The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
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The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
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| Table of Contents | |
| Section | Page |
| Start of eBook | 1 |
| A SUMMER NIGHT | 1 |
| DUSK | 1 |
| DAWN | 2 |
| DANA | 2 |
| THE HOUR OF THE KING | 3 |
| REFLECTIONS | 4 |
| NATURAL MAGIC | 5 |
| FORGIVENESS | 5 |
| PARTING | 6 |
| THE HEROES | 6 |
| BLINDNESS | 7 |
| A NEW BEING | 8 |
| ENDURANCE | 8 |
| THE TWILIGHT OF EARTH | 9 |
| THE PARTING OF WAYS | 10 |
| THE VIRGIN MOTHER | 11 |
Her mist of primroses within
her breast
Twilight hath folded up, and
o’er the west,
Seeking remoter valleys long
hath gone,
Not yet hath come her sister
of the dawn.
Silence and coolness now the
earth enfold:
Jewels of glittering green,
long mists of gold,
Hazes of nebulous silver veil
the height,
And shake in tremors through
the shadowy night.
Heard through the stillness,
as in whispered words,
The wandering God-guided wings
of birds
Ruffle the dark. The
little lives that lie
Deep hid in grass join in
a long-drawn sigh
More softly still; and unheard
through the blue
The falling of innumerable
dew,
Lifts with grey fingers all
the leaves that lay
Burned in the heat of the
consuming day.
The lawns and lakes lie in
this night of love,
Admitted to the majesty above.
Earth with the starry company
hath part;
The waters hold all heaven
within their heart,
And glimmer o’er with
wave-lips everywhere
Lifted to meet the angel lips
of air.
The many homes of men shine
near and far;
Peace-laden as the tender
evening star,
The late home-coming folk
anticipate
Their rest beyond the passing
of the gate,
And tread with sleep-filled
hearts on drowsy feet.
Oh, far away and wonderful
and sweet
All this, all this. But
far too many things
Obscuring, as a cloud of seraph
wings
Blinding the seeker for the
Lord behind,
I fall away in weariness of
mind,
And think how far apart are
I and you,
Beloved, from those spirit
children who
Felt but one single Being
long ago,
Whispering in gentleness and
leaning low
Out of its majesty, as child
to child.
I think upon it all with heart
grown wild.
Hearing no voice, howe’er
my spirit broods.
No whisper from the dense
infinitudes,
This world of myriad things
whose distance awes.
Ah me; how innocent our childhood
was!
CREATION
As one by one the veils took
flight,
The day withdrew, the stars
came up:
The spirit issued dark and
bright,
Filling thy beauty like a
cup.
Sacred thy laughter on the
air,
Holy thy lightest word that
fell,
Proud the innumerable hair
That waved at the enchanter’s
spell.
Oh Master of the Beautiful,
Creating us from hour to hour,
Give me this vision to the
full
To see in lightest things
thy power!
This vision give, no heaven
afar,
No throne, and yet I will
rejoice,
Knowing beneath my feet a
star,
Thy word in every wandering
voice.
Dusk wraps the village in
its dim caress;
Each chimney’s vapour,
like a thin grey rod,
Mounting aloft through miles
of quietness,
Pillars
the skies of God.
Far up they break or seem
to break their line,
Mingling their nebulous crests
that bow and nod
Under the light of those fierce
stars that shine
Out
of the calm of God.
Only in clouds and dreams
I felt those souls
In the abyss, each fire hid
in its clod,
From which in clouds and dreams
the spirit rolls
Into
the vast of God.
NIGHT
Heart-hidden from the outer
things I rose;
The spirit woke anew in nightly
birth
Unto the vastness where forever
glows
The
star-soul of the earth.
There all alone in primal
ecstasy,
Within her depths where revels
never tire,
The Olden Beauty shines:
each thought of me
Is
veined through with its fire.
And all my thoughts are throngs
of living souls;
They breathe in me, heart
unto heart allied;
Their joy undimmed, though
when the morning tolls
The
planets may divide.
Still as the holy of holies
breathes the vast
Within its crystal depths
the stars grow dim;
Fire on the altar of the hills
at last
Burns
on the shadowy rim.
Moments that holds all moments;
white upon
The verge it trembles; then
like mists of flowers
Break from the fairy fountain
of the dawn
The
hues of many hours.
Thrown downward from that
high companionship
Of dreaming inmost heart with
inmost heart,
Into the common daily ways
I slip,
My
fire from theirs apart.
DAY
In day from some titanic past
it seems
As if a thread divine of memory
runs;
Born ere the Mighty One began
his dreams,
Or
yet were stars and suns.
