See thou thy native land no more:’—
The Hermit spake: the Saint obeyed.
He sailed: he reached an island green;
Alone he clomb its grassy steep:
Though dimly, Eire could still be seen:
Once more he launched into the deep.
Iona's soil at last he trod;
There, there once more, they say he mixed
His hymns of Eire with hymns of God
Standing with wide eyes southward fixed.
Three years went by. One stormy morn
He grasped a Monk that near him stood:
‘Go down to yonder beach forlorn
O'er which the northward sea-mists scud.
149

‘There, bleeding thou shalt find ere long
A Stork from Eire that loves her well
Sore wounded by the tempest's wrong:
Uplift and bear her to thy cell.
‘Three days that Stork shall be thy guest:
The fourth o'er yonder raging main
The exile, strong through food and rest,
Will seek her native Eire again.’
The Monk obeyed. The Stork he found,
And fed, three days. Those three days o'er
The exile, soaring, gazed around,
Then winged her to her native shore.
The Harper ended. Loud and shrill
They raised their shout and praised that Stork,
And praised the Saint that, exiled, still
Could sing for Eire; for God could work.

THE GRAVES.

In the Cambrian valleys with sea-murmurs haunted
The grave-yards at noontide are fresh with dawn-dew;
On the virginal bosom white lilies are planted
'Mid the monotone whisper of pine-tree and yew.
In the dells of Etruria, where all day long warbles
The night-bird, the faithful 'mid cloisters repose:
And the long cypress shadow falls black upon marbles
That cool aching hearts like the Apennines' snows.
150

In Ireland, in Ireland the wind ever sighing
Sings alone the death-dirge o'er the just and the good;
In the abbeys of Ireland the bones are round lying
Like blocks where the hewer stands hewing the wood.

THE LONG DYING.

The dying tree no pang sustains;
But, by degrees relinquishing
Companionship of beams and rains,
Forgets the balmy breath of Spring:
From off the enringèd trunk that keeps
His annual count of ages gone
Th' embrace of Summer slowly slips:
Still stands the giant in the sun:
His myriad lips, that suck'd of old
The dewy breasts of heaven, are dry;
His root remit the crag, the mould;
Yet painless is his latest sigh:
He falls; the forests round him roar;—
Ere long on quiet bank and copse
Untrembling moonbeams rest; once more
The startled babe his head down-drops:
But ah for one who never drew
From age to age a painless breath!
And ah the old wrong ever new!
And ah the many-centuried death
151

A BARD'S LOVE FOR ERIN.

I

I thought it was thy voice I heard;—
Ah no! the ripple burst and died;
Among cold reeds the night-wind stirr'd;
The yew-tree sigh'd; the earliest bird
Answer'd the white dawn far descried.

II

I thought it was a tress of thine
That grazed my cheek and touched my brow;—
Ah no! in sad but calm decline
'Twas but my ever grapeless vine
Slow-waving from the blighted bough.

III

O Eire, it is not ended! Soon,
Or late, thy flower renews its bud!
In sunless quarries still unhewn
Thy statue waits; thy sunken moon
Shall light once more the autumnal flood!

IV

Memory for me her hands but warms
O'er ashes of thy greatness gone;
Or lifts to heaven phantasmal arms,
Muttering of talismans and charms,
And grappling after glories flown.

V

Tired brain, poor worn-out palimpsest!
Sleep, sleep! man's troubles soon are o'er:—
152

When in dark crypts my relics rest
Star-high shall flash my Country's crest,
Where birds of darkness cannot soar!

UNREVEALED.

Grey Harper, rest!—O maid, the Fates
On those sad lips have press'd their seal!
Thy song's sweet rage but indicates
That mystery it can ne'er reveal.
Take comfort! Vales and lakes and skies,
Blue seas, and sunset-girded shore,
Love-beaming brows, love-lighted eyes,
Contend like thee. What can they more?

SHANID'S KEEP.

I

A Conqueror stood upon Shanid's brow
And, ‘Build me aloft,’ he cried,
‘A castle to rule o'er the meads below
From the hills to the ocean's side!’
In green Ardineer, far down, alone
A beggar girl sang her song,
A sorrowful dirge for a roof o'erthrown
And a fire stamped out by wrong.

