faith

There--let thy hands be folded
Awhile in sleep's repose;
The patient hands that wearied not,
But earnestly and nobly wrought
In charity and faith;
And let thy dear eyes close--
The eyes that looked alway to God,
Nor quailed beneath the chastening rod
Of sorrow;
Fold thou thy hands and eyes
For just a little while,
And with a smile
Dream of the morrow.

And, O white voiceless flower,
The dream which thou shalt dream
Should be a glimpse of heavenly things,

Oh, mighty conjuror, you raise
The ghost of my lost youth --
The happy, golden-tinted days
When earth her treasure-trove displays,
And everything is truth.

Your compeers may be sage and dry,
But in your page appears
A very fairyland, where I
Played 'neath a changeful Irish sky --
A sky of smiles and tears.

Dear native land! this little book
Brings back the varied charm
Of emerald hill and flashing brook,
Deep mountain glen and woodland nook,

Ha! whare ye gaun, ye crowlan ferlie!
Your impudence protects you sairly;
I canna say but ye strunt rarely,
Owre gauze and lace;
Tho', faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.

Ye ugly, creepan, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her,
Sae fine a Lady!
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body.

Swith! in some beggar's haffet squattle;
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle,

Since much has been your mirth
And fair your fate,
Friend, leave your lot of earth
Less desolate.
With frailing overdue,
Why don't you try
The bit of God in you
To justify?

Try to discern the grace
All greed above,
That may uplift the race
To realm of love.
For in you is a spark,
A heaven-glow,
That will illume the dark
Before you go.

Aye, though it be that you
To Faith are blind,

1902


When I was a King and a Mason - a Master proven and skilled -
I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build.
I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently, under the silt,
I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built.

There was no worth in the fashion - there was no wit in the plan -
Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran -
Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone:
'After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known.'

Please God, forsake your water and dry bread,
And fling the bitter cress you eat aside.
Put by your rosary. In Mary's name leave chanting creeds
To mildewing monks in Rome.
Spring's at work in gardens bright with sun,
Springtime's not made for living like a nun.
Your faith, my fairest lady, your religion,
Shows but a single face of love's medallion.
Slip on this ring and this green gown, these laces -
The wood is furnitured with resting places.
Hide in the birch tree's shade; upon your knees

To thee, O father of the stately peaks,
Above me in the loftier light -- to thee,
Imperial brother of those awful hills
Whose feet are set in splendid spheres of flame,
Whose heads are where the gods are, and whose sides
Of strength are belted round with all the zones
Of all the world, I dedicate these songs.
And if, within the compass of this book,
There lives and glows ONE verse in which there beats
The pulse of wind and torrent -- if ONE line
Is here that like a running water sounds,

We trace the pow'r of Death from tomb to tomb,
And his are all the ages yet to come.
'Tis his to call the planets from on high,
To blacken Phoebus, and dissolve the sky;
His too, when all in his dark realms are hurl'd,
From its firm base to shake the solid world;
His fatal sceptre rules the spacious whole,
And trembling nature rocks from pole to pole.
Awful he moves, and wide his wings are spread:

Behold thy brother number'd with the dead!
From bondage freed, the exulting spirit flies

LORD BUDDHA, on thy Lotus-throne,
With praying eyes and hands elate,
What mystic rapture dost thou own,
Immutable and ultimate?
What peace, unravished of our ken,
Annihilate from the world of men?

The wind of change for ever blows
Across the tumult of our way,
To-morrow's unborn griefs depose
The sorrows of our yesterday.
Dream yields to dream, strife follows strife,
And Death unweaves the webs of Life.

For us the travail and the heat,
The broken secrets of our pride,

I marked a rainbow in the north,
What time the wild autumnal sun
From his dark veil at noon looked forth,
As glorying in his course half done,
Flinging soft radiance far and wide
Over the dusky heaven and bleak hill-side.

It was a gleam to Memory dear,
And as I walk and muse apart,
When all seems faithless round and drear,
I would revive it in my heart,
And watch how light can find its way
To regions farthest from the fount of day.

Light flashes in the gloomiest sky,