“Thy sorrows are the world’s—
Thy wrongs the world’s.”
There’s a glade in Aghadoe, Aghadoe, Aghadoe
There’s a green and silent glade in Aghadoe,
Where we met, my love and I, love’s fair planet in the sky,
O’er that sweet and silent glade in Aghadoe.
II.
There’s a glen in Aghadoe, Aghadoe, Aghadoe,
There’s a deep and secret glen in Aghadoe,
Where I hid him from the eyes of the red-coats and their spies,
That year the trouble came to Aghadoe.
III.
O, my curse on one black heart in Aghadoe, Aghadoe,
On Shaun Dhuv, my mother’s son, in Aghadoe!
When your throat fries in hell’s drouth, salt the flame be in your mouth,
For the treachery you did in Aghadoe!
IV.
For they tracked me to that glen in Aghadoe, Aghadoe!
When the price was on his head in Aghadoe,
O’er the mountain, by the wood, where I stole to him with food,
Where in hiding lone he lay in Aghadoe.
V.
But they never took him living in Aghadoe, Aghadoe;
With the bullets in his heart in Aghadoe,
There he lay—that head my breast feels the warmth of, where ‘twould rest,
Gone to win the traitor’s gold, from Aghadoe.
VI.
I walked to Mallow town from Aghadoe, Aghadoe,
Brought his head from the gaol’s gate to Aghadoe,
Then I covered him with fern, and I piled on him the cairn,
Like an Irish king he sleeps in Aghadoe.
VII.
O, to creep into that cairn in Aghadoe, Aghadoe,
There to rest upon his breast in Aghadoe,
Sure your dog for you could die with no truer heart than I,
Your own love, cold on your cairn, in Agadoe.
Night sends forth many an eagle-wingëd dream:
To soar through regions never known by day;
And I by one of these was rapt away
To where the sun-burnt Nile, with opulent stream
Makes teem the desert sand. My pomp supreme,
Enriched the noon, I spurned Earth’s common clay;
For I was Antony, and by me lay
That Snake whose sting was bliss. Nations did seem
But camels for the burden of our joy;
Kings were our slaves; our wishes glowed in the air
And grew fruition; night grew day, day night,
Lest the high bacchanal of our love should cloy;
We reined the tiger, life, with flower-crowned hair,
Abashlessly abandoned to delight.
What means this mighty chant, wherein the wail
Of some intolerable woe, grown strong
With sense of more intolerable wrong,
Swells to a stern victorious march—a gale
Of vengeful wrath? What mean the faces pale,
The fierce resolve, the ecstatic pangs along
Life’s fiery ways, the demon thoughts which throng,
The gates of awe, when these wild notes assail
The sleeping of our souls? Hear we no more
Than the mad foam of revolution’s leaven,
Than a roused people’s throne-o’erwhelming tread?
Yes, ’tis man’s spirit thundering on the shore
Of iron fate, the tramp of titans dread,
Sworn to dethrone the gods unjust from heaven.
Creation.
Behind me lay life’s endless avatars,
Before me vague unfathomable dread,
In wastes of space where Death himself was dead:
Then God went by me, silent, sowing stars.
Conscience (the Obverse).
Conscience is that fine critic of each thrill,
Along the spirit’s nerves, with instinct sane
For life’s fine art assaying joy and pain,
His loves and hates canons of good and ill.
Conscience (the Reverse).
Conscience is but a child who fears the rod
Laid on by Mrs. Grundy or by God;
But whose the stroke, or why the smite or spare,
The smarting child scarce guesses. That is odd!
Morality.
Hating another’s sins, I hate my own,
Hating my own I grow the judge of men,
Judging, I judge myself: with penance, then,
Harsh righteousness my sackcloth, I atone.
The Golden Key.
To love the right things rightly: this ensphere,
Wisdom, religion, art; forges the key,
That opens Eden through the Gate of Tears,
Where by life’s river blooms the mystic tree.
I.
In Venice! This night so delicious—its air
Full of moonlight, and passionate snatches of song,
And quick cries, and perfume of romances, which throng
To my brain, as I steal down this marble sea-stair,
And my gondola comes:
And I hear the slow, rhythmical sweep of the oar
Drawing near and more near—and the noise of the prow,
And the sharp, sudden splash of her stoppage—and now
I step in; we are off o’er the street’s heaving floor,
As my gondola glides—
Away past these palaces silent and dark,
Looming ghostly and grim o’er their bases, where clings
Rank sea-weed which gleams, flecked with light, as it swings
To the plash of the waves, where they reach the tide-mark
On the porphyry blocks—with a song full of dole,
A forlorn barcarole,
As my gondola glides.
