The Perilous Light

The Eternal Beauty smiled on me From the long lily’s curved form, She laughed in a wave of the sea, She flashed on white wings through the storm. In the bulb of a daffodil She made a little joyful stir, And the white cabin on the hill Was my heart’s home because of Her. Her laughter fled the eyes of pride, Barefoot She went o’er stony land, And ragged children, hungry-eyed, Clung to Her skirts and held Her hand. When storm winds shook the cabin door And red the Atlantic sunset blazed, The fisher folk of Mullaghmore Into Her eyes indifferent gazed. By lonely waves She dwells apart, And sea gulls circling on white wings, Crowd round the windows of Her heart, Most dear to Her of starving things. The ploughman, down by Knocknarea, Was free of Her twilight abode, In shining sea-winds, salt with spray, She haunted every gray cross road. Some peasants with a creel of turf Along the wind-swept boreen came, Her feet went flashing through the surf, Her wings were in the sunset’s flame. Beyond the rocks of Classiebawn, The mackerel fishers sailing far, Out in the vast Atlantic dawn Found, tangled in their nets, a star. In every spent and broken wave The Eternal Beauty takes Her rest, She is the Lover of the Brave, The comrade of the perilous quest. The Eternal Beauty wrung my heart, Faithful is She, and true to shed The austere glory of Art On the scarceness of daily bread. Men follow Her with toil and thought, Over the heaven’s starry pride,⁠— The Eternal Beauty comes unsought To the child by the roadside.