Joseph Campbell
Reading edition
AT HARVEST
Earth travails,
Like a woman come to her time.
The swaying corn-haulms
In the heavy places of the field
Cry to be gathered.
Apples redden, and drop from their rods.
Out of their sheath of prickly leaves
The marrows creep, fat and white.
The blue pallor of ripeness
Comes on the fruit of the vine-branch.
Fecund and still fecund
After æons of bearing:
Not old, not dry, not wearied out;
But fresh as when the unseen Right Hand
First moved on Brí,
And the candle of day was set,
And dew fell from the stars’ feet,
And cloths of greenness covered thee.
Let me kiss thy breasts:
I am thy son and lover.
Womb-fellow am I of the sunburnt oat,
Friendly gossip of the mearings;
36Womb-fellow of the dark and sweet-scented apple;
Womb-fellow of the gourd and of the grape:
Like begotten, like born.
And yet without a lover’s knowledge
Of thy secrets
I would walk the ridges of the hills,
Kindless and desolate.
What were the storm-driven moon to me,
Seed of another father?
What the overflowing
Of the well of dawn?
What the hollow,
Red with rowan fire?
What the king-fern?
What the belled heath?
What the drum of grouse’s wing,
Or glint of spar,
Caught from the pit
Of a deserted quarry?
Let me kiss thy breasts:
I am thy son and lover.
ON WAKING
Sleep, gray brother of death,
Has touched me,
And passed on.
I arise, facing the east—
Pearl-doored sanctuary
From which light,
Hand-linked with dew and fire,
Dances.
37Hail, essence, hail!
Fill the windows of my soul
With beauty:
Pierce and renew my bones:
Pour knowledge into my heart
As wine.
Cualann is bright before thee.
Its rocks melt and swim:
The secret they have kept
From the ancient nights of darkness
Flies like a bird.
What mourns?
Cualann’s secret flying,
A lost voice
In endless fields.
What rejoices?
My voice lifted praising thee.
Praise! Praise! Praise!
Praise out of trumpets, whose brass
Is the unyoked strength of bulls;
Praise upon harps, whose strings
Are the light movements of birds;
Praise of leaf, praise of blossom,
Praise of the red-fibred clay;
Praise of grass,
Fire-woven veil of the temple;
Praise of the shapes of clouds;
Praise of the shadows of wells;
Praise of worms, of fetal things,
And of the things in time’s thought
Not yet begotten.
To thee, queller of sleep,
Looser of the snare of death.
38
THE OLD WOMAN
As a white candle
In a holy place,
So is the beauty
Of an agèd face.
As the spent radiance
Of the winter sun,
So is a woman
With her travail done.
Her brood gone from her,
And her thoughts as still
As the waters
Under a ruined mill.