Poems

Know, that I would accounted be

True brother of that company,

Who sang to sweeten Ireland's wrong,

Ballad and story, rann and song;

Nor be I any less of them,

Because the red-rose-bordered hem

Of her, whose history began

Before God made the angelic clan,

Trails all about the written page;

For in the world's first blossoming age

The light fall of her flying feet

Made Ireland's heart begin to beat;

And still the starry candles flare

To help her light foot here and there;

And still the thoughts of Ireland brood

Upon her holy quietude.

Nor may I less be counted one

With Davis, Mangan, Ferguson,

Because to him, who ponders well,

My rhymes more than their rhyming tell

Of the dim wisdoms old and deep,

That God gives unto man in sleep.

For the elemental beings go

About my table to and fro.

In flood and fire and clay and wind,

They huddle from man's pondering mind;

Yet he who treads in austere ways

May surely meet their ancient gaze.

Man ever journeys on with them

After the red-rose-bordered hem.

Ah, faeries, dancing under the moon,

A Druid land, a Druid tune!

While still I may, I write for you

The love I lived, the dream I knew.

From our birthday, until we die,

Is but the winking of an eye;

And we, our singing and our love,

The mariners of night above,

And all the wizard things that go

About my table to and fro.

Are passing on to where may be,

In truth's consuming ecstasy

No place for love and dream at all;

For God goes by with white foot-fall.

I cast my heart into my rhymes,

That you, in the dim coming times,

May know how my heart went with them

After the red-rose-bordered hem.