But here an iron will has
fixed the bars;
Forgetfulness falls on earth’s
myriad races:
No image of the proud and
morning stars
Looks
at us from their faces.
Yet yearning still to reach
to those dim heights,
Each dream remembered is a
burning-glass,
Where through to darkness
from the Light of Lights
Its
rays in splendour pass.
I am the tender voice calling
‘Away,’
Whispering between the beatings
of the heart,
And inaccessible in dewy eyes
I dwell, and all unkissed
on lovely lips,
Lingering between white breasts
inviolate,
And fleeting ever from the
passionate touch,
I shine afar, till men may
not divine
Whether it is the stars or
the beloved
They follow with wrapt spirit.
And I weave
My spells at evening, folding
with dim caress,
Aerial arms and twilight dropping
hair,
The lonely wanderer by wood
or shore,
Till, filled with some deep
REMEMBRANCE
There were many burning hours
on the heart-sweet tide,
And we passed away from ourselves,
forgetting all
The immortal moods that faded,
the god who died,
Hastening away to the King
on a distant call.
There were ruby dews were
shed when the heart was riven,
And passionate pleading and
prayers to the dead we had wronged;
And we passed away unremembering
and unforgiven,
Hastening away to the King
for the peace we longed.
Love unremembered and heart-ache
we left behind,
We forsook them, unheeding,
hastening away in our flight;
We knew the hearts we had
wronged of old we would find
When we came to the fold of
the King for rest in the night.
Who would think this quiet
breather
From the world had taken flight?
Yet within the form we see
there
Wakes the golden King to-night.
Out upon the face of faces
He looked forth before his
sleep:
Now he knows the starry races
Haunters of the ancient deep;
On the Bird of Diamond Glory
Floats in mystic floods of
song:
As he lists Time’s triple
story
Seems but as a day is long.
From the mightier Adam falling
To his image dwarfed in clay,
He will at our voices calling
Come to this side of the day.
When he wakes, the dreamy-hearted,
He will know not whence he
came,
And the light from which he
parted
Be the seraph’s sword
of flame,
And behind it hosts supernal
Guarding the lost paradise,
And the tree of life eternal
From the weeping human eyes.
THE WINDS OF ANGUS
The grey road whereupon we
trod became as holy ground:
The eve was all one voice
that breathed its message with no sound:
And burning multitudes pour
through my heart, too bright, too blind,
Too swift and hurried in their
flight to leave their tale behind.
Twin gates unto that living
world, dark honey-coloured eyes
The lifting of whose lashes
flushed the face with paradise—
Beloved, there I saw within
their ardent rays unfold
The likeness of enraptured
birds that flew from deeps of gold
To deeps of gold within my
breast to rest or there to be
Transfigured in the light,
or find a death to life in me.
So love, a burning multitude,
a seraph wind which blows
From out the deep of being
to the deep of being goes:
And sun and moon and starry
fires and earth and air and sea
Are creatures from the deep
let loose who pause in ecstasy,
Or wing their wild and heavenly
way until again they find
The ancient deep and fade
therein, enraptured, bright and blind.
How shallow is this mere that
gleams!
Its depth of blue is from
the skies;
And from a distant sun the
dreams
And lovely light within your
eyes.
We deem our love so infinite
Because the Lord is everywhere,
And love awakening is made
bright
And bathed in that diviner
air.
We go on our enchanted way
And deem our hours immortal
hours,
Who are but shadow kings that
play
With mirrored majesties and
powers.
THE DAWN OF DARKNESS
Come earth’s little
children pit-pat from their burrows on the hill;
Hangs within the gloom its
weary head the shining daffodil.
In the valley underneath us
through the fragrance flit along
Over fields and over hedgerows
little quivering drops of song.
All adown the pale blue mantle
of the mountains far away
Stream the tresses of the
twilight flying in the wake of day.
Night comes; soon alone shall
fancy follow sadly in her flight
Where the fiery dust of evening,
shaken from the feet of light,
Thrusts its monstrous barriers
between the pure, the good, the true,
That our weeping eyes may
strain for, but shall never after view.
Only yester eve I watched
with heart at rest the nebulae
Looming far within the shadowy
shining of the Milky Way;
Finding in the stillness joy
and hope for all the sons of men;
Now what silent anguish fills
a night more beautiful than then.
For earth’s age of pain
has come, and all her sister planets weep,
Thinking of her fires of morning
passing into dreamless sleep.
