Sorrow and death I sing-- The canker come on the corn, The fisher lost in the mountain loch, The cry at the mouth of morn.
No other life I sing, For I am sprung of the stock That broke the hilly land for bread, And built the nest in the rock!
As a white candle In a holy place, So is the beauty Of an aged 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.
This unique personality was born in Dublin in February, 1882. Stephens was discovered in an office and saved from clerical slavery by George Russell ("A. E."). Always a poet, Stephens's most poetic moments are in his highly-colored prose. And yet, although the finest of his novels, _The Crock of Gold_ (1912), contains more wild phantasy and quaint imagery than all his volumes of verse, his _Insurrections_ (1909) and _The Hill of Vision_ (1912) reveal a rebellious spirit that is at once hotly ironic and coolly whimsical.
Stephens's outstanding characteristic is his delightful blend of incongruities--he combines in his verse the grotesque, the buoyant and the profound. No fresher or more brightly vigorous imagination has come out of Ireland since J. M. Synge.
And then I pressed the shell Close to my ear And listened well, And straightway like a bell Came low and clear The slow, sad murmur of the distant seas, Whipped by an icy breeze Upon a shore Wind-swept and desolate. It was a sunless strand that never bore The footprint of a man, Nor felt the weight Since time began Of any human quality or stir Save what the dreary winds and waves incur. And in the hush of waters was the sound Of pebbles rolling round, For ever rolling with a hollow sound. And bubbling sea-weeds as the waters go Swish to and fro Their long, cold tentacles of slimy grey. There was no day, Nor ever came a night Setting the stars alight To wonder at the moon: Was twilight only and the frightened croon, Smitten to whimpers, of the dreary wind And waves that journeyed blind-- And then I loosed my ear ... O, it was sweet To hear a cart go jolting down the street.
I saw God. Do you doubt it? Do you dare to doubt it? I saw the Almighty Man. His hand Was resting on a mountain, and He looked upon the World and all about it: I saw him plainer than you see me now, You mustn't doubt it.