PROLOGUE MY DEAR “MAURICE”–You will remember that afternoon in Calvados last summer when your black Persian “Minoulooshe,” who had walked behind us for a good mile, heard a wing flutter in a bramble-bush? For a long time we called her endearing names in vain. She seemed resolute to spend her night among the brambles. She […]

The jester walked in the garden:The garden had fallen still;He bade his soul rise upwardAnd stand on her window-sill. It rose in a straight blue garment,When owls began to call:It had grown wise-tongued by thinkingOf a quiet and light footfall; But the young queen would not listen;She rose in her pale night gown;She drew in […]

Be you still, be you still, trembling heart;Remember the wisdom out of the old days:Him who trembles before the flame and the flood, And the winds that blow through the starry ways, Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood Cover over and hide, for he has no part With the proud, majestical […]

The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spearsSuddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the criesOf unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.We who still labour by the cromlec on the shore,The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew,Being weary of the world’s empires, […]

If this importunate heart trouble your peaceWith words lighter than air,Or hopes that in mere hoping flicker and cease;Crumple the rose in your hair;And cover your lips with odorous twilight and say,‘O Hearts of wind-blown flame!‘O Winds, elder than changing of night and day,‘That murmuring and longing came,‘From marble cities loud with tabors of old‘In […]

O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyesThe poets labouring all their daysTo build a perfect beauty in rhymeAre overthrown by a woman’s gazeAnd by the unlabouring brood of the skies:And therefore my heart will bow, when dewIs dropping sleep, until God burn time,Before the unlabouring stars and you.

I wander by the edgeOf this desolate lakeWhere wind cries in the sedgeUntil the axle break That keeps the stars in their round And hands hurl in the deep The banners of East and West And the girdle of light is unbound, Your breast will not lie by the breast Of your beloved in sleep.

I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs,For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood;And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the woodWith her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes:I cried in my dream ‘ O women bid the young men lay ‘Their heads on your knees, […]

Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair,And dream about the great and their pride;They have spoken against you everywhere,But weigh this song with the great and their pride;I made it out of a mouthful of air,Their children’s children shall say they have lied.

Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,Enfold me in my hour of hours; where thoseWho sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,Or in the wine vat, dwell beyond the stirAnd tumult of defeated dreams; and deepAmong pale eyelids, heavy with the sleepMen have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfoldThe ancient beards, the helms of ruby and […]

Cumhal called out, bending his head,Till Dathi came and stood,With a blink in his eyes at the cave mouth,Between the wind and the wood. And Cumhal said, bending his knees,‘I have come by the windy way‘To gather the half of your blessedness‘And learn to pray when you pray. ‘I can bring you salmon out of […]

The Powers whose name and shape no living creature knowsHave pulled the Immortal Rose;And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept,The Polar Dragon slept,His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep:When will he wake from sleep? Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire,With your harmonious choirEncircle her I […]

O, colleens, kneeling by your altar rails long hence,When songs I wove for my beloved hide the prayer,And smoke from this dead heart drifts through the violet airAnd covers away the smoke of myrrh and frankincense;Bend down and pray for the great sin I wove in song,Till Maurya of the wounded heart cry a sweet […]

Though you are in your shining days,Voices among the crowdAnd new friends busy with your praise,Be not unkind or proud,But think about old friends the most:Time’s bitter flood will rise,Your beauty perish and be lostFor all eyes but these eyes.

When the flaming lute-thronged angelic door is wide;When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay;Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the wayCrowded with bitter faces, the wounds in palm and side,The hyssop-heavy sponge, the flowers by Kidron stream:We will bend down and loosen our hair over you,That it may drop faint perfume, and […]

O where is our Mother of PeaceNodding her purple hood?For the winds that awakened the starsAre blowing through my blood.I would that the death-pale deerHad come through the mountain side,And trampled the mountain away,And drunk up the murmuring tide;For the winds that awakened the starsAre blowing through my blood,And our Mother of Peace has forgot […]

I have drunk ale from the Country of the YoungAnd weep because I know all things now:I have been a hazel tree and they hungThe Pilot Star and the Crooked PloughAmong my leaves in times out of mind:I became a rush that horses tread:I became a man, a hater of the wind,Knowing one, out of […]

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,Enwrought with golden and silver light,The blue and the dim and the dark clothsOf night and light and the half light,I would spread the cloths under your feet:But I, being poor, have only my dreams;I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Were you but lying cold and dead,And lights were paling out of the West,You would come hither, and bend your head,And I would lay my head on your breast;And you would murmur tender words,Forgiving me, because you were dead:Nor would you rise and hasten away,Though you have the will of the wild birds,But know your […]

CHARACTERS PETER GILLANE. MICHAEL GILLANE his son, going to be married. PATRICK GILLANE a lad of twelve, Michael’s brother. BRIDGET GILLANE Peter’s wife. DELIA CAHEL engaged to MICHAEL. THE POOR OLD WOMAN. NEIGHBOURS. ACT I [SCENE: Interior of a cottage close to Killala, in 1798. BRIDGET is standing at a table undoing a parcel. PETER […]