THE ROSE
"Sero te amavi, Pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova! Sero te amavi."
S. Augustine.
TO LIONEL JOHNSON
Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;The Druid, gray, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;And thine own sadness, whereof stars, grown oldIn dancing silver sandalled on the sea,Sing in their high and lonely melody.Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate,I find under the boughs of love and hate,In all poor foolish things that live a day,Eternal beauty wandering on her way.Come near, come near, come near—Ah, leave me stillA little space for the rose-breath to fill!Lest I no more hear common things that crave;The weak worm hiding down in its small cave,The field mouse running by me in the grass,And heavy mortal hopes that toil and pass;But seek alone to hear the strange things saidBy God to the bright hearts of those long dead,And learn to chaunt a tongue men do not know.Come near; I would, before my time to go,Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways:Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.
FERGUS
The whole day have I followed in the rocks,And you have changed and flowed from shape to shape.First as a raven on whose ancient wingsScarcely a feather lingered, then you seemedA weasel moving on from stone to stone,And now at last you wear a human shape,A thin gray man half lost in gathering night.
DRUID
What would you, king of the proud Red Branch kings?
FERGUS
This would I say, most wise of living souls:Young subtle Concobar sat close by meWhen I gave judgment, and his words were wise,And what to me was burden without end,To him seemed easy, so I laid the crownUpon his head to cast away my care.
DRUID
What would you, king of the proud Red Branch kings?
FERGUS
I feast amid my people on the hill,And pace the woods, and drive my chariot wheelsIn the white border of the murmuring sea;And still I feel the crown upon my head.
DRUID
What would you?
FERGUS
I would be no more a kingBut learn the dreaming wisdom that is yours.
DRUID
Look on my thin gray hair and hollow cheeksAnd on these hands that may not lift the swordThis body trembling like a wind-blown reed.No woman loves me, no man seeks my help,Because I be not of the things I dream.
FERGUS
A wild and foolish labourer is a king,To do and do and do, and never dream.
DRUID
Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams;Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.
FERGUS
I see my life go dripping like a streamFrom change to change; I have been many things,A green drop in the surge, a gleam of lightUpon a sword, a fir-tree on a hill,An old slave grinding at a heavy quern,A king sitting upon a chair of gold,And all these things were wonderful and great;But now I have grown nothing, being all,And the whole world weighs down upon my heart:Ah! Druid, Druid, how great webs of sorrowLay hidden in the small slate-coloured bag!
A man came slowly from the setting sun,To Forgail's daughter, Emer, in her dun,And found her dyeing cloth with subtle care,And said, casting aside his draggled hair:"I am Aleel, the swineherd, whom you bid"Go dwell upon the sea cliffs, vapour hid;"But now my years of watching are no more."Then Emer cast the web upon the floor,And stretching out her arms, red with the dye,Parted her lips with a loud sudden cry.Looking on her, Aleel, the swineherd, said:"Not any god alive, nor mortal dead,"Has slain so mighty armies, so great kings,"Nor won the gold that now Cuchulain brings.""Why do you tremble thus from feet to crown?"Aleel, the swineherd, wept and cast him downUpon the web-heaped floor, and thus his word:"With him is one sweet-throated like a bird.""Who bade you tell these things?" and then she criedTo those about, "Beat him with thongs of hide"And drive him from the door."And thus it was:And where her son, Finmole, on the smooth grassWas driving cattle, came she with swift feet,And called out to him, "Son, it is not meet"That you stay idling here with flocks and herds.""I have long waited, mother, for those words:"But wherefore now?""There is a man to die;"You have the heaviest arm under the sky.""My father dwells among the sea-worn bands,"And breaks the ridge of battle with his hands.""Nay, you are taller than Cuchulain, son.""He is the mightiest man in ship or dun.""Nay, he is old and sad with many wars,"And weary of the crash of battle cars.""I only ask what way my journey lies,"For God, who made you bitter, made you wise.""The Red Branch kings a tireless banquet keep,"Where the sun falls into the Western deep."Go there, and dwell on the green forest rim;"But tell alone your name and house to him"Whose blade compels, and bid them send you one"Who has a like vow from their triple dun."Between the lavish shelter of a woodAnd the gray tide, the Red Branch multitudeFeasted, and with them old Cuchulain dwelt,And his young dear one close beside him knelt,And gazed upon the wisdom of his eyes,More mournful than the depth of starry skies,And pondered on the wonder of his days;And all around the harp-string told his praise,And Concobar, the Red Branch king of kings,With his own fingers touched the brazen strings.At last Cuchulain spake, "A young man strays"Driving the deer along the woody ways."I often hear him singing to and fro,"I often hear the sweet sound of his bow,"Seek out what man he is."One went and came."He bade me let