In this cycle of great sorrow
for the moments that we last
We too shall be linked by
weeping to the greatness of her past:
But the coming race shall
know not, and the fount of tears shall dry,
And the arid heart of man
be arid as the desert sky.
So within my mind the darkness
dawned and round me everywhere
Hope departed with the twilight,
leaving only dumb despair.
We are tired who follow after
Phantasy and truth that flies:
You with only look and laughter
Stain our hearts with richest
dyes.
When you break upon our study
Vanish all our frosty cares;
As the diamond deep grows
ruddy,
Filled with morning unawares.
With the stuff that dreams
are made of
But an empty house we build:
Glooms we are ourselves afraid
of,
By the ancient starlight chilled.
All unwise in thought or duty—
Still our wisdom envies you:
We who lack the living beauty
Half our secret knowledge
rue.
Thought nor fear in you nor
dreaming
Veil the light with mist about;
Joy, as through a crystal
gleaming,
Flashes from the gay heart
out.
Pain and penitence forsaking,
Hearts like cloisters dim
and grey,
By your laughter lured, awaking
Join with you the dance of
day.
IN THE WOMB
Still rests the heavy share
on the dark soil:
Upon the black mould thick
the dew-damp lies:
The horse waits patient:
from his lowly toil
The ploughboy to the morning
lifts his eyes.
The unbudding hedgerows dark
against day’s fires
Glitter with gold-lit crystals:
on the rim
Over the unregarding city’s
spires
The lonely beauty shines alone
for him.
And day by day the dawn or
dark enfolds
And feeds with beauty eyes
that cannot see
How in her womb the mighty
mother moulds
The infant spirit for eternity.
At dusk the window panes grew
grey;
The wet world vanished in
the gloom;
The dim and silver end of
day
Scarce glimmered through the
little room.
And all my sins were told;
I said
Such things to her who knew
not sin—
The sharp ache throbbing in
my head,
The fever running high within.
I touched with pain her purity;
Sin’s darker sense I
could not bring:
My soul was black as night
to me:
To her I was a wounded thing.
I needed love no words could
say;
She drew me softly nigh her
chair,
My head upon her knees to
lay,
With cool hands that caressed
my hair.
She sat with hands as if to
bless,
And looked with grave, ethereal
eyes;
Ensouled by ancient quietness,
A gentle priestess of the
Wise.
A WOMAN’S VOICE
His head within my bosom lay,
But yet his spirit slipped
not through:
I only felt the burning clay
That withered for the cooling
dew.
It was but pity when I spoke
And called him to my heart
for rest,
And half a mother’s
love that woke
Feeling his head upon my breast:
And half the lion’s
tenderness
To shield her cubs from hurt
or death,
Which, when the serried hunters
press,
Makes terrible her wounded
breath.
But when the lips I breathed
upon
Asked for such love as equals
claim
I looked where all the stars
were gone
Burned in the day’s
immortal flame.
’Come thou like yon
great dawn to me
From darkness vanquished,
battles done:
Flame unto flame shall flow
and be
Within thy heart and mine
as one.’
As from our dream we died
away
Far off I felt the outer things;
Your wind-blown tresses round
me play,
Your bosom’s gentle
murmurings.
And far away our faces met
As on the verge of the vast
spheres;
And in the night our cheeks
were wet,
I could not say with dew or
tears.
As one within the Mother’s
heart
In that hushed dream upon
the height
We lived, and then we rose
to part,
Because her ways are infinite.
A PRAYER
O, holy Spirit of the Hazel,
hearken now,
Though shining suns and silver
moons burn on the bough,
And though the fruit of stars
by many myriads gleam,
Yet in the undergrowth below,
still in thy dream,
Lighting the labyrinthine
maze and monstrous gloom
Are many gem-winged flowers
with gay and delicate bloom;
And in the shade, hearken,
O Dreamer of the Tree,
One wild rose blossom of thy
spirit breathed on me
With lovely and still light,
a little sister flower
To those that whitely on the
tall moon branches tower,
Lord of the Hazel now, oh
hearken while I pray,
This wild rose blossom of
thy spirit fades away.
By many a dream of God and man
my thoughts in shining flocks were led:
But as I went through Patrick Street the hopes
and prophecies were dead.
The hopes and prophecies were dead: they
could not blossom where the feet
Walked amid rottenness, or where the brawling
shouters stamped the street.
Where was the beauty that the Lord gave man when
first he towered in pride?
But one came by me at whose word the bitter condemnation
died.
His brows were crowned with thorns of light:
his eyes were bright as one
who
sees
The starry palaces shine o’er the sparkle
of the heavenly seas.
