From the Land of Dreams :: :: University of Virginia Library

Over the Wicklow hills the sun's vast blaze
Palpitates in the abyss of azure bright;
Dim through the splendour, in a pearly haze
The glowing woodlands loom. Slow sail the white
Swan-breasted argosies the ocean calm

Of the blue air, their shadows drowsily
Moving like dreams over the fields and flowers;
And every field is pasture for the bee,
Each flower a blithe voice in the fragrant psalm
Antheming earth's delight in summer hours.

II

Like spirits clothed in light they shine and sing,
In heaven's own loom woven are the robes they wear,
Angels on every wind grace to them bring,
And back to heaven their sweet oblations bear.
The basking thyme sheds balm about my feet;
The yellow iris o'er the marshy ground
Flames, where the river wanders through the dale;
The woodbine her grave incense breathes around;
Red poppies blaze among the sunburnt wheat,
And silver lamps gleam where the bindweeds trail.

III

But oh! the roses! Here hot afternoon
Sleeps with her winds in this lone woodland glade
Where shine the roses. Ah! fade not so soon,
Sweet flowers, each winsome as an Irish maid.

For when your last buds wane, and withered be
Your frail immaculate petals red and white,
This nook your delicate fragrance makes divine,
Will seem the temple of a lost delight;
Where, while ye breathe, to breathe is ecstasy,
Embalming your brief hours in memory's shrine.

IV

The sun's heart still throbs through the luminous haze,
I wander through the lost land of a dream;
Heaven stoops to embrace earth, as she stands at gaze,
Wondering at her own beauty in the stream.
Summer in triumph comes to celebrate
In magic robes her druid mysteries here;
I feel the drowsy glamour of her eyes—
Time swoons, earth dreams. What ancient gods appear?
What mystic rites? What Kings in solemn state?
What Bards, what Heroes from their gravemounds rise?

V

O Land of Dreams! O haunted Innisfail!
O Land enchanted for a thousand years!
O forlorn Land where sings no nightingale,
Counting thy woes on rosaries of tears!
Before me, cloudlike, sail wild visions by:
High tragedies of passionate love and hate:
Battles and festivals; heroic deeds,
Orgies of crime. Some unappeased fate
Hangs like dumb thunder in the brooding sky,
And phantom fears come stalking through the meads.

VI

I wake—how far away! How long ago
I roamed, that summer day, my spirit aflame
With youth, ambition, hope, the rapturous glow
Of courage born, when to my heart Love came,
Singing the song that makes this world of ours
Beautiful as a new-created star!
Yet still, though Time, the spectre with grey hair,
Bears me each day from youth's glad fields more far,
I hear that song Love sang among the flowers,
And pay no homage to the fiend Despair.