all know he gives his name"At the sword point, and bade me bring him one"Who had a like vow from our triple dun.""I only of the Red Branch hosted now,"Cuchulain cried, "have made and keep that vow."After short fighting in the leafy shade,He spake to the young man, "Is there no maid"Who loves you, no white arms to wrap you round,"Or do you long for the dim sleepy ground,"That you come here to meet this ancient sword?""The dooms of men are in God's hidden hoard.""Your head a while seemed like a woman's head"That I loved once."Again the fighting sped,But now the war rage in Cuchulain woke,And through the other's shield his long blade broke,And pierced him."Speak before your breath is done.""I am Finmole, mighty Cuchulain's son.""I put you from your pain. I can no more."While day its burden on to evening bore,With head bowed on his knees Cuchulain stayed;Then Concobar sent that sweet-throated maid,And she, to win him, his gray hair caressed;In vain her arms, in vain her soft white breast.Then Concobar, the subtlest of all men,Ranking his Druids round him ten by ten,Spake thus, "Cuchulain will dwell there and brood,"For three days more in dreadful quietude,"And then arise, and raving slay us all."Go, cast on him delusions magical,"That he might fight the waves of the loud sea."And ten by ten under a quicken tree,The Druids chaunted, swaying in their handsTall wands of alder, and white quicken wands.In three days' time, Cuchulain with a moanStood up, and came to the long sands alone:For four days warred he with the bitter tide;And the waves flowed above him, and he died.
Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,Mournful that no new wonder may betide,Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,And Usna's children died.We and the labouring world are passing by:Amid men's souls, that waver and give place,Like the pale waters in their wintry race,Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,Lives on this lonely face.Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:Before you were, or any hearts to beat,Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;He made the world to be a grassy roadBefore her wandering feet.
If Michael, leader of God's hostWhen Heaven and Hell are met,Looked down on you from Heaven's door-postHe would his deeds forget.Brooding no more upon God's warsIn his Divine homestead,He would go weave out of the starsA chaplet for your head.And all folk seeing him bow down,And white stars tell your praise,Would come at last to God's great town,Led on by gentle ways;And God would bid His warfare cease.Saying all things were well;And softly make a rosy peace,A peace of Heaven with Hell.
Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!The tall thought-woven sails, that flap unfurledAbove the tide of hours, trouble the air,And God's bell buoyed to be the water's care;While hushed from fear, or loud with hope, a bandWith blown, spray-dabbled hair gather at hand.Turn if you may from battles never done,I call, as they go by me one by one,Danger no refuge holds; and war no peace,For him who hears love sing and never cease,Beside her clean-swept hearth, her quiet shade:But gather all for whom no love hath madeA woven silence, or but came to castA song into the air, and singing pastTo smile on the pale dawn; and gather youWho have sought more than is in rain or dewOr in the sun and moon, or on the earth,Or sighs amid the wandering, starry mirth,Or comes in laughter from the sea's sad lipsAnd wage God's battles in the long gray ships.The sad, the lonely, the insatiable,To these Old Night shall all her mystery tell;God's bell has claimed them by the little cryOf their sad hearts, that may not live nor die.Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurledUpon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ringThe bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing.Beauty grown sad with its eternityMade you of us, and of the dim gray sea.Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait,For God has bid them share an equal fate;And when at last defeated in His wars,They have gone down under the same white stars,We shall no longer hear the little cryOf our sad hearts, that may not live nor die.
Sung by the people of faery over Diarmuid and Grania, who lay in their bridal sleep under a Cromlech.
We who are old, old and gay,O so old!Thousands of years, thousands of years,If all were told:Give to these children, new from the world,Silence and love;And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,And the stars above:Give to these children, new from the world,Rest far from men.Is anything better, anything better?Tell us it then:Us who are old, old and gay,O so old!Thousands of years, thousands of years,If all were told.
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,And live alone in the bee-loud glade.And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,And evening full of the linnet's wings.I will arise and go now, for always night and dayI hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,I hear it in the deep heart's core.
"Coth yani me von gilli beg,'N heur ve thu more a creena."The angels are stoopingAbove your bed;They weary of troopingWith the whimpering dead.God's laughing in heavenTo see you so good;The Shining SevenAre gay with His mood.I kiss you and kiss you,My pigeon, my own;Ah, how I shall miss youWhen you have grown.
