No windflower dances scarlet gay,
Nor crocus-flame lights up the way.

What land of cloth o' gold and green,
Hey, ho, daffodil !

Cloth o' gold with the green between,

Was that you left but yestere'en
To light a gloomy world and mean?

King trumpeter to Flora queen,
Hey, ho, daffodil !

Blow, and the golden jousts begin.

SUMMER-SWEET

HONEY-SWEET, sweet as honey smell the lilies,
Little lilies of the gold in a ring;

Little censers of pale gold are the lilies,

That the wind, sweet and sunny, sets a-swing.

Smell the rose, sweet of sweets, all a-blowing! Hear the cuckoo call in dreams, low and sweet! Like a very John-a-Dreams coming, going.

There's honey in the grass at our feet.

There's honey in the leaf and the blossom,
And honey in the night and the day,
And honey-sweet the heart in Love's bosom,
And honey-sweet the words Love will say.

AUGUST WEATHER

DEAD heat and windless air,
And silence over all;

Never a leaf astir,

But the ripe apples fall;

Plums are purple-red,

Pears amber and brown ;

Thud! in the garden-bed

Ripe apples fall down.

Air like a cider-press

With the bruised apples' scent;
Low whistles express

Some sleepy bird's content;
Still world and windless sky,

A mist of heat o'er all;
Peace like a lullaby,

And the ripe apples fall.

AN ISLAND FISHERMAN

I GROAN as I put out

My nets on the say,

To hear the little girshas shout,
Dancin' among the spray.

Ochone! the childher pass
An' lave us to our grief;
The stranger took my little lass
At the fall o' the leaf.

Why would you go so fast

With him you never knew? In all the throuble that is past I never frowned on you.

The light o' my old eyes!

The comfort o' my heart! Waitin' for me your mother lies In blessed Innishart.

Her lone grave I keep

From all the cold world wide, But you in life an' death will sleep The stranger beside.

Ochone! my thoughts are wild :
But little blame I say ;

An ould man hungerin' for his child,
Fishin' the livelong day.

You will not run again,

Laughin' to see me land.

Oh, what was pain an' throuble then,
Holdin' your little hand?

Or when your head let fall

Its soft curls on my breast?
Why do the childher grow at all
To love the stranger best?

LUX IN TENEBRIS

AT night what things will stalk abroad,
What veiled shapes, and eyes of dread!
With phantoms in a lonely road
And visions of the dead.

The kindly room when day is here,
At night takes ghostly terrors on ;
And every shadow hath its fear,
And every wind its moan.

Lord Jesus, Day-Star of the world,

Rise Thou and bid this dark depart

And all the east, a rose uncurled,

Grow golden at the heart!

Lord, in the watches of the night,

Keep Thou my soul! a trembling thing

As any moth that in daylight

Will spread a rainbow wing.

WINTER EVENING

BUT the rain is gone by, and the day's dying out in a splendour; There is flight as of many gold wings in the heart of the sky God's birds, it may be, who return from their ministry tender, Flying home from the earth, like the earth-birds when darkness

is nigh.

EE

Gold plumes and gold feathers, the wings hide the roseate faces, But a glimmer of roseate feet breaks the massing of gold : There's gold hair blowing back, and a drifting of one in clear

spaces,

A little child-angel whose flight is less sure and less bold.

They are gone, they are flown, but their footprints have left the sky ruddy,

And the night's coming on with a moon in a tender green sea, And my heart is fled home, with a flight that is certain and steady To her home, to her nest, to the place where her treasure shall

be

Across the dark hills where the scarlet to purple is waning;

For the birds will fly home, will fly home, when the night's coming on.

But hark in the trees how the wind is complaining and straining For the birds that are flown it may be, or the nests that are gone.

WAITING

IN a grey cave, where comes no glimpse of sky,
Set in the blue hill's heart full many a mile,

Having the dripping stone for canopy,

Missing the wind's laugh and the good sun's smile,
I, Fionn, with all my sleeping warriors lie.

In the great outer cave our horses are,

Carved of grey stone, with heads erect, amazed,
Purple their trappings, gold each bolt and bar,

One fore-foot poised, the quivering thin ears raised :
Methinks they scent the battle from afar.

A frozen hound lies by each warrior's feet—
Ah, Bran, my jewel! Bran, my king of hounds!
Deep-throated art thou, mighty-flanked, and fleet;
Dost thou remember how with giant bounds
Didst chase the red deer in the noontide heat?

I was a king in ages long ago,

A mighty warrior, and a seer likewise,

Still mine eyes look with solemn gaze of woe

From stony lids adown the centuries,

And in my frozen heart I know, I know.

A giant I, of a primeval race,

These, great-limbed, bearing helm and shield and sword, My good knights are, and each still, awful face

Will one day wake to knowledge at a word—
O'erhead the groaning years turn round apace.

Here with the peaceful dead we keep our state;
Some day a cry shall ring adown the lands:
'The hour is come, the hour grown large with fate.'
He knows who hath the centuries in His hands
When that shall be-till then we watch and wait.

The queens that loved us, whither be they gone,
The sweet, large women with the hair as gold,
As though one drew long threads from out the sun?
Ages ago, grown tired, and very cold,

They fell asleep beneath the daisies wan.

The waving woods are gone that once we knew,

And towns grown grey with years are in their place : A little lake, as innocent and blue

As my queen's eyes were, lifts a baby face Where once my palace towers were fair to view.

The fierce old gods we hailed with worshipping,

The blind old gods, waxed mad with sin and blood, Laid down their godhead as an idle thing

At a God's feet, whose throne was but a Rood; His crown, wrought thorns; His joy, long travailing.

Here in the gloom I see it all again,

As ages since in visions mystical

I saw the swaying crowds of fierce-eyed men,
And heard the murmurs in the judgment hall.
Oh, for one charge of my dark warriors then!