Eyes of Youth

The Passion of Mary

 
O Lady Mary, thy bright crown
Is no mere crown of majesty;
For with the reflex of His own
Resplendent thorns Christ circled thee.
 
 
The red rose of this passion tide
Doth take a deeper hue from thee,
In the five Wounds of Jesus dyed,
And in Thy bleeding thoughts, Mary.
 
 
The soldier struck a triple stroke
That smote thy Jesus on the tree;
He broke the Heart of hearts, and broke
The Saint's and Mother's hearts in thee.
 
 
Thy Son went up the Angels' ways,
His passion ended; but, ah me!
Thou found'st the road of further days
A longer way of Calvary.
 
 
On the hard cross of hopes deferred
Thou hung'st in loving agony,
Until the mortal dreaded word,
Which chills our mirth, spake mirth to thee.
 
 
The Angel Death from this cold tomb
Of life did roll the stone away;
And He thou barest in thy womb
Caught thee at last into the day—
Before the living throne of Whom
The lights of heaven burning pray.
 

L'ENVOY

 
O thou who dwellest in the day,
Behold, I pace amidst the gloom:
Darkness is ever round my way,
With little space for sunbeam room.
 
 
Yet Christian sadness is divine,
Even as thy patient sadness was:
The salt tears in our life's dark wine
Fell in it from the saving Cross.
 
 
Bitter the bread of our repast;
Yet doth a sweet the bitter leaven:
Our sorrow is the shadow cast
Around it by the light of Heaven.
O Light in light, shine down from Heaven!
 

PADRAIC COLUM

"I shall not die for you"

(From the Irish)

 
O woman, shapely as the swan,
On your account I shall not die.
The men you've slain—a trivial clan—
Were less than I.
 
 
I ask me shall I die for these:
For blossom-teeth and scarlet lips?
And shall that delicate swan-shape
Bring me eclipse?
 
 
Well shaped the breasts and smooth the skin,
The cheeks are fair, the tresses free;
And yet I shall not suffer death,
God over me.
 
 
Those even brows, that hair like gold,
Those languorous tones, that virgin way;
The flowing limbs, the rounded heel
Slight men betray.
 
 
Thy spirit keen through radiant mien,
Thy shining throat and smiling eye,
Thy little palm, thy side like foam—
I cannot die.
 
 
O woman, shapely as the swan,
In a cunning house hard-reared was I;
O bosom white, O well-shaped palm,
I shall not die.
 

An Idyll

 
You stay at last at my bosom, with your beauty
young and rare,
Though your light limbs are as limber as the
foal's that follows the mare,
Brow fair and young and stately where thought
has now begun—Hair
bright as the breast of the eagle when he
strains up to the sun!
 
 
In the space of a broken castle I found you on
a day
When the call of the new-come cuckoo went
with me all the way.
You stood by the loosened stones that were
rough and black with age:
The fawn beloved of the hunter in the panther's
broken cage!
 
 
And we went down together by paths your
childhood knew—
Remote you went beside me, like the spirit of
the dew;
Hard were the hedge-rows still: sloe-bloom
was their scanty dower—
You slipped it within your bosom, the bloom
that scarce is flower.
 
 
And now you stay at my bosom with you
beauty young and rare,
Though your light limbs are as limber as the
foal's that follows the mare;
But always I will see you on paths your childhood
knew,
When remote you went beside me like the
spirit of the dew.
 

Christ the Comrade

 
Christ, by thine own darkened hour
Live within my heart and brain!
Let my hands not slip the rein.
 
 
Ah, how long ago it is
Since a comrade rode with me!
Now a moment let me see
 
 
Thyself, lonely in the dark,
Perfect, without wound or mark.
 

Arab Songs (I)

 
Saadi the Poet stood up and he put forth his
living words.
His songs were the hurtling of spears and
his figures the flashing of swords.
With hearts dilated our tribe saw the creature
of Saadi's mind;
It was like to the horse of a king, a creature
of fire and of wind.
 
 
Umimah my loved one was by me: without
love did these eyes see my fawn,
And if fire there were in her being, for me
its splendour had gone;
When the sun storms up on the tent, he makes
waste the fire of the grass—
It was thus with my loved one's beauty: the
splendour of song made it pass.
 
 
The desert, the march, and the onset—these
and these only avail,
Hands hard with the handling of spear-shafts,
brows white with the press of the mail!
And as for the kisses of women—these are
honey, the poet sings;
But the honey of kisses, beloved, it is lime
for the spirit's wings.
 

Arab Songs (II)

The poet reproaches those who have affronted him.

 
Ye know not why God hath joined the horse
fly unto the horse
Nor why the generous steed is yoked with
the poisonous fly:
Lest the steed should sink into ease and lose
his fervour of nerve
God hath appointed him this: a lustful and
venomous bride.
 
 
Never supine lie they, the steeds of our folk,
to the sting,
Praying for deadness of nerve, their wounds
the shame of the sun;
They strive, but they strive for this: the fullness
of passionate nerve;
They pant, but they pant for this: the speed
that outstrips the pain.
 
 
Sons of the dust, ye have stung: there is
darkness upon my soul.
Sons of the dust, ye have stung: yea, stung
to the roots of my heart.
But I have said in my breast: the birth
succeeds to the pang,
And sons of the dust, behold, your malice
becomes my song.
 

SHANE LESLIE

A Dead Friend (J.S., 1905)

 
I drew him then unto my knee, my friend who
was dead,
And I set my live lips over his, and my heart
by his head.
 
 
I thought of an unrippled love and a passion
unsaid,
And the years he was living by me, my friend
who was dead;
 
 
And the white morning ways that we went,
and how oft we had fed
And drunk with the sunset for lamp—my friend
who was dead;
 
 
Now never the draught at my lips would thrill
to my head—
For the last vintage ebbed in my heart; my
friend he was dead.
 
 
Then I spake unto God in my grief: My wine
and my bread
And my staff Thou hast taken from me—my
friend who is dead.
 
 
Are the heavens yet friendless to Thee, and
lone to Thy head,
That Thy desolate heart must have need of my
friend who is dead?
 
 
To God then I spake yet again: not Peter
instead
Would I take, nor Philip nor John, for my
friend who is dead.