A pity beyond all tellingIs hid in the heart of love:The folk who are buying and sellingThe clouds on their journey aboveThe cold wet winds ever blowingAnd the shadowy hazel groveWhere mouse-gray waters are flowingThreaten the head that I love.
The quarrel of the sparrows in the eaves,The full round moon and the star-laden sky,And the loud song of the ever-singing leaves,Had hid away earth's old and weary cry.And then you came with those red mournful lips,And with you came the whole of the world's tearsAnd all the trouble of her labouring ships,And all the trouble of her myriad years.And now the sparrows warring in the eaves,The curd-pale moon, the white stars in the sky,And the loud chaunting of the unquiet leaves,Are shaken with earth's old and weary cry.
When you are old and gray and full of sleep,And nodding by the fire, take down this book,And slowly read, and dream of the soft lookYour eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;How many loved your moments of glad grace,And loved your beauty will love false or true;But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,And loved the sorrows of your changing face.And bending down beside the glowing barsMurmur, a little sadly, how love fledAnd paced upon the mountains overheadAnd hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew dabbled, the lily and rose;Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam: I and you!I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;Soon far from the rose and the lily, and fret of the flames would we be,Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!
I dreamed that one had died in a strange placeNear no accustomed hand;And they had nailed the boards above her faceThe peasants of that land,Wondering to lay her in that solitude,And raised above her moundA cross they had made out of two bits of wood,And planted cypress round;And left her to the indifferent stars aboveUntil I carved these words:She was more beautiful than thy first love,But now lies under boards.
All the heavy days are over;Leave the body's coloured prideUnderneath the grass and clover,With the feet laid side by side.One with her are mirth and duty,Bear the gold embroidered dress,For she needs not her sad beauty,To the scented oaken press.Hers the kiss of Mother Mary,The long hair is on her face;Still she goes with footsteps wary,Full of earth's old timid grace.With white feet of angels sevenHer white feet go glimmeringAnd above the deep of heaven,Flame on flame and wing on wing.
Who will go drive with Fergus now,And pierce the deep wood's woven shade,And dance upon the level shore?Young man, lift up your russet brow,And lift your tender eyelids, maid,And brood on hopes and fears no more.And no more turn aside and broodUpon Love's bitter mystery;For Fergus rules the brazen cars,And rules the shadows of the wood,And the white breast of the dim seaAnd all dishevelled wandering stars.
He stood among a crowd at Drumahair;His heart hung all upon a silken dress,And he had known at last some tenderness,Before earth made of him her sleepy care;But when a man poured fish into a pile,It seemed they raised their little silver heads,And sang how day a Druid twilight shedsUpon a dim, green, well-beloved isle,Where people love beside star-laden seas;How Time may never mar their faery vowsUnder the woven roofs of quicken boughs:The singing shook him out of his new ease.He wandered by the sands of Lisadill;His mind ran all on money cares and fears,And he had known at last some prudent yearsBefore they heaped his grave under the hill;But while he passed before a plashy place,A lug-worm with its gray and muddy mouthSang how somewhere to north or west or southThere dwelt a gay, exulting, gentle race;And how beneath those three times blessed skiesA Danaan fruitage makes a shower of moons,And as it falls awakens leafy tunes:And at that singing he was no more wise.He mused beside the well of Scanavin,He mused upon his mockers: without failHis sudden vengeance were a country tale,Now that deep earth has drunk his body in;But one small knot-grass growing by the poolTold where, ah, little, all-unneeded voice!Old Silence bids a lonely folk rejoice,And chaplet their calm brows with leafage cool,And how, when fades the sea-strewn rose of day,A gentle feeling wraps them like a fleece,And all their trouble dies into its peace:The tale drove his fine angry mood away.He slept under the hill of Lugnagall;And might have known at last unhaunted sleepUnder that cold and vapour-turbaned steep,Now that old earth had taken man and all:Were not the worms that spired about his bonesA-telling with their low and reedy cry,Of how God leans His hands out of the sky,To bless that isle with honey in His tones;That none may feel the power of squall and waveAnd no one any leaf-crowned dancer missUntil He burn up Nature with a kiss:The man has found no comfort in the grave.
There was a green branch hung with many a bellWhen her own people ruled in wave-worn Eire;And from its murmuring greenness, calm of faery,A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell.It charmed away the merchant from his guile,And turned the farmer's memory from his cattle,And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle,For all who heard it dreamed a little while.Ah, Exiles wandering over many seas,Spinning at all times Eire's good to-morrow!Ah, worldwide Nation, always growing Sorrow!I also bear a bell branch full of ease.I tore it from green boughs winds tossed and hurled,Green boughs of tossing always, weary, weary!I tore it from the green boughs of old Eire,The willow of the many-sorrowed world.Ah, Exiles, wandering over many lands!My bell branch murmurs: the gay bells bring laughter,Leaping to shake a cobweb from the rafter;The sad bells bow the forehead on the hands.A honeyed ringing: under the new skiesThey bring you memories of old village faces,Cabins gone now, old well-sides, old dear places;And men who loved the cause that never dies.
