Modern British Poetry Part 24

Carol, every violet has Heaven for a looking-gla.s.s!

Every little valley lies Under many-clouded skies; Every little cottage stands Girt about with boundless lands.

Every little glimmering pond Claims the mighty sh.o.r.es beyond-- Sh.o.r.es no seamen ever hailed, Seas no s.h.i.+p has ever sailed.

All the sh.o.r.es when day is done Fade into the setting sun, So the story tries to teach More than can be told in speech.

Beauty is a fading flower, Truth is but a wizard's tower, Where a solemn death-bell tolls, And a forest round it rolls.

We have come by curious ways To the light that holds the days; We have sought in haunts of fear For that all-enfolding sphere: And lo! it was not far, but near.

We have found, O foolish-fond, The sh.o.r.e that has no sh.o.r.e beyond.

Deep in every heart it lies With its untranscended skies; For what heaven should bend above Hearts that own the heaven of love?

Carol, Carol, we have come Back to heaven, back to home.

_Padraic Colum_

Padraic Colum was born at Longford, Ireland (in the same county as Oliver Goldsmith), December 8, 1881, and was educated at the local schools. At 20 he was a member of a group that created the Irish National Theatre, afterwards called The Abbey Theatre.

Colum began as a dramatist with _Broken Soil_ (1904), _The Land_ (1905), _Thomas Muskerry_ (1910), and this early dramatic influence has colored much of his work, his best poetry being in the form of dramatic lyrics. _Wild Earth_, his most notable collection of verse, first appeared in 1909, and an amplified edition of it was published in America in 1916.

THE PLOUGHER

Sunset and silence! A man: around him earth savage, earth broken; Beside him two horses--a plough!

Earth savage, earth broken, the brutes, the dawn man there in the sunset, And the Plough that is twin to the Sword, that is founder of cities!

"Brute-tamer, plough-maker, earth-breaker! Can'st hear?

There are ages between us.

"Is it praying you are as you stand there alone in the sunset?

"Surely our sky-born G.o.ds can be naught to you, earth child and earth master?

"Surely your thoughts are of Pan, or of Wotan, or Dana?

"Yet, why give thought to the G.o.ds? Has Pan led your brutes where they stumble?

"Has Dana numbed pain of the child-bed, or Wotan put hands to your plough?

"What matter your foolish reply! O, man, standing lone and bowed earthward, "Your task is a day near its close. Give thanks to the night-giving G.o.d."

Slowly the darkness falls, the broken lands blend with the savage; The brute-tamer stands by the brutes, a head's breadth only above them.

A head's breadth? Ay, but therein is h.e.l.l's depth, and the height up to heaven, And the thrones of the G.o.ds and their halls, their chariots, purples, and splendors.

AN OLD WOMAN OF THE ROADS

O, to have a little house!

To own the hearth and stool and all!

The heaped up sods upon the fire, The pile of turf against the wall!

To have a clock with weights and chains And pendulum swinging up and down!

A dresser filled with s.h.i.+ning delph, Speckled and white and blue and brown!

I could be busy all the day Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor, And fixing on their shelf again My white and blue and speckled store!

I could be quiet there at night Beside the fire and by myself, Sure of a bed and loth to leave The ticking clock and the s.h.i.+ning delph!

Och! but I'm weary of mist and dark, And roads where there's never a house nor bush, And tired I am of bog and road, And the crying wind and the lonesome hus.h.!.+

And I am praying to G.o.d on high, And I am praying Him night and day, For a little house--a house of my own-- Out of the wind's and the rain's way.

_Joseph Campbell_

(_Seosamh MacCathmhaoil_)

Joseph Campbell was born in Belfast in 1881, and is not only a poet but an artist; he made all the ill.u.s.trations for _The Rushlight_ (1906), a volume of his own poems. Writing under the Gaelic form of his name, he has published half a dozen books of verse, the most striking of which is _The Mountainy Singer_, first published in Dublin in 1909.

I AM THE MOUNTAINY SINGER

I am the mountainy singer-- The voice of the peasant's dream, The cry of the wind on the wooded hill, The leap of the fish in the stream.

Quiet and love I sing-- The carn on the mountain crest, The _cailin_ in her lover's arms, The child at its mother's breast.

Beauty and peace I sing-- The fire on the open hearth, The _cailleach_ spinning at her wheel, The plough in the broken earth.

Travail and pain I sing-- The bride on the childing bed, The dark man laboring at his rhymes, The eye in the lambing shed.

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!

THE OLD WOMAN

As a white candle In a holy place, So is the beauty Of an aged face.