EIRE.

O Eire, Eire, what of the morrow? Speak to us who are thinking long, O Eire, Eire, mother of sorrow, Mother of song. We that cling to thy knees for ever, True to thy hills and glens and streams; We that the years and the seas dissever From all but dreams, We have laid our hearts on thy high green altar, We are made all thine till the world’s life cease; Speak to our hopes and hearts that falter Words of peace. “Children dear, I have wandered, wandered, I have faced each sorrow the years renew, For you I have laboured, for you have pondered, Have wept for you. O children broken! O children weary! The griefs that lie in your pathways strown I, your mistress, your mother, Eire, I, too, have known. But of all things sure I have found none surer Than this one wisdom the days let fall, That the heart grown stronger, the heart grown purer Shall master all. You shall leave to others the lute and tabor, You shall go your ways from the dance and song, You shall set your hands to the daily labour The whole year long. You shall count no task for your toil too humble, You shall hate no man for the times long gone, For strifes must perish and hates must crumble, But love lives on. And so at the end as the light draws nearer You shall find that labour and love are best, And I, your mother, grown greater, dearer, Shall give you rest.”

I heard the summer calling across great breadths of sea In the landwind and the seawind and the wind of gramarie; For the seawind speaks in thunder and the landwind whispers low, But the little wind of faery you scarce can hear it blow. But listen, listen, listen and you shall hear afar A low and lovely murmur like the singing of a star; But listen, listen, listen till all things fade and fall And the lone and luring music is master over all. And you shall hear it chanting in one triumphant chime Of the life that lives for ever and the fugitives of time Beyond the green land’s border and washing wastes of sea In the world beyond the world’s end, where nothing is but glee. The magic waters gird it, and skies of laughing blue Keep always faith with summer, and summer still is true; There is no end of dancing and sweet unceasing song, And eyes to eyes make answer and love with love grows strong. But close your ears and silence the crying of your heart, Lest in the world of mortals you walk a man apart; For O! I heard the music, I answered to the call, And the landwind mocks my longing and the seawind saddens all.

For a year my love lies down In a little western town And the sun upon the corn is not so sweet. At the chill time of the year On the hills where roams my dear There is honey in the traces of her feet. If my longing I could get, I would take her in a net And would ease my aching sorrow for a while; And, though all men say me nay, I shall wed her on a day, She my darling of the sweet and sunny smile. I must finish with the plough And sow my seedlands now, I must labour in the face of wind and weather; But in rain and frost and snow, Always as I come and go I am thinking she and I should be together. O love my heart finds fair, It is little that you care Though I perish in the blackness of my grief; But may you never tread God’s Heaven overhead, If you scorn me and refuse my love relief. I would count them little worth, All the women of the earth, And myself alone to have the choice among them; For in books I read it clear, That the beauty of my dear It has wrestled with their beauties and has flung them.

As I travelled the road at the fall of the night With the glimmering boglands to left and to right, I heard him sing loud through the whispering dark, The little wee lad with the voice of a lark. He never is silent by night or by day, But still he is singing at work and at play, And, as his glad notes o’er the heather go winging, They set all the sorrowful solitudes singing. The wind in the grass and the lark in the sky And the pattering rain to his music reply, And the clouds and the streams and the mountains are glad To hear the sweet song of the little wee lad. O folk of the city, so proud and uplifted! You sing from your lips, be you never so gifted; From his heart he sings out in the daylight and dark, The little wee lad with the voice of a lark.

The West is behind me, the East before me, The North and the South to left and to right, I bind to my charming the firmament o’er me, The hosts of the day and the hosts of the night. The sun and the moon and the wrath of ocean And all things silent, all secret things, The winds in their stillness, the winds in their motion, The flying wings and the folded wings. I have burnt his hair in the hearth fire’s burning, I have spoken the words that are ill to be said; I have turned three times and three times turning I have cried the cry that awakes the dead. And I know in the hut by the side of the river He wakes and wonders and feels the charms Steal into his blood. He is mine for ever, Mine are his lips and his eyes and his arms. The door stands open, the wide road calls him, His feet stir softly and take the way; He comes by night—for a charm enthralls him— The road he never has come by day. He comes, O God! there is naught can hold him, He feels my arms through the mist and rain Cherish and claim and clasp and enfold him; He is mine and never his own again.

We have no conscience and no care And us no sweets can cloy; For we are of the ancient air And brothers born of joy. We watch the earth-begotten men That still must dream and toil Vainly, until they turn again Into their mother soil. Light hearts are ours, light thoughts, light wings, And yet our songs can say The secret of the elder things That men have lost for aye. We have no conscience and no care, No trouble and no tears, And yet we envy men that fare Sad through the saddened years.

