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

From exile in a Land of the Stranger,
I come, as from long voyage, eagerly,
To her port with many a scar of many a billow,
A ship comes flying, singing o'er the sea;
Safe bearing in her weathered hull, storm-battered,
Her cargo of things rare,
As in my heart, their golden shrine, unshattered,
My shipwrecked hopes I bear.

II

And here I stand, a stranger, yet no stranger,
In Ireland, on the soil where first I knew,
In the vision and the glamour of life's morning,
The silent consecration of her dew;
The dreams that came, like angels, in her sunlight,
Ghosts in her twilight grey;
The mystery and sadness of her moonlight,
That was dearer than the day.

III

The sun fills heaven and earth with his last glory,
And, like phantoms, through the veil of golden mist,
Loom the Connemara mountains, huge and solemn,
Hewn out of heaven's aerial amethyst.
Plain and mountain dream, entranced in subtle splendour,
Bog and pasture still the same,
Gleam through miles of glowing light, and shadows tender
In the palpitating flame.

IV

And the sunset-wind comes wandering out of Dreamland,
That Dreamland where I wandered long ago,

With whispering in my ear and ghostly singing,
Druid words, and dirgelike music, sweet and low,
Comes from far away, where lilies white are sailing
On waters vast and cool,
Comes o'er cotton-grass and myrtle softly wailing,
And through rushes by the pool.

V

In the bog stand three lonely pine-trees,
Waifs of fortune, planted there by Fate's grim choice,
And the wind wails o'er the bog, and in their branches,
And thrills me with solitary voice;
Like the Spirit of an ancient Desolation
It comes wailing o'er the West,
And the burden of its ancient lamentation
Is echoed in my breast.

VI

The wind wails o'er the bog, and in the pine-trees,
With an Irish note of sorrow, soft and wild,
And old memories of dead days come with its wailing,
Till the heart in me is weeping like a child.
It wafts to me the smell of turf-sods burning

In some cabin far away,
And the homelike Irish odour sets me yearning
For a hearth—cold many a day.

VII

Oh! the story of my home, the dismal story,
The story of a thousand homes like mine:
The four walls in their grave-grass, cold the hearth stone,
Dead my kin, or driven like felons o'er the brine!
Raise the keene, O wind! for Ireland's ancient sorrow,
O'er the desolated West!
Raise the keene for our dead hopes of her tomorrow,
The pale treasures of my breast!

VIII

Yet, like sweet, remembered kisses of my Mother,
I feel each Irish sight, and scent, and sound;
Like her love I feel the tender Irish twilight
With gentle consolation clasp me round.
Oh! the magical, drear beauty of this lone land,
Oh! its welcome, sad and wild!
To the Mother's breast of Ireland, of my own land,
I come, weeping like a child!