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

Now is the season of rewarded toil,
When sunburnt labourers reap to sow again,
And each lean handful cast into the soil
Waits its rich usury; where the loaded wain,
Heavy with harvest, lately left its track;
For Mother Earth smiles on each golden grain,
Pledge of man's trust in her who gives him back
An hundredfold for one spared from her spoil.

II

What do men reap now in our Land of Dreams?
What do they sow? Here, over stubbles, leas,
And hills, a sultry mist of sunshine seems
Deeply to brood, wakening old memories:
Sad, patient eyes, in faces pinched and pale,
Haunt me from days when Ireland's enemies,
Famine and fever, in the Golden Vale
Ravaged and slew, where Suir still flows and gleams.

III

Those days grow dim, and Ireland wakes at last
Out of her Great Enchantment, and her eyes
Turn from vain brooding o'er the bitter past,
While in her dauntless heart new hopes arise;

New songs, like streams outleaping from springs,
Fill her glad vales with music, as though her skies
With mellower music hearten him who sings;
The Nation's blood begins to flow more fast.

IV

Now is our seedtime, when the sering leaves
Whisper low dirges for the days gone by,
With their dead children, to each wind that heaves
The baring boughs. All things outworn must die,
Yet, dying, quicken, as their life they yield,
Earth and the air with a new potency;
And every seeds finds in the furrowed field,
Bare earth to-day, food for to-morrow's sheaves.