Your mother Eire is always young, Dew ever shining and twilight gray; Though hope fall from you and love decay, Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.
Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill For there the mystical brotherhood Of sun and moon and hollow and wood And river and stream work out their will;
And God stands winding His lonely horn, And time and the world are ever in flight; And love is less kind than the gray twilight And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.
I WENT out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire a-flame, But something rustled on the floor, And someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.
O WHAT to me the little room That was brimmed up with prayer and rest; He bade me out into the gloom, And my breast lies upon his breast.
O what to me my mother’s care, The house where I was safe and warm; The shadowy blossom of my hair Will hide us from the bitter storm.
O hiding hair and dewy eyes, I am no more with life and death, My heart upon his warm heart lies, My breath is mixed into his breath.
PALE brows, still hands and dim hair, I had a beautiful friend And dreamed that the old despair Would end in love in the end: She looked in my heart one day And saw your image was there; She has gone weeping away.
HE MOURNS FOR THE CHANGE THAT HAS COME UPON HIM AND HIS BELOVED AND LONGS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD
DO you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns! I have been changed to a hound with one red ear; I have been in the Path of Stones and the Wood of Thorns, For somebody hid hatred and hope and desire and fear Under my feet that they follow you night and day. A man with a hazel wand came without sound; He changed me suddenly; I was looking another way; And now my calling is but the calling of a hound; And Time and Birth and Change are hurrying by. I would that the Boar without bristles had come from the West And had rooted the sun and moon and stars out of the sky And lay in the darkness, grunting, and turning to his rest.