II

The beggar girl's song in the wind was drowned:
A moment it lived: no more:
153

The Conqueror's castle went back to the ground,
Went back after centuries four:
The great halls crumbled from roof to moat;
The grey Keep alone remains:
But echoes still of the girl's song float
All over the lonely plains.

SAINT BRIGID OF THE CONVENTS.

She looked not on the face of man:
Nor husband hers, nor brother:
But where she passed the children ran
And hailed that Maid their Mother!
In haste she fled soft mead and grove
For Virtue's region hilly:
They called her, 'mid the birds, the Dove,
Among the flowers, the Lily.
In woods of Oriel—Leix's vales—
Her convent homes she planted
Where Erin's cloistered nightingales
Their nocturns darkling chanted.
By many a Scottish moorland wide,
By many an English river,
Men loved of old their ‘good Saint Bride;’
But Erin loves for ever!
A sword went forth; thy fanes they burn'd!
Sweet Saint, no anger fret thee!
There are that ne'er thy grace have spurned:
There are that ne'er forget thee!
154

Thus sang they while the autumnal glade
Exchanged green leaf for golden;
And later griefs were lighter made
By thought of glories olden.

IN FAR LANDS.

I see, I see the domes ascend
O Seville, o'er thy Guadalquiver:
I see thy breeze-touched cypress bend;
I hear thy moonlit palm-grove shiver:
I know that honour here to those
Who suffered for the Faith is given;
I know, I know that earthly woes
Are secret blessings crowned in heaven:
But ah! against Dunluce's crags
To watch our green sea-billows swelling!
And ah! once more to hear the stags
In Coona's stormy oakwoods belling!

SAINT COLUMBA'S FAREWELL.

A MINSTREL SONG.

The exiles gazed on headlands theirs no more,
Lough Swilly's mountain portals dimly seen:
Sing us that song Columba sang of yore
Then sang the Minstrel, 'mid the sad, serene.
155

Farewell to Aran Isle, farewell!
I steer for Hy: my heart is sore:
The breakers burst, the billows swell
'Twixt Aran Isle and Alba's shore.
Thus spake the Son of God, ‘Depart!’
O Aran Isle, God's will be done!
By Angels thronged this hour thou art:
I sit within my bark alone.
O Modan, well for thee the while!
Fair falls thy lot, and well art thou!
Thy seat is set in Aran's Isle:
Northward to Alba turns my prow.
O Aran, Sun of all the West!
My heart is thine! As sweet to close
Our dying eyes in thee as rest
Where Peter and where Paul repose!
O Aran, Sun of all the West!
My heart in thee its grave hath found:
He walks in regions of the blest
The man that hears thy church-bells sound!
O Aran blest, O Aran blest!
Accursed the man that loves not thee!
The dead man cradled in thy breast—
No demon scares him: well is he!
Each Sunday Gabriel from on high
For so did Christ our Lord ordain
Thy Masses come to sanctify
With fifty angels in his train.
156

Each Monday Michael issues forth
To touch with blood each sacred fane:
Each Tuesday cometh Raphael
To bless the hearth and bless the grain
Each Wednesday cometh Uriel,
Each Thursday Sariel, fresh from God;
Each Friday cometh Ramael
To bless thy stones and bless thy sod.
Each Saturday comes Mary,
Comes Babe in arm, 'mid heavenly hosts!
O Aran, near to heaven is he
That hears God's angels bless thy coasts!
The Minstrel sang, and ceased; while women's tears
Shone, sunset-brightened, on pure cheeks and pale;
And dreadful less became in children's ears
The hoarse sea-dirges, and the rising gale.
 

Iona.

Scotland.

ARBOR NOBILIS.

I

Like a cedar our greatness arose from the earth;
Or a plane by some broad-flowing river;
Like arms that give blessing its boughs it put forth:
We thought it would bless us for ever.
The birds of the air in its branches found rest;
The old lions couched in its shadow;
Like a cloud o'er the sea was its pendulous crest;
It murmur'd for leagues o'er the meadow.
157

II

Was a worm at its root? Was it lightning that charr'd
What age after age had created?
Not so! 'Twas the merchant its glory that marr'd
And the malice that, fearing it, hated.
Its branches lie splintered; the hollow trunk groans
Like a church that survives desolations;
But the leaves, scatter'd far when the hurricane moans,
For the healing are sent to the nations!

