Light O' Love

But now, said she, I must away.
And if I tend another fire
In some one's house, this you will say:
It is not that her love doth tire;
This is the price she has to pay
For bread she gets no other way,
Still craving for her heart's desire.

And so she went out from the door
While I sat quiet in my chair.
She ran back once again, no more:
I heard a creaking on the stair,
A lifted latch, one moment fleet
I heard the noises of the street.
Then silence booming everywhere.


The Lonely God, and Other Poems [1909]

Secrets

When I was young, I used to think
That every eye peered through a chink;
And every man was hid behind
His own thick self where none could find;
That every woman in the street,
Looking fair and smiling sweet,
Was maybe hiding thoughts that were
Not quite so sweet, nor quite so fair
As her kind smile and blossom fare:
She hived in some forgotten place
Within herself, and could not bear
That any man should see her there.
. . . And though I'm older, still I see
In every face a mystery.


The Lonely God, and Other Poems [1909]

Who'll Carry A Message?

Father unto whom we lift
At the closing of the day
Prayer and praise — a tiny gift —
Thou art very far away.
Feeble little people we
Vainly tell our misery.

If we cannot understand,
Even while we pray to Thee,
Why Thou dost not stretch a hand
To allay our misery:
Father unto whom we pray,
Thou art very far away.

It is strange a Father should
From His children thus be far.
Thou who art so great and good
Surely cannot know we are
Weeping here in misery,
Mourning we are far from Thee.

Tears are very fragile things,
Hopeless things that cannot rise:
Sorrow has not any wings.
How can Sorrow reach the skies?
Fathers when they live too high
Cannot hear their children cry.

If You hear us when we pray,
Smitten down by hunger dread,
Unto Thee from day to day,
"Give us now our daily bread."
Father, while Thy children groan
Can Thou sit upon a throne?


The Lonely God, and Other Poems [1909]

Change

There's a cloud upon the sky
There's a voice upon the air.
'Tis the wind that with a sigh
Stays awhile and hushes by,
Mourning where the trushes were,
Mourning that the trees are bare.

All the leaves have fallen slow:
Now they rustle on the ground,
Crinkle-tip and russet glow,
Yellow leaf and brown they go
With a little withered sound,
Flitting on the air around.

All the birds have gone away,
All the daisies too have fled:
Buttercups have had their day,
And the grass is turning grey
Thinking of the pansy dead,
And the poppy's sleepy head.

Sad and sad the breezes blow.
Leaves are lifted up and thrown
— Crinkle-tip and russet glow —
Withered to the earth below.
Death's the harvest, Death alone.
What's the use in having grown?


The Lonely God, and Other Poems [1909]

In The High Court Of Justice

I saw this is a place at the world's end
When He was left alone without a friend

From every place, from far and near they came,
The blind and battered, and the lewd and lame,
The frightened people and the helpless crew
Who hid in cellars, and the stragglers who
Dodged here and there in corners of the earth
Cursing the sun, and they who from their birth
Were lap't in madness, raved and strode along,
Chanting in fury to a holy song
Their flighty wrath: and all the hungry folk,
Who through the world had rummaged, yelped and broke
Stiff to a run, for vengeance was in view,
And everyone knew what he had to do.

It was the Judgement Day, and so they sped,
These vagabonds who always had been dead
E'en when alive, and massed into the space
Between two stars: a deep and hollow place
Rolling immense, a swirl of blue and grey
Steeped out of eyesight: so it ever lay
Swinging in whispers, prickling to the sound
Till a wind's whimper, rolling round and round,
Jolted in thunder, or the dreary sigh
Of a dead man drummed madness on the sky.

Here they kept silence, every face intent
With a dumb grin upon the sun was bent,
Till sudden, huge and stately, came He fleet
Red from the sun, with fire about His feet
And flaming brow : and as He walked in fire
Those million, million muzzles lifted higher,
Stared at Him, grinned damnation, toned a yelp,
A vast malignant query, "Did you help?"
And at the sound the jangled spaces threw
Echo to echo: thunders bit and flew
Through deeper thunders into such a bay
The Judge stood frightened, turned and stole away.


