In the bird's house of emerald The sun is weaving webs of gold! She never broke her passionate heart! Pipeth clear from the orchard close A thrush in the bowers of white and rose ! For full delight of birds and flowers T THE TREES HESE be God's fair high palaces, Walled with fine leafen trellises, Interstarred with the warm and luminous azure; Sunlights run laughing through, And rains and honey-dew Scatter pale pearls at every 'green embrasure. The tangled twist and twine Of his soaring staircases have mosses fine For emerald pavement, and each leafy chamber Athwart the mellow air gossamer The chaffinch is God's little page. O joyant vassalage! "You will! You will!" he sayeth the whole day long, In sweet monotonous song: Poised on the window-sills of outmost leaves He watches where the tremulous sunlight weaves Its golden webbing over the palpitant grass, While the summer butterfly, winged of the blueveined snow, Floats by on aerial tides as clear as glass; From the break of morn, Herein the blackbird is God's courtier, With gold tongue ever astir, Piping and praising On his beaked horn. To do his Seigneur duty In mellow fluency and dulcet phrasing, In pæans of passing beauty; As a chanting priest, Chanting his matins in the wane o' the night, While slow great winds of vibrant light The dumb thing is God's guest, And ever tired creature seeking rest ; The cattle, drouthy with heat, One after one, lagging on listless feet, Seek the green shadow of God's pleasant housing; While the thousand winged wights of bough and air Do find God's palace fair! I MARY FURLONG AN IRISH LOVE-SONG love you, and I love you, and I love you, O my honey! It isn't for your goodly lands, it isn't for your money; It isn't for your father's cows, your mother's yellow butter, The love that's in my heart for you no words of mine may utter! The whole world is gone wrong with me since yestermorning early, Above the shoulder of Sliav Ruadh the sun was peeping barely, Your light feet scarcely stirred the dew among the scented clover; O happy dew, O happy grass, those little feet went Over ! The breeze had coaxed your nut-brown hair beneath the white sunbonnet, The sunbeams kissed the corn-flowers blue that you had fastened on it, And danced and danced, and quivered down your gown of colored cotton; And when I looked upon your face I fear I'd quite forgotten It was not you I came to see this morning but another, But who could look on that brown head, and ask for Tom, the brother? Your blue eyes have bewitched me quite, the eatin' and the dhrinkin' Have lost the grah' they used to have, of you I'm always thinkin'. The white of wheat is on your cheek, the scarlet of the berry : There sweetly blends on each soft lip the smile comes quick and merry; And oh the blue, blue eyes that shine beneath their silken lashes. My word! it is for sake of them my bread is turned to ashes! But sure this foolish tongue of mine won't get to tell its story Oh, how I wish I had the talk of my fine cousin Rory! Who's just as glib as if he ate the highest English Grammar, And if he loved a thousand times it would not make him stammer. And yet I almost think she cares-for sometimes how she blushes! And so this pleasant eve of May, when all the larks and thrushes Are singing their sweet songs of love, I'll try an' tell my story, Although I cannot sing like them, or speak like cousin Rory. Grah, taste. IN GLEN-NA-SMOEL N the heart of high blue hills Where the silence thrills and thrills, In the Valley of the Thrushes: From the golden low furze-bushes On the mountain wind's light feet Comes a perfume faint and sweet. Where the hills stand blue and gray Through the valley it goes swift, In the Thrushes' mystic glen When the ghostly moonlight glimmers Do the fairies never come Are their nimble feet grown numb? Ah! I think the fairies fled |