ST. COLUMBA OF THE LEGENDS.

A week ere yet her Saint was born
Columba's mother prayed alone—
Thus sang the Bard on Ascension Morn—
Then the Angel of Eire before her shone.
He lifted a Veil snow-white, yet red
With Roses wrought around and around:
And ‘These are the Wounds of Love,’ he said.
‘That heal the wounded, and wound hearts sound.
He dropped that Veil on her head; and lo!
A wind from God outstretched it wide;
And a golden glory suffused its snow;
And the heart of its Roses grew deeplier dyed.
Like a cloud of dawn on the breeze it flew;
Yet it clung to her holy head the while;
It spanned the woods, and the headlands blue;
It circled and girdled with joy the Isle!
158

And this was a sign that, come what might,
In gloom or glory, in good or ill,
Columba's Gospel with love and light
Should clasp and comfort his Erin still:
A sign, and a pledge, and a holy troth
That hath not failed her, and never can;
For God to Columba sware an oath
That Eire should be dear to the God made Man;
More dear as the centuries onward rolled,
When her bread should be shame, and grief her wine;
And mantled more closely with fold on fold
Of healing radiance and strength divine.
Thus sang to the vanquished the Bard Maelmire,
As the tide swelled up on the grassy shore
And the smooth sea filled with the sunset's fire:
He sang; and the weepers wept no more.

THE HERMIT'S COUNSEL.

I

Thus spake the hermit: Count it gain,
The scoff, the stab, the freezing fear:
Expiate on earth thine earthly stain;
The fire that cleanseth, find it here!
Nearest we stand to heavenly light
When girt by Purgatorial glooms:
That Church which crowns the Roman height
Three centuries trod the Catacombs!
159

II

But when thy God His Hand withdraws,
And all things round seem glad and fair,
Unchallenged Faith, impartial laws,
And wealth and honour, then beware!
Beware lest sin in splendour deck'd
Make null the years of holy sighs,
And God's great People, grief-elect,
Her birthright scorning, miss the prize.

EVENING MELODY.

Fresh eve, that hang'st in yon blue sky
On breeze-like pinions swaying,
And leav'st our earth reluctantly
Departing, yet delaying!
Along the beach the ripples rake;
Dew-drench'd the thicket flushes;
And last year's leaves in bower and brake
Are dying 'mid their blushes.
Is this the world we knew of yore,
Long bound in wintry whiteness
Which here consummates more and more
Its talismanic brightness?
To music wedded well-known lines
Let forth a hidden glory:
Thus, bathed in sunset, swells and shines
Lake, woodland, promontory.
160

New Edens pure from Adam's crime
Invite the just to enter;
The spheres of wrongfull Life and Time
Grow lustrous to their centre.
Rejoice, glad planet! Sin and Woe,
The void, the incompleteness,
Shall cease at last; and thou shalt know
The mystery of thy greatness!

CARO REQUIESCET.

Look forth, O Sun, with beam oblique
O'er crags and lowlands mellow;
The dusky beech-grove fire, and strike
The sea-green larch-wood yellow:
All round the deep, new-flooded meads
Send thy broad glories straying;
Each herd that feeds 'mid flowers and weeds
In golden spoils arraying:
Flash from the river to the bridge
Red glance with glance pursuing;
Fleet from low sedge to mountain ridge,
Whatever thou dost undoing:
Kiss with moist lip those vapoury bands
That swathe yon slopes of tillage;
Clasp with a hundred sudden hands
The gables of yon village:
161

But O, thus sharping to a point
O, brightening thus while dying,
Ere yet thou diest the graves anoint
Where my beloved are lying!
Ye shades that mount the moorland dells
Ascend, the tree tops dimming;
But leave those amethystine hills
Awhile in glory swimming!

THE SECRET OF POWER.

Dark, dark that grove at the Attic gate
By the sad Eumenides haunted
Where the Theban King in his blindness sat
While the nightingales round him chanted!
In a grove as dark of cypress, and bay
Upgrown to a forest's stature
In vision I saw at the close of day
A Woman of godlike feature.
She stood like a Queen, and her vesture green
Shone out as a laurel sun-lighted;
And she sang a wild song like a Mourner's keen
With an Angel's triumph united.
She sang like one whose grief is done;
Who has solved Life's dread enigma;
A beam from the sun on her brow was thrown
And I saw there the conquering Stigma.
162

EVENING MELODY.

