sky

Week after week it shrank and shrank
as the fierce drought fiend drank and drank,
till on the bone-dry bed revealed
the mud peeled;
but now tonight is steamy-warm,
heavy with hint of thunderstorm.

And hark! hark! hoarse and harsh
the throaty croak of the frogs in the marsh:
"Wake! wake! awake! awake!
The drought break!"
but no, that chorus seems to me
more a primeval harmony.

The thunder booms, the floods flow
blended with deeper din below,
and every time the skies crash

Sunt aliquid manes; letum non omnia finit;
Luridaque evictos effugit umbra rogos.
PROPERTIUS.



To Albion's misty isle across the waves I sped me:
It look'd as if interr'd beneath a leaden sea,
And gathering round our bark the halcyon's music led me,
While all the crew rejoiced in their sweet melody.
The dancing surge, the evening breezes falling,
And through the sails and shrouds those breezes whistling thrill,
And to the watch the active helmsman calling,

A splendid place is London, with golden store,
For them that have the heart and hope and youth galore;
But mournful are its streets to me, I tell you true,
For I'm longing sore for Ireland in the foggy dew.

The sun he shines all day here, so fierce and fine,
With never a wisp of mist at all to dim his shine;
The sun he shines all day here from skies of blue:
He hides his face in Ireland in the foggy dew.

The maids go out to milking in the pastures gray,
The sky is green and golden at dawn of the day;

Unyielding in the pride of his defiance,
Afloat with none to serve or to command,
Lord of himself at last, and all by Science,
He seeks the Vanished Land.

Alone, by the one light of his one thought,
He steers to find the shore from which he came,
Fearless of in what coil he may be caught
On seas that have no name.

Into the night he sails, and after night
There is a dawning, thought there be no sun;
Wherefore, with nothing but himself in sight,
Unsighted, he sails on.

Oh, a wonderful horse is the Fly-Away Horse -
Perhaps you have seen him before;
Perhaps, while you slept, his shadow has swept

Through the moonlight that floats on the floor.
For it's only at night, when the stars twinkle bright,
That the Fly-Away Horse, with a neigh
And a pull at his rein and a toss of his mane,
Is up on his heels and away!
The Moon in the sky,
As he gallopeth by,
Cries: "Oh! what a marvelous sight!"
And the Stars in dismay
Hide their faces away
In the lap of old Grandmother Night.

When storm-clouds rumble in the sky and June showers come down.
The moist east wind comes marching over the heath to blow its
bagpipes among the bamboos.
Then crowds of flowers come out of a sudden, from nobody knows
where, and dance upon the grass in wild glee.
Mother, I really think the flowers go to school underground.
They do their lessons with doors shut, and if they want to
come out to play before it is time, their master makes them stand
in a corner.
When the rain come they have their holidays.

The autumn afternoon is dying o'er
The quiet western valley where I lie
Beneath the maples on the river shore,
Where tinted leaves, blue waters and fair sky
Environ all; and far above some birds are flying by

To seek their evening haven in the breast
And calm embrace of silence, while they sing
Te Deums to the night, invoking rest
For busy chirping voice and tired wing--
And in the hush of sleeping trees their sleeping cradles swing.

In forest arms the night will soonest creep,

I praise Thee, God, whose rays upstart beneath the Bright
and Morning Star:
Nowit asali fardh salat assobhi allahu akbar.

I praise Thee, God, the fierce and swart; at noon Thou ridest
forth to war!
Nowit asali fardh salat assohri allahu akabr.

I praise Thee, God, whose arrows dart their royal radiance
o'er the scar:
Nowit asali fardh salat asasri allahu akabr.

I praise Thee, God, whose fires depart, who drivest down the
sky thy car:
Nowit asali fardh salat al maghrab allahu akabr.

The common rain had come again
Slanting and colorless, pale and anonymous,
Fainting falling in the first evening
Of the first perception of the actual fall,
The long and late light had slowly gathered up
A sooty wood of clouded sky, dim and distant more and
more
Until, at dusk, the very sense of selfhood waned,
A weakening nothing halted, diminished or denied or set
aside,
Neither tea, nor, after an hour, whiskey,
Ice and then a pleasant glow, a burning,
And the first leaping wood fire

Ah, these jasmines, these white jasmines!
I seem to remember the first day when I filled my hands with
these jasmines, these white jasmines.
I have loved the sunlight, the sky and the green earth;
I have heard the liquid murmur of the river thorough the
darkness of midnight;
Autumn sunsets have come to me at the bend of a road in the
lonely waste, like a bride raising her veil to accept her lover.
Yet my memory is still sweet with the first white jasmines
that I held in my hands when I was a child.