Both nuns and mothers worship images, But those the candles light are not as those That animate a mother’s reveries, But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
All through the years of our youth Neither could have known Their own thought from the other’s, We were so much at one.
Pale brows, still hands and dim hair, I had a beautiful friend And dreamed that the old despair Would end in love in the end...
I would that there was nothing in the world But my beloved that night and day had perished, And all that is and all that is to be, All that is not the meeting of our lips.
I would that I were an old beggar Rolling a blind pearl eye, For he cannot see my lady Go gallivanting by.
I see a schoolboy when I think of him, With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window...
But stories that live longest Are sung above the glass, And Parnell loved his country And Parnell loved his lass.
Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land; Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand...
While on that old grey stone I sat Under the old wind-broken tree, I knew that One is animate, Mankind inanimate phantasy.
Maybe the bride-bed brings despair, For each an imagined image brings And finds a real image there...
Gaze no more in the bitter glass The demons, with their subtle guile, Lift up before us when they pass, Or only gaze a little while...
Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.
A spot whereon the founders lived and died Seemed once more dear than life; ancestral trees, Or gardens rich in memory glorified Marriages, alliances, and families, And every bride’s ambition satisfied.
For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave.
Acquaintance; companion; One dear brilliant woman; The best-endowed, the elect, All by their youth undone, All, all, by that inhuman Bitter glory wrecked.
Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight, Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
I – love’s skein upon the ground, My body in the tomb – Shall leap into the light lost In my mother’s womb.
O sweet everlasting Voices, be still; Go to the guards of the heavenly fold And bid them wander obeying your will, Flame under flame, till Time be no more...
When we are high and airy hundreds say That if we hold that flight they’ll leave the place, While those same hundreds mock another day Because we have made our art of common things...
O heart the winds have shaken, the unappeasable host Is comelier than candles at Mother Mary’s feet.