O that the pines which crown yon steep
Their fires might ne'er surrender!
O that yon fervid knoll might keep
While lasts the world, its splendour!
Pale poplars on the breeze that lean
And in the sunset shiver
O that your golden stems might screen
For aye yon glassy river!
That yon white bird on homeward wing
Soft-sliding without motion
And now in blue air vanishing
Like snow-flake lost in ocean
Beyond our sight might never flee,
Yet forward still be flying,
And all the dying day might be
Immortal in its dying!
Pellucid thus in saintly trance
Thus mute in expectation
What waits the Earth? Deliverance?
Ah no! Transfiguration!
She dreams of that ‘New Earth’ divine
Conceived of seed immortal;
She sings ‘Not mine the holier shrine,
Yet mine the steps and portal!’
163

THE ‘OLD LAND.’

I

Ah, kindly and sweet, we must love thee perforce!
The disloyal, the coward alone would not love thee:
Ah, Mother of heroes! strong Mother! soft nurse!
We are thine while the large cloud swims onward above thee!
By thy hills ever-blue that draw Heaven so near;
By thy cliffs, by thy lakes, by thine ocean-lull'd highlands;
And more—by thy records disastrous and dear,
The shrines on thy headlands, the cells in thine islands!

II

Ah, well sings the thrush by Lixnaw and Traigh-li!
Ah, well breaks the wave upon Umbhall and Brandon!
Thy breeze o'er the upland blows clement and free
And o'er fields, once his own, which the hind must abandon.
A caitiff the noble who draws from thy plains
His all, yet reveres not the source of his greatness;
A clown and a serf 'mid his boundless domains
His spirit consumes in the prison of its straitness.

III

Through the cloud of its pathos thy face is more fair:
In old time thou wert sun-clad; the gold robe thou worest!
To thee the heart turns as the deer to her lair
Ere she dies—her first bed in the gloom of the forest.
164

Our glory, our sorrow, our Mother! Thy God
In thy worst dereliction forsook but to prove thee!
Blind, blind as the blindworm; cold, cold as the clod
Who seeing thee see not, possess but not love thee!

TO ETHNEA READING HOMER.

Ah, happy he who shaped the words
Which bind thee in their magic net;
Who draws from those old Grecian chords
The harmonies that charm thee yet!
Who waves from that illumined brow
The dark locks back;—upon that cheek
Pallid erewhile as Pindan snow
Makes thus the Pindan morning break!
'Tis he that fringes lids depress'd
With lashes heavier for a tear
And shakes that inexperienced breast
With womanhood. Upon the bier
Lies cold in death the hope of Troy;
Thou hear'st the Elders sob around,
The widow'd wife, the orphan'd boy,
The old grey King, the realm discrown'd.
Hadst thou but lived that hour by thee
Well wept had been the heroic dead;
The heroic hands well kissed; thy knee
Had propp'd the pallid princely head!
165

From thee Andromache had caught
Dirges more sweet; and she who burn'd
With self-accusing grief shame-fraught
A holier woe from thee had learn'd!
Ah child! Thy Troy in ruin lies
Like theirs! Her princes too are cold:
Again Cassandra prophesies
Vainly prophetic as of old.
Brandon to Ida's cloudy verge
Responds. Tirawley's kingless shore
Wails like the Lycian when its marge
Saintly Sarpedon trod no more.
Not Gods benign, like Sleep and Death
Who bore that shepherd-monarch home
But famine's tooth and fever's breath
Our exiles hunt o'er ocean's foam.
Peace reigns in heaven. The Fates each hour
Roll round earth's wheel through darkness vast:
Alone survives the Poet's power,
A manlike Art that from the past
Draws forth that line whose sanguine track
The wicked fear, the weak desert;
That clue which leads through centuries back
The patriot to his Country's heart.
166

GRATTAN.

I

God works through man, not hills or snows!
In man, not men, is the godlike power;
The man, God's potentate, God foreknows;
He sends him strength at the destined hour:
His Spirit He breathes into one deep heart:
His cloud He bids from one mind depart:
A Saint!—and a race is to God re-born!
A Man! One man makes a Nation's morn!

