A straggling crow called high and thin. A bird Trilled from the birch-leaves. Round the shingled shore, Yellow with weed, there wandered, vague and clear, Strange vowels, mysterious gutturals, idly heard.
FROM A WINDOW IN PRINCES STREET--To M. M. M'B.
Above the Crags that fade and gloom Starts the bare knee of Arthur's Seat;
Ridged high against the evening bloom, The Old Town rises, street on street;
With lamps bejewelled, straight ahead, Like rampired walls the houses lean, All spired and domed and turreted, Sheer to the valley's darkling green;
Ranged in mysterious disarray, The Castle, menacing and austere, Looms through the lingering last of day;
And in the silver dusk you hear, Reverberated from crag and scar, Bold bugles blowing points of war.
IN THE DIALS
To GARRYOWEN upon an organ ground Two girls are jigging. Riotously they trip, With eyes aflame, quick bosoms, hand on hip, As in the tumult of a witches' round.
Youngsters and youngsters round them prance and bound.
Two solemn babes twirl ponderously, and skip.
The artist's teeth gleam from his bearded lip.
High from the kennel howls a tortured hound.
The music reels and hurtles, and the night Is full of stinks and cries; a naphtha-light Flares from a barrow; battered and obtused With vices, wrinkles, life and work and rags, Each with her inch of clay, two loitering hags Look on dispassionate--critical--something 'mused.
***
The gods are dead? Perhaps they are! Who knows?
Living at least in Lempriere undeleted, The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose, Are one and all, I like to think, retreated In some still land of lilacs and the rose.
Once high they sat, and high o'er earthly shows With sacrificial dance and song were greeted.
Once . . . long ago. But now, the story goes, The gods are dead.
It must be true. The world, a world of prose, Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and sheeted, Nods in a stertorous after-dinner doze!
Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows Who will may hear the sorry words repeated:-
'The Gods are Dead!'
To F. W.
Let us be drunk, and for a while forget, Forget, and, ceasing even from regret, Live without reason and despite of rhyme, As in a dream preposterous and sublime, Where place and hour and means for once are met.
Where is the use of effort? Love and debt And disappointment have us in a net.
Let us break out, and taste the morning prime . . .
Let us be drunk.
In vain our little hour we strut and fret, And mouth our wretched parts as for a bet:
We cannot please the tragicaster Time.
To gain the crystal sphere, the silver dime, Where Sympathy sits dimpling on us yet, Let us be drunk!
***
When you are old, and I am passed away -
Passed, and your face, your golden face, is gray -
I think, whate'er the end, this dream of mine, Comforting you, a friendly star will shine Down the dim slope where still you stumble and stray.
So may it be: that so dead Yesterday, No sad-eyed ghost but generous and gay, May serve you memories like almighty wine, When you are old!
Dear Heart, it shall be so. Under the sway Of death the past's enormous disarray Lies hushed and dark. Yet though there come no sign, Live on well pleased: immortal and divine Love shall still tend you, as God's angels may, When you are old.
***
Beside the idle summer sea And in the vacant summer days, Light Love came fluting down the ways, Where you were loitering with me.
Who has not welcomed, even as we, That jocund minstrel and his lays Beside the idle summer sea And in the vacant summer days?
We listened, we were fancy-free;
And lo! in terror and amaze We stood alone--alone at gaze With an implacable memory Beside the idle summer sea.
I. M. R. G. C. B. 1878
The ways of Death are soothing and serene, And all the words of Death are grave and sweet.
From camp and church, the fireside and the street, She beckons forth--and strife and song have been.
A summer night descending cool and green And dark on daytime's dust and stress and heat, The ways of Death are soothing and serene, And all the words of Death are grave and sweet.
O glad and sorrowful, with triumphant mien And radiant faces look upon, and greet This last of all your lovers, and to meet Her kiss, the Comforter's, your spirit lean . . .
The ways of Death are soothing and serene.
***
We shall surely die:
Must we needs grow old?
Grow old and cold, And we know not why?
O, the By-and-By, And the tale that's told!
We shall surely die:
Must we needs grow old?
Grow old and sigh, Grudge and withhold, Resent and scold? . . .
Not you and I?
We shall surely die!
***
What is to come we know not. But we know That what has been was good--was good to show, Better to hide, and best of all to bear.
We are the masters of the days that were:
We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered . . . even so.
Shall we not take the ebb who had the flow?
Life was our friend. Now, if it be our foe -
Dear, though it spoil and break us!--need we care What is to come?
Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow, Or the gold weather round us mellow slow:
We have fulfilled ourselves, and we can dare And we can conquer, though we may not share In the rich quiet of the afterglow What is to come.
ECHOES
Aqui este encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro Garcias Gil Blas AU LECTEUR