The Lonely God, and Other Poems [1909]

Astray

Little lady! as you walk
With a shy and pensive pace:
Little lady! as you talk
I am looking in your face.
     Who am I? you do not know,
     Or you wouldn't eye me so.

Sure your step is like a wave,
And your voice is sweet to charm,
And your face, composed and grave,
Shows no motion of alarm.
     Little lady! If I say
     Who I am, you'll run away.

Little lady! I am Death,
I am sent to comfort thee:
Now you start and catch your breath
Lady, do not run from me.
     Just awhile ago you smiled,
     Little lady! Little child!

Little lady! Smile of Grace!
This is not the road for you.
This is not a fitting place.
— Once there was a Lily grew
     In a garden. — Cease to roam,
     I have come to bring you home.


The Lonely God, and Other Poems [1909]

The Loney God

I

So Eden was deserted, and at eve
Into the quiet place God came to grieve.
His face was sad: His hands hung slackly down
Along His robe. Too sorrowful to frown,
He paced along the grassy paths and through
The silent trees, and where the flowers grew,
Tended by Adam. All the birds had gone
Out to the world, and singing was not one
To cheer the Lonely God out of His grief —
The silence broken only when a leaf
Tap't lightly on a leaf, or when the wind,
Slow-handed, swayed the bushes to its mind.

II

And so along the base of a round hill,
Rolling in fern, He bent His way until
He neared the little hut which Adam made,
And saw its dusky roof-tree overlaid
With greenest leaves. Here Adam and his spouse
Were wont to nestle in their little house
Snug at the dew-time: here He, standing sad,
Sighed with the wind, nor any pleasure had
In heav'nly knowledge, for His darlings twain
Had gone from Him to learn the feel of pain,
And what was meant by sorrow and despair
— Drear knowledge for a Father to prepare.

III

Then, sad, He looked upon the little place
— A beehive round it was — with not a trace
Of occupant or owner: standing dim
Among the gloomy trees it seemed to Him
A final desolation, the last word
Wherewith the lips of silence had been stirred.
Chaste and remote, so tiny and so shy,
So new withal, so lost to any eye,
So pac't of memorie:. all innocent
Of days and nights that in it had been spent
In blithe communion, Adam, Eve and He
Afar from heaven and its gaudery.

IV

And now no more! He still must be the God,
But not the Friend: a Father with a rod
Whose voice was fear, whose countenance a threat,
Whose coming terror and whose going wet
With penitential tears: not ever more
Would they run forth to meet Him, as before,
With careless laughter, striving each to be
First to His hand, and dancing in their glee
To see Him coming — they would hide instead
At His approach, or stand and hang the head,
Speaking in whispers, and would learn to pray
Instead of asking ""Father, if we may."

V

Never again to Eden would He haste
At cool of evening, when the sun had paced
Back from the tree-tops, slanting from the rim
Of a low cloud, what time the twilight dim
Knit tree to tree in shadow, gathering slow
Till all had met and vanished in the flow
Of dusky silence, and a brooding star
Stared at the growing darkness from afar.
Whiie haply now and then some nested bird
Would lift upon the air a sleepy word
Most musical, or swing its airy bed
To the high moon that drifted overhead.

VI

'Twas good to quit at even His great throne,
To lay His crown aside, and all alone
Down sloping through the quiet air to glide,
Unkenned by angels, silently and hide
In the green fields, by dappled shades where brooks
Through leafy solitudes and quiet nooks
Flowed, hid from heav'nly majesty and pride,
From light astounding and the wheeling wide
Of roaring stars. Thus does it ever seem
Good to the best to stray aside and dream
In narrow places, where the hand can feel
Something beside and know that it is real.