II

A man, and the blind land by slow degrees
Gains sight! A man, and the deaf land hears!
A man, and the dumb land like wakening seas
Thunders low dirges in proud, dull ears!
A man, and the People, a three days' corse,
Stands up, and the grave-bands fall off perforce;
One man, and the nation in height a span
To the measure ascends of the perfect man.

III

Thus wept unto God the land of Eire:
Yet there rose no man and her hope was dead:
In the ashes she sat of a burn'd-out fire;
And sackcloth was over her queenly head.
But a man in her latter days arose;
A Deliverer stepp'd from the camp of her foes:
He spake; the great and the proud gave way,
And the dawn began which shall end in day!
167

THE SECRET JOY.

O, blithesome at times is life perforce
When Death is the gate of Hope not Fear;
Rich streams lie dumb; over rough stones course
The runlets that charm the ear.
‘Her heart is hard; she can laugh,’ men say;
‘That light one can jest who has cause to sigh!’
Her conscience is light; and with God are they
She loves: they are safe—and nigh.
God's light shines brightest on cheeks grief-pale!
The song of the darkling is sad and dark:
That proud one boasts of her nightingale!
O Eire, keep thou thy lark!

INSIGHT.

Sharp stretch the shades o'er the sward close-bitten
Which the affluent meadows receive but half;
Truth lies clear-edged on the soul grief-smitten
Congeal'd there in epitaph.
A vision is thine by the haughty lost;
An Insight reserved for the sad and pure:
On the mountain cold in the grey hoar frost
Thy Shepherd's track lies sure!
168

SONG.

The Little Black Rose shall be red at last!
What made it black but the East wind dry
And the tear of the widow that fell on it fast?
It shall redden the hills when June is nigh!
The Silk of the Kine shall rest at last!
What drave her forth but the dragon-fly?
In the golden vale she shall feed full fast
With her mild gold horn, and her slow dark eye.
The wounded wood-dove lies dead at last:
The pine long-bleeding, it shall not die!
—This song is secret. Mine ear it pass'd
In a wind o'er the stone-plain of Athenry.
 

Mystical names applied to Ireland by her Bards.

Mystical names applied to Ireland by her Bards.

THE CLUE.

To one in dungeons bound there came,
The last long night before he died,
An Angel garlanded with flame
Who raised his hand and prophesied:
‘Thy life hath been a dream: but lo!
This night thine eyes shall see the truth:
That which thou thoughtest weal was woe;
And that was joy thou thoughtest ruth.
‘Thy Land hath conquer'd through her loss;
With her God's chief of Creatures plain'd,
169

The same who scaled of old the Cross
When Mary's self beneath remain'd.
‘Thou fought'st upon the righteous side:
Yet, being dust, thou wroughtest sin:
Once—twice—thy hand was raised in pride:
The Promised Land thou may'st not win;
‘But they, thy children, shall.’ Next morn
Around the Patriot-martyr press'd
A throng that cursed him. He in turn,
The sentenced, bless'd them—and was bless'd.
 

Dante's description of Holy Poverty.

ODE ON THE FIRST REPEAL OF THE PENAL LAWS.

A.D. 1778.

I

The hour has struck! at last in heaven
The golden shield an Angel smites!
On Erin's altars thunder-riven
A happier Destiny alights.
'Tis done that cannot be undone
The lordlier ages have begun;
The flood that widens as it flows
Is loosed; fulfilled the Triple Woes!

II

Once more the Faith uplifts her forehead
Star-circled to the starry skies:
170

Fangless at last, a snake abhorred,
Beneath her foot Oppression lies:
Above the waning moon of Time
The Apparition stands sublime
From hands immaculate, hands of light
Down scattering gifts of saintly might.

III

Long for her martyrs Erin waited:
They came at last. Rejoice this hour
Ye tonsured heads, or consecrated
That sank beneath the stony shower!
Thou Land for centuries dark and dumb
Arise and shine! thy light is come!
Return; for they are dead their knife
Who raised, and sought the young child's life.

IV

Again the wells of ancient knowledge
Shall cheer the thirsty lip and dry:
Again waste places, fane and college,
The radiance wear of days gone by!
Once more shall rise the Minster porch;
Once more shall laugh the village church
O'er plains that yield the autumnal feast
Once more to industry released!

