She breathed divinity into his heart,
That rare divinity of watching those
Slow growths that make a nettle learn to
dart

The puny poison of its little throes.

Her miracles of motion, butterflies,
Rubies and sapphires skimming lily-crests,
Carved on a yellow petal with their eyes
Tranced by the beauty of their powdered
breasts,

Seen in the mirror of a drop of dew,

He loved as friends and as a friend he knew. The dust of gold and scarlet underwings More precious was to him than nuggets torn From all invaded treasure-crypts of time, And every floating, painted, silver beam Drew him to roses where it stayed to dream,

Or down sweet avenues of scented lime.

No cunning trill, no mazy shake that rang
Doubtful on ears unaided by the view.

But in his glory, as a young pure priest
In that great temple, only roofed by stars,
An angel hastened from the sacred East
To reap the wisest and to leave the least.
And as he moaned upon the couch of death,
Breathing away his little share of breath,
All suddenly he sprang upright in bed!
Life, like a ray, poured fresh into his face,
Flooding the hollow cheeks with passing
grace.

He listened long, then pointed up above;
Laughed a low laugh of boundless joy and

love

That was a plover called, he softly said, And on his wife's breast fell, serenely dead!

THE COUNTRY FAITH

HERE in the country's heart Where the grass is green, Life is the same sweet life As it e'er hath been.

Seek other spur Bravely to stir

The dust in this loud world, and tread
Alp-high among the whisp'ring dead.

Trust in thyself, - then spur amain:
So shall Charybdis wear a grace,
Grim Etna laugh, the Libyan plain
Take roses to her shrivell'd face.

This orb this round

Of sight and sound

Count it the lists that God hath built
For haughty hearts to ride a-tilt.

THE WHITE MOTH

If a leaf rustled, she would start :
And yet she died, a year ago.
How had so frail a thing the heart

To journey where she trembled so?
And do they turn and turn in fright,
Those little feet, in so much night?

The light above the poet's head Streamed on the page and on the cloth,

A CURLEW'S CALL

And twice and thrice there buffeted
On the black pane a white-winged moth :
'T was Annie's soul that beat outside
And "Open, open, open!” cried :

"I could not find the way to God;
There were too many flaming suns
For signposts, and the fearful road

Led over wastes where millions
Of tangled comets hissed and burned-
I was bewildered and I turned.

"O, it was easy then! I knew

Your window and no star beside. Look up, and take me back to you!"

- He rose and thrust the window wide. 'T was but because his brain was hot With rhyming; for he heard her not.

But poets polishing a phrase

Show anger over trivial things; And as she blundered in the blaze

Towards him, on ecstatic wings, He raised a hand and smote her dead; Then wrote "That I had died instead!"

Εκλυον ἂν ἐγὼ οὐδ' ἂν ἤλπισ ̓ αὐδάν. WHETHEN is it yourself, Mister Hagan? an' lookin' right hearty you are; "T is a thrate to behold you agin. You'll be waitin' to take the long car For Kilmoyna, the same as meself, sir? They 're late at the cross-roads tonight,

For I mind when the days 'ud be long, they'd be here ere the droop of the light,

Yet out yonder far over the bog there's the sunset beginnin' to burn Like the red of a camp-fire raked low, and no sign of thim roundin' the turn.

So the dark 'll git ahead of us home on this jaunt; we 've good ten mile to go, And thin afther the rain-pours this mornin', we 're apt to be draggin' an' slow Ay, you're right, sir: alongside the road I've been thravellin' you'd scarce count that far;

You'll cross dark an' light times and agin between Creggan and Kandahar.

And is Norah along wid you? Well, Norah jewel, how 's yourself all this year? Sure she's thin grown and white, sir, to what I remember her last time we were here.

Took could in the spring? Ah, begorrah,

the March win 's as bad as a blight; But the weather we git in Afghanistan, troth, 't would destroy her outright. For in summer Ould Horny seems houldin' the earth in the heat of his hand, And in winther the snow 's the great ghost of a world settled down on the land, Wid a blast keenin' over it fit to be freezin' the sun where he shone ; If they'd lease you that counthry rint-free, you'd do righter to let it alone.

Glad enough to be ought of it? Well, in a way, but I've this on me mind, That I'm come like the winther's worst day, after lavin' me betthers behind;

An' the nearer I git to the ould place at home, it's the stranger I seem, Missin' thim I'll behold there no more till me furlough I take in a dream. But the divil a dream's in it now, and I'd liefer dream ugly than think What Jack Connolly's folk 'll remember whinever they notice the blink Of me coat past their hedge, and I goin' their road. Jack's poor mother belike

'Ill be feedin' her hins in the door, or else

gath'rin' her clothes at the dyke, And it's down to the gate she'll be runnin' and callin', an' biddin' me step in ; And she 'll say to me: "Well, Dan, you're home, and I'm glad, sure, to see you agin." Quare an' glad, I'll be bound, wid the thought in her heart of how long she might wait,

Ere she'd see her own slip of a redcoat come route-marchin' in at her gate; He that's campin' apart from us, joined wid the throop who shift quarters

no more;

Crep' in under the tent that's wide worlds beyond call, tho' 't was pitched at your door.

Ah, the crathur: 't is poor bits of hope folk take up wid whin luck's turnin' bad!

She that not so long since 'ud be thinkin' she'd soon git a sight of the lad, There she 'll stand wid her eyes on me face, till I see all as plain 's if I heard

How she's wond'rin', an dhreadin' to ask, have I brought her so much as a word.

That's the notion's come home wid me; faix, I get thinkin' it every odd while, Maybe oft as a lamed horse shrinks his fut

in the len'th of a stony mile.

You'll remember Jack Connolly, sir? Ay, for sure, 't is good neighbors you 've been

Since he was n't the height of your stick,

and meself but a bit of spalpeen. Great the pair of us both were; out most whiles off over the bog and away, But the end of it happint us yonder at sunset last Pathrick's Day.

The way of it? Our picket was ridin' in

be the wall of the little white town, That's stuck like a blaiched wasps' nest in the gap where the ridge of the hills breaks down,

And the big flat plain spreads out and about, you might say 't was a bog gone dhry,

Lookin' nathural enough till you notice, pricked up 'gin the light in the sky, Their two thin towers, like an ould snail's horns be the shell of their haythin dome,

Peerin' out of a purpose to put you in mind where you've thravelled from home.

We were ridin' too close; I remember along on the white of the wall The front men's helmets went bob, bob, bob, in blue shadow, sthretched won'erful tall,

For the sunbames were raichin' their furthest aslant from the edge of the day,

Where the light ran, dhrained over the earth, like a wave turnin' back to the say,

All hot gold. Howane'er, when we past where their straight-archin' door opened black,

Wid the dust - thracks they thramp into roads glamin' in at it, off went a

crack,

And ere ever an echo got rappin' the hills, or the smoke riz to float,

'Twas a plunge, and a thud, and Jack Connolly down wid him, shot in the

throat.

So be raison of we two bein' neighbors, they bid me mind Jack while they

went

To make out what the mischief at all the rapscallion that potted him meant ; Some ould objic' wisped up in his rags head and fut, the crow's notice to quit, Wid a quare carabine 'ud scarce fright e'er a bird who'd a scrumption of wit.

But it was able enough for that job, and be hanged to it; Jack's business was done,

As you could n't misdoubt. All the west swam clear fire round the smooth, redhot sun,