VII

His angels! silly creatures who could sing,
And sing again, and delicately fling
The smoky censer, bow and stand aside
In muted adoration; thronging wide
Till nowhere could He look, but soon He saw
An angel bending humbly to the law
Mechanic; knowing nothing more of pain
Than when they were forbid to sing again,
Or swing anew the censer or bow down
In humble adoration of His frown.
This was the thought in Eden as He trod
. . . It is a lonely thing to be a God.

VIII

So long! afar through Time He bent His mind
For the beginning which He could not find.
Through endless centuries and backwards still,
Endless for ever, till His 'stonied will
Halted in circles, dizzied in the swing
Of mazy nothingness — His mind could bring
Not to subjection, grip, or hold the theme
Whose wide horizon melted like a dream
To thinnest edges. Infinite -behind
The piling centuries were trodden blind
In gulfs chaotic — so He could not see
When He was not who always had To Be.

IX

Not even Godly Fortitude can stave
Into Eternity, nor easy bear
The insolent vacuity of Time:
It is too much, the mind can never climb
Up to its meaning, for, without an end,
Without beginning, plan, or scope, or trend
To point a path, there nothing is to hold
And steady surmise: so the mind is rolled
And swayed and drowned in dull Immensity.
Eternity outfaces even Me
With its indiff'rence, and the fruitless year
Would swing as fruitless were I never here.

X

And so forever, day and night the same,
Years flying swiftly nowhere, like a game
Played random by a madman — without end
Or any reasoned object but to spend
What is unspendable '— Eternal Woe!
O Weariness of Time that fast or slow
Goes never farther, never has in view
An ending to the thing it seeks to do,
And so does nothing: merely ebb and flow
From nowhere into nowhere, touching so
The shores of many stars, and passing on,
Careless of what may co.ae or what has gone.

XI

O solitude unspeakable! to be
For ever with oneself, never to see
An equal face or feel an equal hand,
To sit in state and issue reprimand,
Admonishment or glory, and to smile
Disdaining what was happening the while.
to be breast to breast against a foe!
Against a friend! To strive and not to know
The laboured outcome: Love nor be aware
How much the other loved and greatly care
With angry passion for that love or hate,
Nor know what joy or dole was hid in Fate.

XII

For I have ranged the spacy widths and gone
Swift north and south, and strove to look upon
An ending somewhere. Many days I sped '
Hard to the west, a thousand years I fled
Eastwards in fury, but I could not find
The fringes of the Infinite. Behind
And yet behind, and ever at the end
Came new beginnings, paths that did not wend
To anywhere were there; and ever vast
And vaster spaces opened till at last,
Dizzied with distance, thrilling to a pain
Unnameable, I turned to Heaven again.

XIII

And there my angels were prepared to fling
The cloudy incense, there prepared to sing
My praise and glory — O in fury I
Then roared them senseless, then threw down the sky
And stamped upon it, buffeted a star
With my great fist, and flung the sun afar:
Shouted my anger till the mighty sound
Rung to the width, frighting the furthest bound
And scope of hearing: tumult vaster still,
Thronging the echo, dinned my ears until
I fled in silence, seeking some dark place
To hide Me from the very thought of Space.

XIV

And so, thought He, in my own image I
Have made a man, remote from heaven high
And all its humble angels. I have poured
My essence in his nostrils. I have cored
His heart with my own spirit. Part of Me
His mind with laboured growth unceasingly
Must strive to equal Mine, must ever grow
By virtue of my essence till he know
Both Good and Evil through the solemn test
Of Sin and Retribution, till, with zest,
He feels his godhead, soars to challenge Me
In mine own heaven for supremacy.

XV

Through savage beasts and still more savage clay,
Invincible, I bid him fight a way
To greater battles; crawling through defeat
Into defeat again; ordained to meet
Disaster in disaster; prone to fall,
I prick him with my memory to call
Defiance at his victor, and arise
With anguished fury to his greater size.
Through tribulation, terror and despair,
Astounded, he must fight to higher air,
Climb battle into battle till he be
Confronted with a flaming sword and Me.

