FROM THE BURREN

I

Leagues upon leagues spread these sun-warmed rocks,
While over my head the breeze swept by,
Grey was it, all grey, yet a grey so clear
That it shone self-lit, like some half-veiled sky.
“Are you rocks, mere rocks, bald earth?” I asked.
“Nay some Titan for sure hath hitherward strayed,
Touched your tops with a god’s own hand,
Over your surface some wild tune played;
Till suddenly, lo! no longer mere rocks,
Spawn of blind forces, dumb things of earth,
But Creatures of Vision, intent, high-planned
Hewn and shaped to a conscious birth.
See how a chisel hath plainly wrought!
Queen of the Arts, with her God-sent gift,
Sculpture herself hath been striving here
Spirit and senses alike to lift.
Or again, up yonder, grey height on height,
Tier above tier and no touch of soil,
Bastion on bastion, solidly planned,
Hewn, one dare swear, with a nation’s toil,
Rightful resort for adventurous men,
See yon portcullis high-perched o’erhead,
From beneath which marched (can we doubt it?) of yore
Fierce fighting septs of a race long dead?”
Heathery, wine-flushed hills in the sun;
Mountainous peaks, bepinnacled, steep;
Vast domes, lost in a dream of snow;
Billowy downs, beloved of sheep;
Dear are you all, yet closer, more dear
Deep in some innermost pucker of soul,
Reign and will reign for me ever these grey hills,
Till coldly and gravely the last tides roll.

II

No hint, no touch of grim utility,
Earth’s busy functions sleep abandoned here;
Corn-grower, root-grower, nourisher of grain,
All are forgotten; nakedly austere.
Nought but herself, her inmost core, survives,
Stripped to the elements; enskyed and pure,
Remote, and stern, and coldly sanctified;
Pale as a ghost, yet rock-fast to endure.
And therefore, Burren hills, to me you seem
Shrines meet for that which is, and which is not;
Approach, beloved ones! Hasten! All is clear,
No bidding need you—you the unforgot!
The door stands open; only come, ah come;
Come from your far-off realms, with noiseless tread,
Come as you were, no dearer could you be—
The Loved, the Lost, the Sundered and the Dead!
Wide glistening pavements fit for ghostly feet,
Where never thought of mart or street intrude,
Only from ledge to ledge spent rain-drops drip,
And half-heard tinklings stir the solitude.
Imponderable wanderers! Shadowy all!
Ghost after ghost; half-veiled; grey muffled; while
With spirit-looks, visions seen in sleep,
Eyes seem to glimmer, lips austerely smile.
Again at dusk-time, or when moonbeams lie
Far on the sheeted silence, fold on fold;
Then with a swifter sequence, soft as light,
Life’s semblances enwrap this shadowy cold.
Like autumn leaves, like high-borne clouds, they come
Strange shapes; and others, others, ah, not strange!
Not strange, God knows, but intimately dear,
Untouched by time, defiant of all change.
And therefore, Burren hills, grey Burren hills,
Soul of fierce Clare, wild West of all our West,
No mindless tract of earth or strand thou seem’st,
Such as dull maps and solemn charts attest.
Here ’mid your solitudes, as ’mid the crowds,
Alike for me thou shinest, realm apart;
Open to all we pine for, pray for, hope;
Sanctified Home-land of th’ unchanging heart.

III
RESURGENCE

I

Where are ye, goblins of a while ago?
Ill-health, dull gloom, Grief with its footsteps slow,
Wry-visaged Pain, the bat-winged form of Care;
Insomnia, whose accursed and cruel brood
Fasten their horrid fangs in faithful Sleep,
Burrs of our life, whose hooked talons creep
Even to the very soul; whose unseen snare
Besets our path, our bed, our toil, our food;
Whose touch is madness, and whose poisoned breath
Is worse than the hard clutch of fatal Death?
Behold they fly!
Further and further yet they hie
Past yon dry and ice-smooth grass
Where the sculptured shadows pass;
Where the bee, intent to steal,
Catches with its small armed heel
At those fairy palace wells
The purple lips of flower bells,
Whose deep chalices hold fast
Their strong-stored sweetness; till at last,
The robber grown importunate,
Teeth and hairy claws are set
Full in the soft and damask sides
Where the garnered treasure hides,
And, the deed of daring done,
With a loud triumphant hum
Off the wingèd felon flies
And to some fresh conquest hies.
Oh, pleasant things familiar long,
What magic doth to you belong?
What secret unpolluted wells,
What store of unexhausted spells?
Can your unruffled sweetness woo
My devious soul again to you,
Sweep from the years regret—how vain—
And give pure Bliss her own again?
Alas! the kindly magic palls,
Its spell dies off; even it recalls,
Even you recall the strain, the stress
Of life’s consummate restlessness.
“Life, let it come in any guise,
Is life,” we say, and over-wise
Our soul informs with its own hue
These tenants of th’ ethereal blue.
We know you all too well, too long,
Your hues, your gambols, and your song;
You cannot think to cheat our eyes
With hope of any new surprise,
Your brightest shows, your deftest wiles
Are trite to us as oft-seen smiles
On some familiar face; as trite
As Time’s unconquerable flight;
Trite as the cradle-songs which haunt
Some dying ear; trite as the chaunt
Of oft-heard thrush in garden shade;
Trite as the love to children paid;
Trite as the prayers whose rhythmic flow
Across unheeding memory go;
Trite as the very vital breath;
Aye, trite as Life, and trite as Death!

