THE COUNTESS CATHLEEN IN PARADISE

THE COUNTESS CATHLEEN IN PARADISE

ALL the heavy days are over;

Leave the body's coloured pride

Underneath the grass and clover,

With the feet laid side by side.

Bathed in flaming founts of duty

She'll not ask a haughty dress;

Carry all that mournful beauty

To the scented oaken press.

Did the kiss of Mother Mary

Put that music in her face?

Yet she goes with footstep wary,

Full of earth's old timid grace.

'Mong the feet of angels seven What a dancer glimmering!

All the heavens bow down to Heaven, Flame to flame and wing to wing.

WHO GOES WITH FERGUS?

WHO will go drive with Fergus now,

And pierce the deep wood's woven shade,

And dance upon the level shore?

Young man, lift up your russet brow,

And lift your tender eyelids, maid,

And brood on hopes and fear no more.

And no more turn aside and brood

Upon love's bitter mystery;

For Fergus rules the brazen cars,

And rules the shadows of the wood,

And the white breast of the dim sea

And all dishevelled wandering stars.

THE LAMENTATION OF THE OLD PENSIONER

ALTHOUGH I shelter from the rain

Under a broken tree,

My chair was nearest to the fire

In every company

That talked of love or politics,

Ere Time transfigured me.

Though lads are making pikes again

For some conspiracy,

And crazy rascals rage their fill

At human tyranny,

My contemplations are of Time

That has transfigured me.

There's not a woman turns her face

Upon a broken tree,

And yet the beauties that I loved

Are in my memory;

I spit into the face of Time

That has transfigured me.

TO SOME I HAVE TALKED WITH BY THE FIRE

WHILE I wrought out these fitful Danaan rhymes,

My heart would brim with dreams about the times

When we bent down above the fading coals

And talked of the dark folk who live in souls

Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees;

And of the wayward twilight companies

Who sigh with mingled sorrow and content,

Because their blossoming dreams have never bent

Under the fruit of evil and of good:

And of the embattled flaming multitude

Who rise, wing above wing, flame above flame,

And, like a storm, cry the Ineffable Name,

And with the clashing of their sword-blades make

A rapturous music, till the morning break

And the white hush end all but the loud beat

Of their long wings, the flash of their white feet.