XVI

So growing age by age to greater strength,
To greater beauty, skill and deep intent:
With wisdom wrung from pain, with energy
Nourished in Sin and Sorrow he will be
Strong, pure and proud an enemy to meet
Tremendous on a battlefield, or sweet
To talk to as a friend with candid mind.
— Dear Enemy or Friend, so hard to find,
I yet shall find you, yet shall put My breast
In enmity or love against your breast:
Shall srnite or clasp with equal ecstacy
Thy Enemy or Friend who grows to Me.

XVII

The topmost blossom of his growing I
Shall take unto Me, cherish and lift high
Beside Myself upon My holy Throne:
- It is not good for God to be alone.
The perfect Woman of his perfect race
Shall sit beside Me in the highest place
And be My Goddess, Queen, Companion, Wife,
The rounder of My majesty, the life
Of My ambition She will smile to see
Me bending down to worship at her knee
Who never bent before, and she will say
"Dear God, who was it taught Thee how to pray?"

XVIII

And through Eternity, adown the slope
Of never-ending Time, compact of hope,
Of zest and young enjoyment, I and She
Will walk together, sowing jollity
Among the raving stars, and laughter through
The vacancies, of heaven, till the blue
Vast amplitudes of Space lift up a song,
The echo of our presence, rolled along
And ever rolling where the Planets sing,
The majesty and glory of the King.
Then, conquered, thou Eternity, shall lie
Under My hand as little as a fly

XIX

I am the Master. I the Mighty God
And you my Workshop. Your pavilions trod
By Me and Mine shall never cease to be,
For you are but the magnitude of Me,
The width of My extension, the surround
Of My dense splendour. Rolling, rolling round
To steeped Infinity and out beyond
My own strong comprehension you are bond
And servile to My doings. Let you swing
More wide and ever wide you do but fling
Around this instant Me and measure still
The breadth and the proportion of My Will.

XX

Then stooping to the hut, — a beehive round, —
God entered in and saw upon the ground
A dusty garland, Adam, learned to weave,
Had loving placed upon the head of Eve
Before the terror came, when joyous they
Could look for God at closing of the day
Profound and happy. So the Mighty Guest
Bent, took and placed the blossoms in His breast.
"This," said He, gently, "I shall show My Queen
When She hath grown to Me in space serene
And say, "Twas worn by Eve." So, smiling fair,
He spread abroad His wings upon the air.


The Lonely God, and Other Poems [1909]

Slan Leath

(To C.)

And now, dear heart, the night is closing in,
The lamps are not yet ready, and the gloom
Of this sad winter evening, and the din
The wind makes in the street fills all the room.
You have listened to my stories Seumas Beg
Has finished the adventures of his youth,
And no more hopes to find a buried keg
Stuffed to the lid with silver. He, in truth,
And all alas, grew up ; but he has found
The path to truer romance, and with you
May easily seek wonders. We are bound
Out to the storm of things, and all is new.
Give me your hand, so, keeping close to me,
Shut tight your eyes, step forward. . . . Where are we?

Insurrections [1909]

Windy Corner

HERE and there along the street
     The lamps are dimly burning,
And all is silent save the fleet
Footsteps of the winds that meet
     To tattle at the turning.

Sleeping softly snug inside
     Lie the people resting
Lip to cheek or side by side,
While I wander where the wide
     Breezes go a-questing.

O, I can tell and I can know
     What the wind rehearses :
"A poet loved a lady so,
Loved her well, and let her go
     While he wrote his verses.

Here he met the maiden fair,
     And here they parted madly,
Tho' she's wed, he still will wear
A shining, twining hoop of hair,
     And sing about her sadly."

That's the tale the winds relate
     Soon as night is shady.
If it's true, I'll simply state
A poet is a fool to rate
     His art above his lady.