I had a chair at every hearth,When no one turned to see,With "Look at that old fellow there,"And who may he be?"And therefore do I wander now,And the fret lies on me.The road-side trees keep murmuringAh, wherefore murmur ye,As in the old days long gone by,Green oak and poplar tree?The well-known faces are all goneAnd the fret lies on me.
The old priest Peter GilliganWas weary night and day;For half his flock were in their beds,Or under green sods lay.Once, while he nodded on a chair,At the moth-hour of eve,Another poor man sent for him,And he began to grieve."I have no rest, nor joy, nor peace,"For people die and die";And after cried he, "God forgive!"My body spake, not I!"He knelt, and leaning on the chairHe prayed and fell asleep;And the moth-hour went from the fields,And stars began to peep.They slowly into millions grew,And leaves shook in the wind;And God covered the world with shade,And whispered to mankind.Upon the time of sparrow chirpWhen the moths came once more,The old priest Peter GilliganStood upright on the floor."Mavrone, mavrone! the man has died,"While I slept on the chair";He roused his horse out of its sleep,And rode with little care.He rode now as he never rode,By rocky lane and fen;The sick man's wife opened the door:"Father! you come again!""And is the poor man dead?" he cried,"He died an hour ago,"The old priest Peter GilliganIn grief swayed to and fro."When you were gone, he turned and died"As merry as a bird."The old priest Peter GilliganHe knelt him at that word."He who hath made the night of stars"For souls, who tire and bleed,"Sent one of His great angels down"To help me in my need."He who is wrapped in purple robes,"With planets in His care,"Had pity on the least of things"Asleep upon a chair."
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,The holy tree is growing there;From joy the holy branches start,And all the trembling flowers they bear.The changing colours of its fruitHave dowered the stars with merry light;The surety of its hidden rootHas planted quiet in the night;The shaking of its leafy headHas given the waves their melody,And made my lips and music wed,Murmuring a wizard song for thee.There, through bewildered branches, goWinged Loves borne on in gentle strife,Tossing and tossing to and froThe flaming circle of our life.When looking on their shaken hair,And dreaming how they dance and dart,Thine eyes grow full of tender care:Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.Gaze no more in the bitter glassThe demons, with their subtle guile,Lift up before us when they pass,Or only gaze a little while;For there a fatal image grows,With broken boughs, and blackened leaves,And roots half hidden under snowsDriven by a storm that ever grieves.For all things turn to barrennessIn the dim glass the demons hold,The glass of outer weariness,Made when God slept in times of old.There, through the broken branches, goThe ravens of unresting thought;Peering and flying to and froTo see men's souls bartered and bought.When they are heard upon the wind,And when they shake their wings; alas!Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:Gaze no more in the bitter glass.
Know, that I would accounted beTrue brother of that company,Who sang to sweeten Ireland's wrong,Ballad and story, rann and song;Nor be I any less of them,Because the red-rose-bordered hemOf her, whose history beganBefore God made the angelic clan,Trails all about the written page;For in the world's first blossoming ageThe light fall of her flying feetMade Ireland's heart begin to beat;And still the starry candles flareTo help her light foot here and there;And still the thoughts of Ireland broodUpon her holy quietude.Nor may I less be counted oneWith Davis, Mangan, Ferguson,Because to him, who ponders well,My rhymes more than their rhyming tellOf the dim wisdoms old and deep,That God gives unto man in sleep.For the elemental beings goAbout my table to and fro.In flood and fire and clay and wind,They huddle from man's pondering mind;Yet he who treads in austere waysMay surely meet their ancient gaze.Man ever journeys on with themAfter the red-rose-bordered hem.Ah, faeries, dancing under the moon,A Druid land, a Druid tune!While still I may, I write for youThe love I lived, the dream I knew.From our birthday, until we die,Is but the winking of an eye;And we, our singing and our love,The mariners of night above,And all the wizard things that goAbout my table to and fro.Are passing on to where may be,In truth's consuming ecstasyNo place for love and dream at all;For God goes by with white foot-fall.I cast my heart into my rhymes,That you, in the dim coming times,May know how my heart went with themAfter the red-rose-bordered hem.