WHO ARE MY FRIENDS
Who are my friends,
Faithful and true?
Who but the stars
That burn in the blue.
Who but the sun
That sinketh so red,
Who but the clay
That giveth me bread.
Who but the hills,
Who but the sea,
Who but the flowers
That fold on the tree.
Who but the moths
That flutter and pass,
Who but the lambs
That cry in the grass.
Who but the darkness,
Who but the rain,
Who but the grave, the grave —
All else are vain!
All else are vain!
O GLORIOUS CHILDBEARER
O glorious childbearer,
O secret womb,
O gilded bridechamber, from which hath come the sightly Bridegroom forth,
O amber veil,
Thou sittest in heaven, the white love of the Gael.
Thy head is crowned with stars, thy radiant hair
Shines like a river thro’ the twilight air;
Thou walkest by trodden ways and trackless seas,
Immaculate of man’s infirmities.
CORONACH
Come, pipes, sound
A crooning coronach round,
Till hill and hollow glen and shadowed lake o’erflow
With welling music of our woe.
Beat, beat, ye muffled drums, ye drones and chanters wail,
With heartbreak of the baffled, battle-broken Gael.
The clay is deep on Ireland’s breast:
Her proud and bleeding heart is laid at last to rest.
To rest. to rest!
TWILIGHT FALLEN
Twilight fallen white and cold,
Child in cradle, lamb in fold;
Glimmering thro’ the ghostly trees,
Gemini and Pleiades.
Wounds of Eloim,
Weep on me!
Black-winged vampires flitting by,
Curlews crying in the sky;
Grey mists wreathing from the ground,
Wrapping rath and burial mound.
Wounds of Eloim,
Weep on me!
Heard, like some sad Gaelic strain,
Ocean’s ancient voice in pain;
Darkness folding hill and wood,
Sorrow drinking at my blood.
Wounds of Eloim,
Weep on me!
THE DAWN WHITENESS
The dawn whiteness.
A bank of slate-grey cloud lying heavily over it.
The moon, like a hunted thing, dropping into the cloud.
THE DWARF
Look at him now, the son,
And the churchyard twist in his foot,
Standing there by his mother’s door,
As if he had taken root!
She crossed a grave, they say,
On a black day in spring,
And bore him in the seventh month —
A poor, misshapen thing.
Kneeling down in the dark
She travailed without a cry,
And gave him the mothering kiss
Between the earth and the sky.
He licks cuckoo-spittle, they say,