Insurrections [1909]

How To Woo

I

SIR YOUTHFUL ANXIOUS

     WHAT to do
     When you woo,
     Listen and I'll tell it you.
Deep humility must teach
That the star's beyond your reach,
Yet must courage raise your heart
To the conqueror's lofty part.
Not too forward, shyly bold.
Not too hot, but never cold.
Fearing still to tread too near,
Treading nigher, spite of fear.
Laying all your logic down
As you pick your manhood up,
Disbelieving every frown,
Intent always on the cup.
     Hold her hand,
     Hold her gaze,
     Always stand
     In her ways ;
     Humbly kiss
     Her finger-tip ;
     She'll surrender
     You her lip.

II

SIR STALWART HEAVY

     What to do,
     How to woo,
     Here's some good advice for you.
Tell the maiden that you're strong,
Never let a weakness show ;
Say you're never in the wrong,
Never bent before a foe ;
Say you're in no need of help,
Never knew the face of fear,
Are sufficient to yourself,
Never shed a foolish tear.
     Then, Sir Stalwart,
     Sitting glum,
     Glower round
     And bite your thumb.

III

SIR SMILE THE NEIGHBOUR

     What to do,
     How to woo
     Your friend's wife who trusts in you—
Make her think that you're in pain ;
Act on this undoubted rule;
Stand an hour in the rain ;
Make her think that you're a fool.
Teach her dear and tender heart
For your agony to sigh ;
Play a foolish, loving part ;
Be embarrassed when she's by.
But your voice must never lend
Half a whisper 'gainst your friend
Who's her husband : here's the plan ;
Renunciation saves a man.
     Then, you devil,
     Slidder in,
     You've done your level
     Best to win.

Insurrections [1909]

Ould Snarly Gob

THERE was a little fire in the grate
     A fistful of red coal
     Might warm a soul,
But scarce could heat a body that had weight—
     Not mine, at any rate.

A glum old man was sitting by the fire,
     With wrinkled brow,
     Warming himself somehow,
And mumbling low, this melancholy sire,
     A singular desire.

If I were young again, said he, if I
     Were only young again,
     I'd laugh at pain :
I'd jeer at people groaning, and I'd try
     To pinch them ere they'd die.

The young folk laugh and jump about and play,
     And I am old,
     And grey, and cold ;
If I were only young again, and they
     Were old, and cold, and grey,

I'd pull them from the fire, I'd jeer and shout.
     I'd say for fun,
     Get up and run
And warm yourself, you lazy, doddering lout,
     Get up and run about.

Insurrections [1909]

The Rebel

I WANT to live, to grasp
With arms outspread, and feel
The thrill, the passion of my time,
To know the dream of every clime :
The goodness, badness, joy or weal,
All throbbing in my clasp.

I want to feel, to see,
To meet, to do, to know,
To live as deeply as I can,
To know the best or worst of man,
To meet the storm, the heat, the snow—
—But you say"you love me."

You love me, how ? you come
To hoard me up and hide
Whatever I may have of bloom
Within a narrow little room,
While sweet the world outside
Sings on, and I sit dumb.

You sob you love me—What,
Must I desert my soul
Because you wish to kiss my lips
In guarded, careful little sips,
Measuring out your stingy dole
Of love ? I want a lot :

Much more than you can give
Or take. A year had seen
Us snapping, snarling, angry-eyed
Across a table three feet wide
And stellar space between
The places where we live.

You want a thing to cook,
To wash and scrub and smile,
To black your boots and brush your hat,
And kiss you good-bye on the mat,
Then darn your socks awhile,
Or con the butcher's book.

I must be I, not you,
That says the thing in brief.
I grew to this without your aid,
Can face the future unafraid,
Nor pine away with grief
Because I'm lonely. True

It is I love you, yet
I must be I, e'en tho' I fling
Your love away and call it knavery,
I cannot love if love be slavery.
I hear the free wind rush and sing.
Must I live in a net?

I want my life, you'd joy
To murder me with love.
You'd hide me in a room, your fist
Upon my breast, and now I'm kissed
Or cuffed, or thrown off like a glove.
. . . Well, take me then, poor boy.

