The dark is full of whispers. Now A fox-hound howls: and through the night, Like some old ghost from out its grave, The moon comes misty white. Madison Cawein THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow And they sigh if the wind but lift up a tress. And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold. - William Butler Yeats 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, Quiet and love I sing The carn on the mountain crest, The child at its mother's breast. Beauty and peace I sing The fire on the open hearth, The cailleach spinning at her wheel, Travail and pain I sing The bride on the childing bed, The dark man laboring at his rhymes, Sorrow and death I sing The canker come on the corn, The fisher lost in the mountain loch, 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! -Joseph Campbell (Seosamh MacCathmhaoil) THE OLD WOMAN As a white candle In a holy place, So is the beauty As the spent radiance Of the winter sun, So is a woman With her travail done, Her brood gone from her, Under a ruined mill. -Joseph Campbell (Seosamh Mac Cathmhaoil) TRANSIENCE Nay, do not grieve tho' life be full of sadness, Nay, do not pine, tho' life be dark with trouble, Nay, do not weep; new hopes, new dreams, new faces, Will prove your heart a traitor to its sorrow, Sarojini Naidu ENAMORED ARCHITECT OF AIRY RHYME Enamored architect of airy rhyme, Build as thou wilt, heed not what each man says: Good souls, but innocent of dreamers' ways, Will come, and marvel why thou wastest time; Others, beholding how thy turrets climb 'Twixt theirs and heaven, will hate thee all thy days; But most beware of those who come to praise. And heaven-sent dreams, let art be all in all; Thomas Bailey Aldrich I SHALL BE LOVED AS QUIET THINGS I shall be loved as quiet things Are loved-white pigeons in the sun, The silver reticence of smoke That tells no secret of its birth Among the fiery agonies That turn the earth; Cloud-islands; reaching arms of trees; The thunder of my heart must go. For it has hammered loud enough, When I am dead. - Karle Wilson Baker FALLING ASLEEP1 Voices moving about in the quiet house: Out in the night there's autumn-smelling gloom The hollow cry of hounds like lonely bells: And I know that the clouds are moving across the moon, The low, red, rising moon. The herons call And wrangle by their pool; and hooting owls Waiting for sleep, I drift from thoughts like these; 1 By permission, from Picture-Show. Copyright by E. P. Dutton & Company |