I wish I were in Ireland now, the country of the young, For there they laugh the kindest laughs, the sweetest songs are sung, And here it’s bitter living by trench and mound and wall ’Neath suns that brand and blister and freezing dews that fall. I mind a glen in Ireland and just the way it goes, I mind the babble of the burn and every wind that blows; The winds blow over vineyards here, and proud the rivers fare, But O! for my brown twinkling streams and heather-scented air. The people here go mocking and laughing with their teeth, There’s little meaning in their smile and little mirth beneath; But when they laugh in Ireland with merry lips apart, The honey of the lips betrays the honey of the heart. The ready tears in Europe they fall for little things, But still the Irish sorrow is fed from deeper springs, And often they go weeping, and only they know why For all the evil things that live and lovely things that die. It’s hardly I’ll be winning back to Irish soil again, And dead in foreign lands I’ll lie, as living I have lain; But still for Ireland I have lived, and, when my time is sped, For Ireland I’ll lay down my life, for Ireland gladly dead.

I tell you, men of Ireland, we Are of the people of the sea And restless, wind-tormented still Have no will but the water’s will. As the great sea-flood comes and goes The tide within us ebbs and flows; And high above us everywhere Scream the wild gulls in the wild air. They cannot cease, the lonely birds, From moaning and the ancient words That, heard but once by night or day, Sweep the world’s boundaries away. These are the words that long ago Were the interpreters of woe To the sad queens and sorrowing kings That ruled above all human things Yet went forth wandering; and we Are waves upon the self-same sea That the winds lift a little space Foaming and in a breath efface.

I think I’ll not forget them, when Ireland’s far away, The songs you gathered in the glens, the songs you sang to-day; And maybe you’ll remember, as I’ll remember well, The grey land, the grey sky, and the grey sea-swell. Below us was the castle that crumbles on Kinban And the foam-fringes rippling up that turned and broke and ran, And straight in front lay Rathlin and farther yet Cantire And all away behind us the land of your desire. The songs that you were singing were simple as the soil And glad with Ireland’s gladness and sad with Ireland’s toil, A dirge for some old chieftain the snake of poison slew, Or maybe “Cuttin’ Rushes” or “Bonnie Lads are few.” And now the words went weeping and now the words were gay And love and death and laughter were on your lips to-day, And still the wind sang with you and still the sea bore part And many joys and sorrows were mingling in your heart. So in the darkened city and far across the sea, The songs you gathered in the glens will sing themselves to me, And maybe you’ll remember, as I’ll remember well, The grey land, the grey sky, and the grey sea-swell.

When you went abroad at morning the sun was in your hair And the amber lights were dancing in your eyes; The cuckoo called us from the branch, the cuckoo of Glenair, And the lark went laughing up into the skies. It was morning on the mountain, it was morning in my heart, We loved and laughed and lilted as we went, And the mists upon the valley drifted suddenly apart And we fled into the world of our content. The roads ran white and winding by the bogs and heather-hills And the tramping-men were singing to the day, The dew was on our naked feet, we waded in the rills, And to-morrow was ten thousand years away. It was morning, morning, morning and the sun upon Glenair: Though the sober world was sleeping, we were wise, When you went abroad at morning with the daylight in your hair And the stars of amber dancing in your eyes.

O dearest of dear ones, O sweeter than sweetness! Than the birds on the mountains more fleet in your fleetness, With your hair on the wind like a stream of fine amber, You came through the mist like the sun in September. As I went at your side in the midst of your brightness, Like a silver swayed birch was your lithe lissom lightness, Your hand was in mine and our hearts beat together And little we cared for the world and its weather. Below in the town they were wrangling and brawling, On the high hills of heaven the soft rain was falling, The soft rain, the sweet rain, so silverly shining, That it charmed us and lulled us till day was declining. Then, hand clasped in hand, with a riot of laughter, We ran to the town and the rain followed after, Till he tired at the last of his splashing and streaming And the lovely lit stars through our window came dreaming.

In the deep glen of Loneliness the lake of Longing lies And, when among the swaying pines the little winds arise, Across the black calm of the lake a silver ripple flies. Let us go up into the hills above the lonely glen, The sunset lingers on the hills, but darkness dwells with men; The sun will light us up the hills and we shall rest us then. Above the tumbled mountain-world we stand and watch the sky. What’s this that whispers in the wind and goes lamenting by? It is the pipe of loneliness crying a silver cry— The voice of endless longing, that dies and will not die.

Because a dream is in our blood And in our hearts a strange desire Of roses of no earthly bud And flames of not an earthly fire, We find no rest in this closed world, But send our vagrant thoughts astray, Where, on the walls of darkness hurled, Die the last onsets of the day. There on the hills, as evening falls, A muffled music strays and sings, The last bird through the darkness calls And winds have rest with folded wings. There we shall find them in the gloom, The children of our strong desire, The roses of no earthly bloom, The flames of not an earthly fire.