II

Ocean of Life! Mysterious ferry
Upon whose silent breast the barques
Flit swift and noiselessly; as sparks
Blown from magician’s forge; as mote
Of city dust; as things which float
Deep down some ancient forest’s shade,
Where, peering through its dusky glade,
Circles on circles eddying start,
And still the teeming atoms part
And meet, and part again, until
The thronging myriads crowding still
Seem to invest the brain—possess,
It with the sense of fruitlessness
Of fevered rush, of frenzied strain
Whose life is toil, whose end is pain.
Then off! small brother-elves, we say
Hence with your idle pranks, away!
Let rather silence obdurate,
Rock palaces, severe as fate,
Brown deserts, or the entrenchant gloom
Of vacant cities, which some doom
Leaves naked to the wolves; let them,
And such as they their spells essay;
So gloom on gloom its powers may try
In dull discordant rivalry,
Mates of the worm and tomb; not you
Gay playthings of the sun and wind,
Too long familiar and too kind.
Yet Life’s warm garment closest clings
When most we strive to strip it; flings
Its mantle round us; ever tries
Fresh hues, fresh modes to tempt our eyes!
For listen, life of rock and hill,
Your secret is your secret still;
From yonder crag thin-peaked and grey,
Cold even in this noontide ray,
To yon bejewelled living thing,
Darting along on viewless wing,
From lichens fine as dryad’s hair,
To cliffs high bathed in cloudless air,
From dust-speck to imperial sky
You all are strangers; and we die
And never know you. Full and free
You quaff the cup of mystery,
Of your own fate the only lord,
We see the scabbard, but the sword
Has never gleamed before our eyes;
Its hidden scrolls, its blazonries,
Are all to us as strange and new
As if nor we, nor they, nor you
Had in one lot a common share,
Or breathed the self-same vital air.
Launched on your pleasant dreamless tide
You sweep along, or fearless glide,
While we, with sobs of toil and pain
Struggle Discovery’s heights to gain.
Till tip-toe on some peak we scan
The vast, the immeasurable plan,
Yet neither clue nor meaning find,
Till ever seeking, ever blind,
Caught by some ’whelming wave we roll,
To the same vast eternal goal.

III

Yet Hope survives. And Hope is blest
Even when it fools us; loveliest, best
Of heaven’s high brood; the hope to pluck
Something from out the void; to suck
Even from the heart of deep distress
That hidden secret which to guess
Were a long life’s completest meed;
That unseen root from whose small seed
Springs the young blossom of Content,
A flower oft grown on foreign soil,
Around whose hidden life-springs coil
Sorrow, and suffering, and death,
Sorrow and toil; whose very breath
Is blent with sighs; yet in whose breast
Still clings the magic perfume—Rest.
And as in this far solitude
Evening restores with her still mood
Much that is lost and hid away
Beneath the glamour of the day,
So on the last remotest verge,
Half-lost against the murmuring surge,
’Midst hollow Ocean-voices heard,
Steals floating in that mystic word,
The word mistaught, misunderstood
Whose half is “Ill,” whose whole is “Good.”
The word whose magic stirs the seeds,
And knits the stars, and links the creeds:
A whisper, solemn, soft and low,
Telling the thing we fain would know,
Yet could not earlier; only now
Now when the tense and busy brow
Swims, and the hands fall pale and dead,
And in a voice serene but dread
Life’s mystic sister, veiled and pale,
Whispers the old, the unknown tale,
Writ on some dim, mysterious scroll,
Preludings of one magic whole.
Yet, even while we strain to hear,
Duller and duller grows the ear,
Less and less clear the accents roll,
Receding from the evanished soul,
Darker, more dark, the shadows fall,
Till grey-eyed Silence covers all.