No need to moan, I've said
The words that end the strife.
If bliss it is, then take your bliss ;
You want—What? just another kiss,
Then here, and here, and here. O life,
Till this hour I've been dead.

Insurrections [1909]

Seumas Beg

A MAN was sitting underneath a tree
Outside the village, and he asked me what
Name was upon this place, and said that he
Was never here before. He told a lot
Of stories to me too. His nose was flat.
I asked him how it happened, and he said
The first mate of the Mary Ann done that
With a marling-spike one day, but he was dead,
And jolly good job too ; and he'd have gone
A long way to have killed him, and he had
A gold ring in one ear ; the other one
" Was bit off by a crocodile, bedad."
That's what he said. He taught me how to chew.
He was a real nice man. He liked me too.

Insurrections [1909]

Where The Demons Grin

THE hill was low, but stretched away
A straggling mile or so to where
The sea was stamping, tossing spray
Beyond its bulwarks black and bare :
     A sullen sea of gray.

Ah me, it was so desolate,
And sadder for the sea-bird's cry
Thrillingly thin. There seemed a weight
Brooding, as if the leaden sky
     Hung heavier for hate.

The grasses jerked as they were stung
By vicious winds. A daisy's head
Crouched in a tuft till it was flung
From its uneasy, troubled bed
     And tost the waves among.

A bent, old man was climbing slow
With weary step and plodding pace
That savage hill, and wild did blow
A bitter wind in headlong race,
     Harsh from the sea below.

And all the woeful things he said—
Ah me, the twitching of his lips—
Of hungry children craving bread,
And fortune's sideward slips,
     And how his wife was dead.

He held a rope, and as he trod,
Pressing against the furious wind,
He muttered low and sneered at God,
And said He sure was deaf or blind,
     Or lazing on the sod.
       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .

And what was done I will not tell—
There is a bent tree on the top
Of that low hill, there you can see
The sequel of this mystery . . .
Beneath the moon ... I dared not stop
My God a demon up from hell
Jab-jabbered as the old man fell.

Insurrections [1909]

Optimist

ALL ye that labour, every broken man
Bending beneath his load, each tired heart
That cannot quit its burden, all the clann,
Black-browed and fierce, who feel the woeful smart
Of fortune's lances, wayward, uncontrolled.
All ye who writhe in silence 'neath the sin
That no man knows about, and ye who sold
The freedom of your souls if ye might win
A moment's ease from strife, and hate the thing
That bought it, ye who droop, trembling with pain,
And hunger-haunted, lacking everything
That dignifies existence, and are fain
To lay ye down and die, hear the behest—
"All ye that labour, come to me, and rest."

Let ye be still, ye tortured ones, nor strive
Where striving's futile. Ye can ne'er attain
To lay your burdens down. All things alive
Must bear the woes of life, and if the pain
Be more than ye can bear, then ye must die.
That is the law, and bootless 'tis to seek
Far through the deeps of space, beyond the high
Pearl-tincted clouds, out where the moon doth peak
Her silver horns, for all that vastness bows
To an appointed toil, and weeps to find
Some kindly helper. Be ye patient, rouse
Your shoulders to the load to ye assigned,
And dree your weird ; be sure ye shall not moan
Stretched in the narrow bed beneath the stone.

Lo, we are mocked with fancies, and we stretch
Meek, unavailing arms to anywhere,
But help is none. The north wind cannot fetch
An answer to our cries, nor in the air
Fanned by the south wind's van is any aid.
What then is left, but this, that we be brave
And steadfast in our places, not afraid
However fell our lot, and we will lave
Us deep in human waters till our minds
Grow broad and kindly, and we haply steal
A paradise from Nature. Nothing binds
Man closer unto man than that he feel
The trouble of his comrade. So we grope
Through courage, truth, and kindness back to hope.