V

Once more the far sea-tide returneth
And feeds the rivers of the Land:
Once more her heart maternal yearneth
With hopes the growth of memories grand.
Immortal longings swell her breast
Quickened from dust of Saints at rest:
171

Once more six centuries bud and flower
To share the triumph of this hour!

VI

Who was it called thee the Forsaken?
A consort judged? a Wife put by?
He at whose nod the heavens are shaken
'Tis He Who hails thee from on high.
‘I loved thee from of old: I saved:
Upon My palms thy name is graved:
With blood were sealed the bridal vows;
For lo, thy Maker is thy Spouse!’

VII

Who, who are those like clouds of morning
That sail to thee o'er seas of gold?
That fly, like doves, their exile scorning,
To windows known and loved of old?
To thee the Isles their hands shall raise;
Thy sons have taught them songs of praise;
And Kings rebuild thy wall, or wait
Beside thy never-closing gate.

VIII

As from the fig-tree, tempest-wasted
The untimely fruitage falleth crude,
So dropp'd around thee, blighted, blasted
Age after age thy sentenced brood.
To thee this day thine own are given:
Yet what are these to thine in heaven?
They left thee in thy years of pain:
Thy cause they pleaded—not in vain.
172

IX

Those years are o'er: made soft by distance
Old wars like war-songs soon will seem,
The aggression dire, the wild resistance
Put on the moonlight of a dream.
Ah, gentle Foes! If wholly past—
That Norman foe was friend at last!
Like him, the ill deed redress, recall—
In Erin's heart is room for all.

THE CAUSE.

I

The Kings are dead that raised their swords
In Erin's right of old;
The Bards that dash'd from fearless chords
Her name and praise lie cold:
But fix'd as fate her altars stand;
Unchanged, like God, her Faith;
Her Church still holds in equal hand
The keys of life and death.

II

As well call up the sunken reefs
Atlantic waves rush o'er
As that old time of native chiefs
And Gaelic Bards restore!
Things heavenly rise: things earthly sink:
God works through Nature's laws;
Sad Isle, 'tis He that bids thee link
Thine Action with thy Cause!
173

MEMORY.

‘They are past, the old days: let the past be forgotten:
Let them die the old wrongs and old woes that were ours
Like the leaves of the winter down-trampled and rotten
That light in the spring-time the forest with flowers.’
So sings the sweet voice! But the sad voice replieth;
‘Unstaunch'd is the wound while the insult remains;
The Tudor's black banner above us still flieth;
The Faith of our fathers is spurned in their fanes!
‘Distrust the repentance that clings to its booty!
Give the people their Church and the priesthood its right:
Till then, to remember the past is a duty,
For the past is our Cause, and our Cause is our might.’

ALL-HALLOWS; OR, THE MONK'S DREAM.

A PROPHECY.

I

I trod once more that place of tombs:
Death-rooted elder full in flower
Oppress'd me with its sad perfumes,
Pathetic breath of arch and tower:
174

The ivy on the cloister wall
Waved, gusty with a silver gleam:
The moon sank low: the billows' fall
In moulds of music shaped my dream.

II

In sleep a funeral chant I heard
A ‘De profundis’ far below;
On the long grass the rain-drops stirr'd
As when the distant tempests blow:
Then slowly, like a heaving sea,
The graves were troubled all around;
And two by two, and three by three,
The monks ascended from the ground.

III

From sin absolved, redeem'd from tears
There stood they, beautiful and calm,
The brethren of a thousand years
With lifted brows and palm to palm!
On heaven they gazed in holy trance;
Low stream'd their beards and tresses hoar:
And each transfigured countenance
The Benedictine impress bore.

IV

By Angels borne the Holy Rood
Encircled thrice the church-yard bound;
They paced behind it, paced in blood,
With bleeding feet, but foreheads crown'd;
And thrice they breathed that hymn benign,
Which angels sang when Christ was born;
And thrice I wept, ere tower or shrine
Had caught the first white beam of morn.
175

V

Down on the earth my brows I laid;
In these, His Saints, I worshipp'd God:
And then return'd that grief which made
My heart since youth a frozen clod:
‘O ye,’ I wept, ‘whose woes are past
Look round on all these prostrate stones!
To these can Life return at last?
Can Spirit lift once more these bones?’