IV
NIGHT SOUNDS

Rush of fierce winds from sea
Say in your flight have ye
Never a word for me,
Threatening or kindly?
Wet with wild scuds of rain,
Drenching yon shivering pane,
Threatening with might and main,
Blindly, most blindly.
Now like a child that cries,
Now like scared bird that flies,
Cowering ’neath angry skies,
Frantically wailing.
Now, with a louder roar,
Through chinks, up crazy floor,
Ghosts of the sea and shore
Desperately railing.
Hark, ’tis a voice that calls!
Sure some poor creature falls,
Crushed amid iron walls,
Hopeless and drowning?
Dying with help so nigh,
Just one last anguished cry,
Flung to a heartless sky,
Pitilessly scowling.
Forces of sea and land,
Battling on either hand,
Armed with one fixed command
“Die, Man, unhoping!”
Unseen, unknown, unguessed,
Blindly, from east to west
Earth’s lone bewildered guest
Travels, still groping.
Blacker yet grows the night,
Pierced with dull moans of fright,
Mounting depths, lowered height
Hollow; despairing;
Up yonder unseen wall
Sea-eyed the phantoms crawl,
Ocean’s vast caves are all
Open and staring.
Toss and toss, turn and strain
Sky, clouds, blank sky and rain!
When can a man attain?
Never, ah never!
Hark, once more Atlantic rolls,
Far out a fog-bell tolls,
God keep all bewildered souls
Here and for ever!

V
TO A HURRYING STREAMLET

Nay, little stream, why so swiftly go?
Past flowery clefts your hurrying waters flow
Past birch and hawthorn, shimmering in the sun,
Past fern-filled tracts; on and on you run,
To yon verge unseen. Ah, slower go!
Pause little stream. The Ocean lies below.
Short-lived thy course, short-lived will be thy dirge,
Short-lived thy sun-time, steep and dark the verge,
Here redstarts flit, and sometimes thrushes sing,
On yonder marge the cormorant flaps his wing.
Short course! Deep drop! Brave courage! Onward go,
Drop little stream; the Ocean waits below.

VI
IS IT LOVE? IS IT HATE?

Is it Love, is it Hate, this clasp by the sea of the land,
Entangling, swaying, revolving, escaping, past to the strand;
Escaping, yet never escaped, never utterly gone from reach;
Which is it? I ask and would know, as I watch at hand,
Here on the beach.
To-night they seem weary of warfare, these ancient foes,
Weary of love as of hate; of eddying kisses or blows;
Even as we, as I, grow weary of eddying thought,
Of the waves of the mind, of the soul and its foam-like woes,
Rising unsought.
The sea’s mood to-night has changed, has grown simple and mild
It draws in the land to its breast as a nurse draws a child,
It sings it a song wrought out of the moan of the beach,
Of the sough of the wind, of the tales of the waste and the wild,
Older and stranger than speech.

VII
A REPROACH

The weltering anguish of a tortured land,
A sky of lead, cumbered with mountainous clouds,
Through which a moon steers, smiling as she goes,
And—stretching to the void of distance—Thou
Oldest of murderers! What ghastly croon,
What dismal tale of past iniquities,
What unremorseful dark soliloquy
Moan’st thou and mutterest thus continually?
Listen! There is a secret register
Which in the hollow pause ’twixt wave and wave
Records thy doings for unnumbered years;
The treacherous tale of sudden summer gales;
Of furious autumn; of black winter nights;
Of man’s first advent, man’s harsh destiny,
Of boding calms, and madly lashing storms,
Of foundered ships, wild prayers, and drowning cries.
That chronicle, dark tumbling one, is thine!
Well may’st thou groan and hourly lash thyself,
Yet not for all thy lashings shalt thou ’scape,
Nor shall thy myriad waters purge thy guilt.
While she, thy dainty partner, up aloft,
Pearly accomplice of a million crimes,
From cloud to cloud steers on, how smilingly!

VIII
TO A FORGOTTEN TRITON

Triumphant wielder of the wreathèd horns,
Breeder and brewer of small midland storms,
Lord of a land-locked sea;
Plunged in this grey tumultuous brine,
What fears, what thoughts, we ask, were thine,
What dreams would visit thee?
A minnow down some wild mill-race,
A leaf, gale-tossed from place to place,
Might fitly image thee;
Some mild seer of the ancient world,
Into our vexed thought-maelstrom hurled,
Would hear this deafening sea.

