Classic Poem

The luminous air is wet
As if the moon came through
To hold as in a net
Such as the spiders set
By ditch and rivulet,
The grey unfallen dew.
The sun is not down yet;
As yet the eve is new.

The water is all a-quiver,
There scarce is room to stand
Beside the tidal river
So narrowed is the strand:
And, over there, the wood
Is standing in a flood,
Erect, and upside down;
And at its roots, a swan.

A silvern mist enhances,
By tangling half the light,
The glowing bay's expanses
Which else had been too bright;
For air is subject to
A tidal ebb and flow.

And all the weeds with sandy root
That in the sunshine on the beach
Crackled like ashes underfoot,
Are standing upright now to stretch,
All ambered from within, each frond
That sways revived in the great pond;
And every axon in my brain
And neuron takes the tide again,
Made all the fuller from the tide
That brims the sands of Malahide;
But what shall come into it now
I know not. I await the flow.
I must abide the cosmic main
Whose high tide floods the stranded brain;
For no such miracle is wrought
On earth like this by taking thought.

Oh, look at the ships
With their sails coming down
And the wonderful sweeps
That are steering them still
To the little grey town
On the green of the hill!
Are they Norman or Norse,
Or descendants of Conn
Returning in force
From a lost British town,
With women and loot now the Roman is gone?
They are Norse! For the bugles are wild in the woods,
Alarms to the farms to look after their goods:
To bury their cauldrons and hide all their herds.
They are Norse! I can tell by the length of their swords —
Oh, no; by their spears and the shape of their shields
They are Normans: the men who stand stiff in the fields
In hedges of battle that no man may turn;
The men who build castles that no one may burn;
The men who give laws to the chief and the kern.
Salt of the earth,
Salt of the sea,
Norman and Norse
And the wild man in me!
The founders of cities,
The takers of fields,
The heroes too proud to wear armour or shields,
Their blood is in you,
As it cannot but be,
O Townsmen of towns on an estuary!

O clear Swords River that now without noise
Meets in this marvellous equipoise,
O clear Swords River, O let me know
What is it you add to the undertow,
For sight and sound like a bubble tost
On the high tide no more than on ether is lost:
No sight or odour or country sound
Lately reflected or long ago drowned,
But rises again, and as beautiful
As the golden weed when the tide is full,
Or the clouds that floating becalmed, sublime,
Break out white sails for the halcyon time.
With what do you mingle your merchandise
Of hawthorns budding or Autumn skies;
The cackling flight of the golden nib
That rallies the leaf to protect the crib;
The moth gone mad in a zigzag flight
On the magical edge of the day and the night;
The flag leaves serried beside your fords,
Like bronze gone green in the ancient swords;
The shadowless light of the peace to be;
The scent of the rain when it dries on the lea?
White wings are all that endow the sea,
Except when it grates on its soundless bars
Of diamonds shoaled from the fallen stars;
For all that you brought from the fields of home
Is saved, not lost, in the fields of foam,
And rises again, for it was not dead,
Here where the meadows and waters wed.
Remember that by no force terrene
Does the high tide rise till no sands are seen,
When silver limits the old green plain,
And the luminous mist floods into the brain
At will to replenish the Past again:
Such wonders cannot on earth be done
Till the moon join hands with the golden sun.