‘Is it not beautiful?’ he cried.
Our Faery Land of Hearts’ Desire
Is mingled through the mire and mist, yet stainless
keeps its lovely fire.
The pearly phantoms with blown hair are dancing
where the drunkards reel:
The cloud frail daffodils shine out where filth
is splashing from the heel.
O sweet, and sweet, and sweet to hear, the melodies
in rivers run:
The rapture of their crowded notes is yet the
RECALL
What call may draw thee back
again,
Lost dove, what art, what
charm may please?
The tender touch, the kiss,
are vain,
For thou wert lured away by
these.
Oh, must we use the iron hand,
And mask with hate the holy
breath,
With alien voice give love’s
command,
As they through love the call
of death?
Our true hearts are forever
lonely:
A wistfulness is in our thought:
Our lights are like the dawns
which only
Seem bright to us and yet
are not.
Something you see in me I
wis not:
Another heart in you I guess:
A stranger’s lips—but
thine I kiss not,
Erring in all my tenderness.
I sometimes think a mighty
lover
Takes every burning kiss we
give:
His lights are those which
round us hover:
For him alone our lives we
live.
Ah, sigh for us whose hearts
unseeing
Point all their passionate
love in vain,
And blinded in the joy of
being,
Meet only when pain touches
pain.
BROTHERHOOD
Twilight, a blossom grey in
shadowy valleys dwells:
Under the radiant dark the
deep blue-tinted bells
In quietness reimage heaven
within their blooms,
Sapphire and gold and mystery.
What strange perfumes,
Out of what deeps arising,
all the flower-bells fling,
Unknowing the enchanted odorous
song they sing!
Oh, never was an eve so living
yet: the wood
Stirs not but breathes enraptured
quietide.
Here in these shades the Ancient
knows itself, the Soul,
And out of slumber waking
starts unto the goal.
What bright companions nod
and go along with it!
Out of the teeming dark what
dusky creatures flit,
That through the long leagues
I know myself no more, my
child,
Since thou art come to me,
Pity so tender and so wild
Hath wrapped my thoughts of
thee.
These thoughts, a fiery gentle
rain,
Are from the Mother shed,
Where many a broken heart
hath lain
And many a weeping head.
THE MAN TO THE ANGEL
I have wept a million tears:
Pure and proud one, where
are thine,
What the gain though all thy
years
In unbroken beauty shine?
All your beauty cannot win
Truth we learn in pain and
sighs:
You can never enter in
To the circle of the wise.
They are but the slaves of
light
Who have never known the gloom,
And between the dark and bright
Willed in freedom their own
doom.
Think not in your pureness
there,
That our pain but follows
sin:
There are fires for those
who dare
Seek the throne of might to
win.
Pure one, from your pride
refrain:
Dark and lost amid the strife
I am myriad years of pain
Nearer to the fount of life.
When defiance fierce is thrown
At the God to whom you bow,
Rest the lips of the Unknown
Tenderest upon my brow.
He bent above: so still
her breath
What air she breathed he could
not say,
Whether in worlds of life
or death:
So softly ebbed away, away
The life that had been light
to him,
So fled her beauty leaving
dim
The emptying chambers of his
heart
Thrilled only by the pang
and smart,
The dull and throbbing agony
That suffers still, yet knows
not why.
Love’s immortality so
blind
Dreams that all things with
it conjoined
Must share with it immortal
day:
But not of this—but
not of this—
The touch, the eyes, the laugh,
the kiss,
Fall from it and it goes its
way.
So blind he wept above her
clay,
THE VESTURE OF THE SOUL
I pitied one whose tattered
dress
Was patched, and stained with
dust and rain;
He smiled on me; I could not
guess
The viewless spirit’s
wide domain.
He said, ’The royal
robe I wear
Trails all along the fields
of light:
Its silent blue and silver
bear
For gems the starry dust of
night.’
’The breath of joy unceasingly
Waves to and fro its folds
starlit,
And far beyond earth’s
misery
I live and breathe the joy
of it.’
The wonder of the world is
o’er:
The magic from the sea is
gone:
There is no unimagined shore,
No islet yet to venture on.
The Sacred Hazels’ blooms
are shed,
The Nuts of Knowledge harvested.
Oh, what is worth this lore
of age
If time shall never bring
us back
Our battle with the gods to
wage
Reeling along the starry track.
The battle rapture here goes
by
In warring upon things that
die.
Let be the tale of him whose
love
Was sighed between white Deirdre’s
breasts,
It will not lift the heart
above
The sodden clay on which it
rests.
