Seven Poems and a Fragment

If you, that have grown old were the first dead
Neither Caltapa tree nor scented lime
Should hear my living feet, nor would I tread
Where we wrought that shall break the teeth of time.
Let the new faces play what tricks they will
In the old rooms; night can outbalance day,
Our shadows rove the garden gravel still,
The living seem more shadowy than they.

A PRAYER FOR MY SON

Bid a strong ghost stand at the head
That my Michael may sleep sound,
Nor cry, nor turn in the bed
Till his morning meal come round;
And may departing twilight keep
All dread afar till morning’s back
That his mother may not lack
Her fill of sleep.

Bid the ghost have sword in hand:
There are malicious things, although
Few dream that they exist,
Who have planned his murder, for they know
Of some most haughty deed or thought
That waits upon his future days,
And would through hatred of the bays
Bring that to nought.

Though You can fashion everything
From nothing every day, and teach
The morning stars to sing,
You have lacked articulate speech
To tell Your simplest want, and known,
Wailing upon a woman’s knee,
All of that worst ignominy
Of flesh and bone;

And when through all the town there ran
The servants of Your enemy
A woman and a man,
Unless the Holy Writings lie,
Have borne You through the smooth and rough
And through the fertile and waste,
Protecting till the danger past
With human love.

CUCHULAIN THE GIRL AND THE FOOL

THE GIRL

I am jealous of the looks men turn on you
For all men love your worth; and I must rage
At my own image in the looking-glass
That’s so unlike myself that when you praise it
It is as though you praise another, or even
Mock me with praise of my mere opposite;
And when I wake towards morn I dread myself
For the heart cries that what deception wins
My cruelty must keep; and so begone
If you have seen that image and not my worth.

CUCHULAIN

All men have praised my strength but not my worth.

THE GIRL

If you are no more strength than I am beauty
I will find out some cavern in the hills
And live among the ancient holy men,
For they at least have all men’s reverence
And have no need of cruelty to keep
What no deception won.

CUCHULAIN

I have heard them say
That men have reverence for their holiness
And not their worth.

THE GIRL

God loves us for our worth;
But what care I that long for a man’s love.

THE FOOL BY THE ROADSIDE

When my days that have
From cradle run to grave
From grave to cradle run instead;
When thoughts that a fool
Has wound upon a spool
Are but loose thread, are but loose thread;

When cradle and spool are past
And I mere shade at last
Coagulate of stuff
Transparent like the wind,