VI

The smile of him the end who knows
Went, luminous, o'er them as I spake;
Their white locks shone like mountain snows.
O'er which the orient mornings break:
They stood: they pointed to the West:
And lo! where darkness late had lain
Rose many a kingdom's citied crest
Reflected in a kindling main!

VII

‘Not only these, the fanes o'erthrown,
Shall rise,’ they said, ‘but myriads more;
The seed, far hence by tempests blown,
Still sleeps on yon expectant shore.
Send forth, sad Isle, thy reaper bands!
Assert and pass thine old renown:
Not here alone—in farthest lands
For thee thy sons shall weave the crown.’

VIII

They spake; and like a cloud down sank
The just and filial grief of years;
176

And I that peace celestial drank
Which shines but o'er the seas of tears.
Thy Mission flashed before me plain,
O thou by many woes anneal'd!
And I discern'd how axe and chain
Had thy great destinies sign'd and seal'd!

IX

That seed which grows must seem to die:
In thee, when earthly hope was none,
The heaven-born hope of days gone by
By martyrdom matured, lived on;
Conceal'd, like limbs of royal mould
In some Egyptian pyramid,
Or statued shape 'mid cities old
Beneath Vesuvian ashes hid.

X

For this cause by a power divine
Each temporal aid was frustrated:
Tyrone, Tirconnell, Geraldine—
In vain they fought; in vain they bled:
Successive, 'neath th' usurping hand
Sank ill-starr'd Mary; erring James:
Nor Spain nor France might wield the brand
Which, for her own, Religion claims!

XI

Arise, long stricken! mightier far
Are they who fight for God and thee
Than those that head the adverse war!
Sad prophet! lift thy face and see!
Behold, with eyes no longer wrong'd
By mists the sense exterior breeds,
177

The hills of heaven around thee throng'd
With fiery chariots and with steeds!

XII

The years baptized in blood are thine;
The exile's prayer from many a strand;
The woes of those this hour who pine
Poor aliens in their native land;
Angels and Saints from heaven down-bent
Watch thy long conflict without pause;
And the most Holy Sacrament
From all thine altars pleads thy cause!

XIII

O great through Suffering, rise at last
Through kindred Action tenfold great!
Thy future calls on thee thy past
Its soul survives to consummate!
Let women weep; let children moan:
Rise, men and brethren, to the fight:
One cause hath Earth, and one alone:
For it, the cause of God, unite!

XIV

Let others trust in trade and traffic!
Be ours, O God, to trust in Thee!
Cherubic Wisdom, Love Seraphic,
Beseem that land the Truth makes free.
The earth-quelling sword let others vaunt;
Such toys allure the youth, the boy:
Be ours for loftier wreaths to pant,
The Apostles' crown of Faith and Joy!
178

XV

Hope of my country! House of God!
All-Hallows! Blessed feet are those
By which thy courts shall yet be trod
Once more as ere the spoiler rose:
Blessed the winds that waft them forth
To victory o'er the rough sea foam:
That race to God which conquers earth
Can God forget that race at home?

HYMN.

ECCLESIA DEI.

I

Who is She that stands triumphant
Rock in strength upon the Rock,
Like some city crown'd with turrets
Braving storm and earthquake shock?
Who is she her arms extending;
Blessing thus a world restored;
All the anthems of creation
Lifting to creation's Lord?
Hers that Kingdom, hers the Sceptre!
Fall, ye nations, at her feet!
Hers that Truth whose fruit is freedom;
Light her yoke; her burden sweet.

II

As the moon its splendour borrows
From a sun unseen all night
179

So from Christ, the Sun of Justice,
Draws His Church her sacred light.
Touch'd by His her hands have healing,
Bread of Life, absolving Key:
Christ Incarnate is her Bridegroom;
The Spirit hers; His Temple she.
Hers the Kingdom, hers the Sceptre!
Fall, ye nations, at her feet!
Hers that Truth whose fruit is freedom;
Light her yoke; her burden sweet!

III

Empires rise and sink like billows;
Vanish and are seen no more;
Glorious as the star of morning
She o'erlooks their wild uproar:
Hers the Household all-embracing,
Hers the Vine that shadows earth;
Blest thy children, mighty Mother!
Safe the stranger at thy hearth.
Hers the Kingdom; hers the Sceptre!
Fall, ye nations, at her feet!
Hers that Truth whose fruit is freedom;
Light her yoke; her burden sweet!