Love once had power the gods
to bring
All rapt on its wild wandering.
We shiver in the falling dew,
And seek a shelter from the
storm:
When man these elder brothers
knew
He found the mother nature
warm,
A hearth fire blazing through
it all,
A home without a circling
wall.
We dwindle down beneath the
skies,
And from ourselves we pass
away:
The paradise of memories
Grows ever fainter day by
day.
The shepherd stars have shrunk
within,
The world’s great night
will soon begin.
Will no one, ere it is too
late,
Ere fades the last memorial
gleam,
Recall for us our earlier
state?
For nothing but so vast a
dream
That it would scale the steeps
of air
Could rouse us from so vast
despair.
The power is ours to make
or mar
Our fate as on the earliest
morn,
The Darkness and the Radiance
are
Creatures within the spirit
born.
Yet, bathed in gloom too long,
we might
Forget how we imagined light.
Not yet are fixed the prison
bars:
The hidden light the spirit
owns
If blown to flame would dim
the stars
And they who rule them from
their thrones:
And the proud sceptred spirits
thence
Would bow to pay us reverence.
Oh, while the glory sinks
within
Let us not wait on earth behind,
But follow where it flies,
and win
The glow again, and we may
find
Beyond the Gateways of the
Day
Dominion and ancestral sway.
THE DREAM
I did not deem it half so
sweet
To feel thy gentle hand,
As in a dream thy soul to
greet
Across wide leagues of land,
Untouched more near to draw
to you
Where, amid radiant skies,
Glimmered thy plumes of iris
hue,
My Bird of Paradise.
Let me dream only with my
heart,
Love first, and after see:
Know thy diviner counterpart
Before I kneel to thee.
So in thy motions all expressed
Thy angel I may view:
I shall not on thy beauty
rest,
But Beauty’s ray in
you.
The skies from black to pearly
grey
Had veered without a star
or sun;
Only a burning opal ray
Fell on your brow when all
was done.
Aye, after victory, the crown;
Yet through the fight no word
of cheer;
And what would win and what
go down
No word could help, no light
make clear.
A thousand ages onward led
Their joys and sorrows to
that hour;
No wisdom weighed, no word
was said,
For only what we were had
power.
There was no tender leaning
there
Of brow to brow in loving
mood;
For we were rapt apart, and
were
In elemental solitude.
We knew not in redeeming day
Whether our spirits would
be found
Floating along the starry
way,
Or in the earthly vapours
drowned.
Brought by the sunrise-coloured
flame
To earth, uncertain yet, the
while
I looked at you, there slowly
came,
Noble and sisterly, your smile.
We bade adieu to love the
old;
We heard another lover then,
Whose forms are myriad and
untold,
Sigh to us from the hearts
of men.
SONG
Dusk its ash-grey blossoms
sheds on violet skies,
Over twilight mountains where
the heart songs rise,
Rise and fall and fade away
from earth to air.
Earth renews the music sweeter.
Oh, come there.
Come, acushla, come, as in
ancient times
Rings aloud the underland
with faery chimes.
Down the unseen ways as strays
each tinkling fleece
Winding ever onward to a fold
of peace,
So my dreams go straying in
a land more fair;
Half I tread the dew-wet grasses,
half wander there.
Fade your glimmering eyes
in a world grown cold;
Come, acushla, with me to
the mountains old.
There the bright ones call
us waving to and fro—
Come, my children, with me
to the ancient go.
Who is that goddess to whom
men should pray
But her from whom their hearts
have turned away,
Out of whose virgin being
they were born,
Whose mother nature they have
named in scorn
Calling its holy substance
common clay.
Yet from this so despised
earth was made
The milky whiteness of those
queens who swayed
Their generations with a light
caress,
And from some image of whose
loveliness
The heart built up high heaven
when it prayed.
Lover, your heart, the heart
on which it lies,
Your eyes that gaze, and those
alluring eyes,
Your lips, the lips they kiss,
alike had birth
Within this dark divinity
of earth,
Within this mother being you
despise.
Ah, when I think this earth
on which we tread
Hath borne these blossoms
of the lovely dead,
And made the living heart
I love to beat,
I look with sudden awe beneath
my feet
As you with erring reverence
overhead.
Here ends By Still Waters, Lyrical Poems Old & New by A.E., printed upon paper made in Ireland, and published by Elizabeth C. Yeats at the Dun Emer Press, in the house of Evelyn Gleeson at Dundrum in the County of Dublin, Ireland, finished on All Soul’s Eve, in the year 1906.