The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people.
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.
Then let them point my every tear,
And let them mock and moan;
Another week, another year,
And I'll be with my own
Who slumber now by night and day
In fields of level brown;
Whose hearts within their breasts were clay
Before they laid them down.
Far in the mellow western sky,
Above the restless harbor bar,
A beacon on the coast of night,
Shines out a calm, white evening star;
But your deep eyes, my 'longshore lass,
Are brighter, clearer far.
The glory of the sunset past
Still gleams upon the water there,
But all its splendor cannot match
The wind-blown brightness of your hair;
Not any sea-maid's floating locks
Of gold are half so fair.
The waves are whispering to the sands
With murmurs as of elfin glee;
Air -- "The Rain upon the Roof"
I
When I was a little infant,
And I lay in mother's arms,
Then I felt the gentle pressure
Of a loving mother's arms.
"Go to sleep my little baby,
Go to sleep," mamma would say;
"Oh, will not my little lady
Go to sleep for ma to-day."
II
Oh! my parents loved me dearly,
For I was their eldest born,
And they always called me Julia
In a mild and loving form.
My parents will not forget me,
Though I married and left their home,
MY grief on the sea,
How the waves of it roll!
For they heave between me
And the love of my soul!
Abandon'd, forsaken,
To grief and to care,
Will the sea ever waken
Relief from despair?
My grief and my trouble!
Would he and I were,
In the province of Leinster,
Or County of Clare!
Were I and my darling--
O heart-bitter wound!--
On board of the ship
For America bound.
On a green bed of rushes
All last night I lay,
My friends without shields walk on the target
It is late the windows are breaking
My friends without shoes leave
What they love
Grief moves among them as a fire among
Its bells
My friends without clocks turn
On the dial they turn
They part
My friends with names like gloves set out
Bare handed as they have lived
And nobody knows them
It is they that lay the wreaths at the milestones it is their
Cups that are found at the wells
And are then chained up
My bed is like a little boat;
Nurse helps me in when I embark;
She girds me in my sailor's coat
And starts me in the dark.
II
At night I go on board and say
Good-night to all my friends on shore;
I shut my eyes and sail away
And see and hear no more.
III
And sometimes things to bed I take,
As prudent sailors have to do;
Perhaps a slice of wedding-cake,
Perhaps a toy or two.
IV
All night across the dark we steer;
But when the day returns at last,
'Twas in a pub just off the Strand
When I was in my cups,
There passed a bloke with in his hand
Two tiny puling pups;
And one was on me with a bound,
Seeking to lick my face,
And so I bought him for a pound
And took him to my place.
Three acres by the shore I own,
A hut, a pint wood;
And there for fifteen years alone
He shared my solitude.
It was his own, his only world,
And when with hunting spent,
Each night beside my bed he curled,
And slept in sheer content.
Deeming that I was due to die
I framed myself a coffin;
So full of graveyard zeal was I,
I set the folks a-laughing.
I made it snugly to my fit,
My joinering was honest;
And sometimes in it I would sit,
And fancy I was non est.
I stored it on my cabin shelf
Forever to remind me,
When I was tickled with myself,
That Death was close behind me.
Let's be prepared, I used to say,
E're in the Dark we launch us:
And so with boding day by day
I kept me coffin-conscious.
"A year to live," the Doctor said;
"There is no cure," and shook his head.
Ah me! I felt as good as dead.
Yet quite resigned to fate was I,
Thinking: "Well, since I have to die
'Twill be beneath the open sky."
And so I sought a wildsome wood
Wherein a lonely cabin stood,
And doomed myself to solitude,
And there was no one I would see:
Each morn a farmer brought to me
My food and hung it on a tree.
Six eggs he brought, and milk a quart,
Enough for wretches of my sort