Insurrections [1909]

A Street

Two narrow files of houses scowl,
Blackened with grime, on either side
Of the road, and through them prowl
Strange men and women, shifty-eyed
And slinking, and a drink-shop throws
Its flare of yellow light adown
The cracked pavement. The gutter flows
A turbid, evil stream. A clown,
Drink-sodden, lurches by and sings
Obscenely. A woman trails behind
With old, bad eyes ; her clothing clings
Rain-soaked about her. No daring wind,
Light-hearted, from a garden blows
Its sweetness here from any rose.

Insurrections [1909]

What The Tramp Said

WHY should one live when living is a pain?
I have not seen a flower had any scent,
Nor heard a bird sing once. The very rain
Seems dirty, and the clouds, all soiled and rent,
Toil sulkily across the black, old sky,
And all the weary stars go moping by,
They care not whither, sea, or mount, or plain,
All's one—and what one gets is never gain.

The sun scowled yesterday a weary while.
It used to beam. The moon last night was grim
With cynic gaze and frosty, sullen smile.
And once I loved to gaze while from the rim
Of some great mountain she would look and gild
The rustling cornfield. Now she is filled
With bitterness and rancour sour as bile,
And blasts the world's surface every mile.

There is no more sunlight : all the weary world
Seems steeped in shadow, and for evermore
The heavy clouds will press till I am hurled
Back to the heart of things. O, it is sore
And sad and sorry to be living : let me die
And rest while all eternity lolls by,
Where the fierce winds of God are closely furled
Ten million miles away from this damned world.

Insurrections [1909]

The Shell

AND then I pressed the shell
Close to my ear
And listened well,
And straightway like a bell
Came low and clear
The slow, sad murmur of far distant seas,
Whipped by an icy breeze
Upon a shore
Wind-swept and desolate.
It was a sunless strand that never bore
The footprint of a man,
Nor felt the weight
Since time began
Of any human quality or stir
Save what the dreary winds and waves incur.
And in the hush of waters was the sound
Of pebbles rolling round,
For ever rolling with a hollow sound.
And bubbling sea-weeds as the waters go
Swish to and fro
Their long, cold tentacles of slimy grey.
There was no day,
Nor ever came a night
Setting the stars alight
To wonder at the moon :
Was twilight only and the frightened croon,
Smitten to whimpers, of the dreary wind
And waves that journeyed blind—
And then I loosed my ear—O, it was sweet
To hear a cart go jolting down the street.

Insurrections [1909]

Fossils

AND then she saw me creeping,
Saw and stood
Transfixed upon the fringes of the wood,
And straight went leaping.

Headlong down the pitch
Of the curved hill,
Over the ditch
And through the skirt of bushes by the rill
She pelted screaming,
Swerved from the water sideways with a twist
Just as I clutched and missed.

Flashed white beneath my hand and doubled back,
Swift as a twisting hare upon her track,
Hot for the hill again,
But all in vain.

Her hair swung far behind,
Straight as a stream balanced upon the wind,
O, it was black, dipped
In the dregs of midnight with a spark
Caught from a star that smouldered in the dark.

It I gripped,
Drew for a moment tight,
Jerked with a victor's cry
Down in the grasses high
Her to the hot, brown earth and threatened—daft,
And then she laughed.

Insurrections [1909]

To the Four Courts, Please

THE driver rubbed at his nettly chin
With a huge, loose forefinger, crooked and black,
And his wobbly, violet lips sucked in,
And puffed out again and hung down slack :
One fang shone through his lop-sided smile,
In his little pouched eye flickered years of guile.

And the horse, poor beast, it was ribbed and forked,
And its ears hung down, and its eyes were old,
And its knees were knuckly, and as we talked
It swung the stiff neck that could scarcely hold
Its big, skinny head up—then I stepped in,
And the driver climbed to his seat with a grin.

God help the horse and the driver too,
And the people and beasts who have never a friend,
For the driver easily might have been you,
And the horse be me by a different end.
And nobody knows how their days will cease
And the poor, when they're old, have little of peace.

Insurrections [1909]