In the wide bed
Under the green embroidered quilt
With flowers and leaves always in soft motion
She is like a wounded bird resting on a pool.
The hunter threw his dart
And hit her breast,--
Hit her but did not kill.
“O my wings, lift me--lift me!
I am not dreadfully hurt!”
Down she dropped and was still.
Kind people come to the edge of the pool with baskets.
“Of course what the poor bird wants is plenty of food!”
Their bags and pockets are crammed almost to bursting
With dinner scrapings and scraps from the servants’ lunch.
Oh! how pleased they are to be really giving!
“In the past, you know you know, you were always so fly-away.
By my bed, on a little round table
The Grandmother placed a candle.
She gave me three kisses telling me they were three dreams
And tucked me in just where I loved being tucked.
Then she went out of the room and the door was shut.
I lay still, waiting for my three dreams to talk;
But they were silent.
Suddenly I remembered giving her three kisses back.
Perhaps, by mistake, I had given my three little dreams.
I sat up in bed.
The room grew big, oh, bigger far than a church.
The wardrobe, quite by itself, as big as a house.
And the jug on the washstand smiled at me:
It was not a friendly smile.
I looked at the basket-chair where my clothes lay folded:
The burnished glow of the old-gold moon
Shines brightly over me.
A thousand stars, like a thousand isles
In a dark and placid sea,
Bring memories of a golden night.
Bedecked in Autumn's hue
And fragrant with the lilac's bloom.
That brought me joy — and you.
Blessed the Hand
That set a new moon on the hill for me,
And hung the night with stars —
With white festoons of stars —
Looped from the corners of the world.
It is evening, and the earth
Wraps her shoulders in an old blue shawl.
Afar off there clink the polychrome points of the stars,
Indefatigable, after all these years!
Here upon earth there is life, and then death,
Dawn, and later nightfall,
Fire, and the quenching of embers:
But why should I not remember that my night is dawn in another part of
the world,
If the idea fits my fancy?
Dawns of marvellous light, wakeful, sleepy, weary, dancing dawns,
You are rose petals settling through the blue of my evening:
I light my pipe to salute you,
And sit puffing smoke in the air and never say a word.
O all you stars up yonder,
Do you hear me? Beautiful, winking, sullen eyes,
I am tired of seeing you in the same old places,
Night after night in the sky.
I hoped you would dance--but after twenty-six years,
I find you are determined to stay as you are.
So I make it known to you, stars clustered or solitary,
That I want you to fall into my lap to-night.
Come down, little stars, let me play with you:
I will string you like beads, and shovel you together,
And wear you in my ears, and scatter you over people--
And toss you back, like apples, if I choose.
Torridly the moon rolls upward
Against the smooth immensity of midsummer sky,
Changeless, inexhaustible:
The city beneath is still:
Heaven and Earth are clasped together,
Momently life grows as careless
As the life of the intense stars.
Out of the houses climbing,
Fuming up windows, flickering from every roof-top,
Rigid on sonorous pinnacles,
Silently swirl aloft
Love's infinite flamelets.
As I went through the city by day
I saw shadows in sunlight:
But in the night I saw everywhere
Stars within the darkness.
(A coldly fluting breeze:
Dark Pan under the trees.
Low laughter: up the sky
A star like a street-lamp left on high.)
As I went through the city by day
I was hustled by jostling people.
But in the night, the wind of the darkness
Whispered, "Hush!" to my soul.
So fair, that all the morning aches
With such monotony!
So brief, that sadness breaks
The brittle spell.
Nothing so fair, nothing so brief:
The sun leaps up and falls.
The wind tosses every leaf:
Every leaf dies.
Blossom, a white cloud in the air,
Is blown like a cloud away.
Must all be brief, being fair?
Nothing remain?
Yes, night and that high regiment
Of stars that wheel and march,
Ever their bright lines bent
To a secret thought;
I am a river flowing round your hill,
Holding your image in my lingering water,
With imaged white clouds rising round your head;
And I am happy to bear your image still.
Though a loud ruffling wind may break and scatter
That happiness, I know it is not fled.
But when the wind is gone or gentled so
That only the least quivering quivers on,
Your image recomposes in my breast
With those high clouds, quiet and white as snow--
Spiritual company; and when day's gone
And those white clouds have stepped into the west;
And the dark blue filling the heavens deep
Is bright with stars that sing above your head,
Their light lies in the deep of my dark eyes
With your dark shape, a shadow of your sleep ...
I hear the stars still singing
To the beautiful, silent night,
As they speed with noiseless winging
Their ever westward flight.
I hear the waves still falling
On the stretch of lonely shore,
But the sound of a sweet voice calling
I shall hear, alas! no more.
Still south I went and west and south again,
Through Wicklow from the morning till the night,
And far from cities, and the sights of men,
Lived with the sunshine, and the moon’s delight.
I knew the stars, the flowers, and the birds,
The grey and wintry sides of many glens,
And did but half remember human words,
In converse with the mountains, moors, and fens.