Rushes that grow by the black water
When will I see you more?
When will the sorrowful heart forget you,
Land of the green, green shore?
When will the field and the small cabin
See us more
In the old country?
What is to me all the gold yonder?
She that bore me is gone.
Knees that dandled and hands that blessed me
Colder than any stone;
Stranger to me than the face of strangers
Are my own
In the old country.
Vein o’ my heart, from the lone mountain
The smoke of the turf will die
And the stream that sang to the young childer
Run down alone from the sky:
On the door-stone, grass,—and the cloud lying
Where they lie
In the old country.
Tired with the day’s monotony of dreaméd joys
I turn to a requickening voice,
A voice whose low tone devastates with nightly thrill
The cities I have wrought at will:
Stone forts depart, and armies heroic flee away
Like the wild snow of spray.
Deep down the green Broceliande’s branch’d corridors
That voice of April pours;
Light as a bird’s light shadow fled across my pages
A touch disturbs the ages,
And the crags and spears of Troy and the courts of Charlemain,
Odin, and the splendid strain
Of Cuchullain’s self, that with his heart’s high brother strove,—
Fade, at the low voice I love.