II.
And the wind seems to sigh through that lattice rust-gnawn,
A low dirge for the past: the sweet past when it played
In the pearl-braided hair of some beauty, who stayed
But one shrinking half-minute—her mantle close-drawn
O’er the swell of her bosom and cheeks passion-pale,
Ere her lover came by, and they kissed. ‘They are clay
Those fire-hearted men with the regal pulse-play.’
‘They are dust!’ sighs the wind with its whisper of wail;
‘Those women snow-fair, flower-sweet, passion-pale!’
And the waves make reply with their song full of dole,
Their fair barcarole,
As my gondola glides.
III.
Dust—those lovers! But love ever lives, ever new,
Still the same: so we shoot into bustle and light,
And lamps from the festal casinos stream bright
On the ripples; and here’s the Rialto in view;
And black gondolas, spirit-like, cross or slide past,
And the gondoliers cry to each other: a song
Far away, from sweet voices in tune, dies along
The waters moon-silvered. So on to the vast
Shadowy span of an arch where the oar-echoes leap
Through chill gloom from the marble; then moonlight once more,
And laughter and strum of guitars from the shore,
And sonorous bass-music of bells booming deep
From St. Mark’s. Still those waves with their song full of dole,
Their forlorn barcarole,
As my gondola glides.
IV.
Here the night is voluptuous with odorous sighs
From verandahs o’erstarred with dim jessamine flowers,
Their still scent deep-stirred by the tremulous showers
Of a nightingale’s notes as his song swells and dies—
While my gondola glides.
V.
Dust—those lovers! who floated and dreamed long ago,
Gazed, and languished, and loved, on these waters—where I
Float and dream and gaze up in the still summer sky,
Whence the great stars look down—as they did long ago:
Where the moon seems to dream with my dreaming—disc-hid
In a gossamer veil of white cirrus—then breaks
The dream spell with a pensive half-smile, as she wakes
To new splendour. But lo! while I mused, we have slid
From the open, the stir, down a lonely lane-way,
Into hush and dark shadow! fresh smells of the sea
Come cool from beyond; a faint lamp mistily
Hints fair shafts and quaint arches, in crumbling decay;
And the waves still break in with their song full of dole,
Their forlorn barcarole,
As my gondola glides.
VI.
Then the silent lagune stretched away through the night,
And the stars, and the fairy-like city behind,
Domes and spires rising spectral and dim: till the mind
Becomes tranced in a vague, subtle maze of delight;
And I float in a dream, lose the present—or seem
To have lived it before. Then a sense of deep bliss,
Just to breathe—to exist—in a night such as this;
Just to feel what I feel, drowns all else. But the gleam
Of the lights, as we turn to the city once more,
And the music, and clangour of bells booming slow,
And this consummate vision—St. Marks’s! the star-glow
For background—crowns all. Then I step out on shore.
The Piazzetta! my life-dream accomplished at last,
(As my gondola goes)
I am here: here alone with the ghost of the past!
But the waves still break in with their song full of dole,
Their forlorn barcarole,
As my gondola goes;
And the pulse of the oar swept through silvery spray
Dies away in the gloom, dies away, dies away—
Dies away—dies away—!
I wandered from my mother’s side
In the fragant paths of morn;
Naked, weary, and forlorn,
I fainted in the hot noon-tide,
For I had met a maiden wild,
Singing of love and love’s delight;
And with her song she me beguiled,
And her soft arms and bosom white.
I followed fast, I followed far,
And ever her song flowed blithe and free;
‘Where Love’s own flowery meadows are,
There shall our golden dwelling be!’
I followed far, I followed fast,
And oft she paused, and cried, ‘O here!’
But where I came no flower would last,
And Joy lay cold upon his bier.
I wandered on, I wandered wide,
Alas! she fleeted with the morn;
Weary, weeping, and forlorn,
She left me in the fierce noontide.
Naked, bleeding, and forlorn,
I wandered on the mountain side;
To hide my wounds from shame and scorn,
I made a garden of my pride.
Till there came a tyrant grey,
He stript and chained me with disgrace,
And led me by the public way,
And sold me in the market-place.
To many masters was I bound,
And many a grievous load I bore;
But in the toil my flesh grew sound,
And from my limbs the chains I tore.
I ran to seek my mother’s cot,
And I found Love singing there,
And round it many a pleasant plot,
And shadowy streams and gardens fair.
Like virgin gold the thatch I see,
Like virgin gold the doorway sweet;
And in the blissful noon each tree
A ladder for the angel’s feet.