IV

Like her Bridegroom, heavenly, human,
Crown'd and militant in one,
Chanting Nature's great Assumption
And the Abasement of the Son,
Her magnificats, her dirges
Harmonise the jarring years;
Hands that fling to heaven the censer
Wipe away the orphan's tears.
180

Hers the Kingdom, hers the Sceptre!
Fall, ye nations, at her feet!
Hers that Truth whose fruit is freedom;
Light her yoke; her burden sweet!

ELECTA.

I

The Hour must come. Long since, and now
The shaft decreed is on the wing:
Loosed from the Eternal Archer's bow
The flying fate shall pierce the ring:
The Hour that comes to seal the right;
The Hour that comes to judge the wrong;
To lift the vales, and thunder-smite
Those cliffs the full-gorged eagles throng.

II

Rejoice, Elect of Isles! Rejoice
Pale image of the Church of God!
Like her afflicted, lift thy voice
Like her, and hail, and hymn the rod!
Thou warr'st on earth: at each new groan
In heaven thy Guardian claps his hands;
And glitters o'er the expectant Throne
A crown inwoven of angel bands!
181

SONG.

I

While autumn flashed from woods of gold
Her challenge to the setting sun
And storm-clouds, breaking, seaward rolled
O'er brightening waves, their passion done,
The linnets on a rain-washed beech
So thronged I saw not branch for bird:
My skill is scant in forest speech
But thus they sang or thus I heard.

II

'Twas all a dream—the wrong, the strife,
The scorn, the blow, the loss, the pain!
Immortal Gladness, Love and Life
Alone are lords by right and reign:
The Earth is tossed about as though
Young Angels tossed a cowslip ball;
But, rough or level, high or low,
What matter? God is all in all.

THE CHANGE.

I

Was it Truth; was it Vision? The old year was dying;
Clear rang the last chime from the turret of stone;
The mountain hung black o'er the village low-lying;
O'er the moon, rushing forward, loose vapours were blown;
182

When I saw an angelical choir with bow'd faces
Wafting on, like a bier, upon pinions outspread
An angel-like Form that of death had no traces:—
Without pain she had died in her sleep; but was dead.

II

Was it Truth; was it Vision? The darkness was riven;
Once more through the infinite breast of pure night
From heaven there looked downward, more beauteous than heaven,
A visage whose sadness was lost in its light:—
‘Why seek'st thou, my son, 'mid the dead for the living?
Thy Country is risen, and lives on in thy Faith;
I died but to live; and now, Life and Life-giving,
Where'er the Cross triumphs I conquer in death.’

SEMPER EADEM.

I

The moon, freshly risen from the bosom of ocean,
Hangs o'er it suspended, all mournful yet bright;
And a yellow sea-circle with yearning emotion
Swells up as to meet it, and clings to its light:
The orb unabiding grows whiter, mounts higher;
The pathos of darkness descends on the brine:
O Erin! the North drew its light from thy pyre:
Thy light woke the nations; the embers were thine!
183

II

Tis sunrise! The mountains flash forth; and, new-redden'd,
The billows grow lustrous, so lately forlorn;
From the orient with vapours long darken'd and deaden'd
The trumpets of Godhead are pealing ‘the Morn!’
He rises, the Sun, in his might re-ascending;
Like an altar beneath him lies blazing the sea!
O Erin! Who proved thee returns to thee, blending
The future and past in one garland for thee!

EPILOGUE.

With spices and urns they come: ah me, how sorrow can babble!
Nothing abides save Love; and to Love comes gladness at last;
Sad was the legend yet sweet; though its truth was mingled with fable;
Dire was the conflict and long; but the rage of the conflict is past.
They are past, the three great Woes; and the days of the dread Desolation;
To amethyst changed are the stones blood-stain'd of the temple-floor:
A Spiritual Power she lives who seem'd to die as a Nation;
Her story is that of a Soul:—and the story of Earth is no more.
184

Endurance it was that won; Suffering, than Action thrice greater;
For Suffering humble acts. Away with sigh and with tear!
She has gone before you and waits: She has gifts for the blinded who hate her;
And that bright Shape by the death-cave in music answers, ‘Not here.’
previous section The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere
next section