IX
TO THAT RARE AND DEEP-RED BURNET-MOTH ONLY TO BE MET WITH IN THE BURREN

Sparkle of red on an iron floor,
In the fiercest teeth of this gale’s wild roar,
What has brought thee, oh speck of fire,
Speaking of love and the heart’s desire,
To a land so dead?
Rocks gaunt and grim as the halls of Death,
Sculptured and hewn by the wind’s rough breath,
Fortress-shaped, fantastic things,
Reared for some turbulent race of Kings,
Kings long since dead.
Wind-blown pools where no herbs grow,
Streams lost and sunk in the depths below,
Where scant flowers bloom, where few birds sing,
Thou, thou fliest alone, thou fire-winged thing!
Small speck of red!

X
A GARDEN

High upon this bleak cliff where the wild wind dashes
Grows that little garden which my soul loves best,
Filled with flower faces, white, and blue, and yellow,
Sheltered from the east wind, cradled by the west.
Tossed against its limestone clings one pallid woodbine,
Spreads the golden trefoil, waves the hair-bell tall,
Gentians and saxifrage, pimpernel and eyebright,
That little hollow rift finds room enough for all.
Close along its ledges cluster snowy dryas,
Rose-like are the flowers, yet it clutches hard the rock,
Claw-like its rootlets, roots like claws of sea-gulls,
Scornful of the tempest, and proof ’gainst every shock.
Campions fill the corners, careless little growers,
Loved of the roving moth, which visits them at night;
Under silvery leaflets round balloon-like blossoms
Tumble in a tangled mat, mingled green and white.
Fierce cruel rifts spread around my garden,
Slashed in the living rock, reaching far below,
Through whose jagged hollows, narrow as a sword-cut,
Ocean’s mutter rises, ocean’s currents flow.
Smooth as the work of some famed and cunning sculptor,
See yon cup hollowed, graven by the tide;
Vacant now, yet wait till the waves returning landward
Send the salt spray flying in a fountain far and wide.
Shyly at night shine the beams into my garden,
Wavering threads of silver which glide along its rock,
Glittering in the darkness, peeping all around it,
Spreading high above it in a thin and misty flock.
Then, as their Lady climbs the silent heavens,
Leaning closely downwards, peering from the height,
Suddenly I spy how on one familiar blossom
Like a star has gathered all that grey and moony light.
Dear to our hearts are the flowers of the spring-time,
Lighters of our bleak months, breakers through the mould,
Scilla and snowdrop, windflower and crocus,
Brave little soldier-lads fearless of the cold!
Gorgeous and glorious the roses of our June days,
Solemn in its beauty the lily white and tall,
Gracious the flowers which come to us in autumn,
Yet the Rock-clan, the Rock-clan is dearest still of all!
Therefore little garden, garden all unheeded,
Watched by no warder save some rash indifferent gull,
Here at your rock-edge a tribute pen I offer,
Vowed long since to you and yours, if rusted now and dull
Rough, very rough, hath been your children’s nurture,
Helped by no shelter, no balmy Zephyrs blest,
Wild, most wild their mistress, wayward, fierce, bewitching,
Queen of moods and shadows, tempest-stirring West!

XI
A WAVE

Up the long level slope of orbèd earth
Comes this great western wave; now its huge crest
Rims the horizon; now in seeming rest
Onward it comes; no shallow outward mirth
Breaks the calm surface, but below our seeing
Laughs the great heart in ecstasy of being,
Earth and sky respond. The rock-strewn shore
Sounds the approach; down falls its gathered might
Prone on the patient crags and bastions hoar,
Then dies away under the sunset light,
Murmuring “My task is ended”; murmuring rest
To all the echoing caves. And still the night
Upholds its mantle, and the star-pricked West
Shines hollow; and the hollow pools are white.

XII
YET A LITTLE LONGER

Loud-voiced tormentor of this naked land,
Whelming with cataract floods the patient strand,
And you, lean rocks, that, lying out to sea,
In its grey wash slumber eternally,
I am your comrade for a little space,
A little longer while God gives me grace,
While the uplifted arrows hovering stay,
And night and day for me are night and day.
A few more months or years, and yon vast sea
Whose tides know nought of personality,
Engulf me; Me! beside whose deeps you stand
Like the least lakelet of yon lake-strewn land.
I am so rare, so strange, nor faun nor fay
Can match me, yet my tale is “every-day,”
Almost too slight to utter! Meanwhile we
Watch these late hours together silently.

XIII
EVENING

They are walking, our dim ones, to-night, to-night,
Grey over grey, greyest spirits all
Secret and silent their footsteps fall,
Yet what they but whisper I’ve guessed aright.
And the birds know it too, each gull and each tern
Sea-swallows skimming the sunset rocks,
Bird after bird in fast following flocks
Homeward wheeling, they pause to learn.
Then away to the West, where the light has gone,
And the sea rolls dumbly, the night comes on.