LITMIR.BIZ

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gather the half of your blessedness

      And learn to pray when you pray.

      ‘I can bring you salmon out of the streams

      And heron out of the skies.’

      But Dathi folded his hands and smiled

      With the secrets of God in his eyes.

      And Cumhal saw like a drifting smoke

      All manner of blessed souls,

      Women and children, young men with books,

      And old men with croziers and stoles.

      ‘Praise God and God’s mother,’ Dathi said,

      ‘For God and God’s mother have sent

      The blessedest souls that walk in the world

      To fill your heart with content.’

      ‘And which is the blessedest,’ Cumhal said,

      ‘Where all are comely and good?

      Is it these that with golden thuribles

      Are singing about the wood?’

      ‘My eyes are blinking,’ Dathi said,

      ‘With the secrets of God half blind,

      But I can see where the wind goes

      And follow the way of the wind;

      ‘And blessedness goes where the wind goes,

      And when it is gone we are dead;

      I see the blessedest soul in the world

      And he nods a drunken head.

      ‘O blessedness comes in the night and the day

      And whither the wise heart knows;

      And one has seen in the redness of wine

      The Incorruptible Rose,

      ‘That drowsily drops faint leaves on him

      And the sweetness of desire,

      While time and the world are ebbing away

      In twilights of dew and of fire.’

THE SECRET ROSE

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      Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,

      Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those

      Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,

      Or in the wine vat, dwell beyond the stir

      And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep

      Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep

      Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold

      The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold

      Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes

      Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise

      In Druid vapour and make the torches dim;

      Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him

      Who met Fand walking among flaming dew

      By a gray shore where the wind never blew,

      And lost the world and Emer for a kiss;

      And him who drove the gods out of their liss,

      And till a hundred morns had flowered red,

      Feasted and wept the barrows of his dead;

      And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown

      And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown

      Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods;

      And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods,

      And sought through lands and islands numberless years,

      Until he found with laughter and with tears,

      A woman, of so shining loveliness,

      That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,

      A little stolen tress. I, too, await

      The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.

      When shall the stars be blown about the sky,

      Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?

      Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,

      Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?

MAID QUIET

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      Where has Maid Quiet gone to,

      Nodding her russet hood?

      The winds that awakened the stars

      Are blowing through my blood.

      O how could I be so calm

      When she rose up to depart?

      Now words that called up the lightning

      Are hurtling through my heart.

THE TRAVAIL OF PASSION

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      When the flaming lute-thronged angelic door is wide;

      When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay;

      Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the way

      Crowded with bitter faces, the wounds in palm and side,

      The hyssop-heavy sponge, the flowers by Kidron stream:

      We will bend down and loosen our hair over you,

      That it may drop faint perfume, and be heavy with dew,

      Lilies of death-pale hope, roses of passionate dream.

THE LOVER PLEADS WITH HIS FRIEND FOR OLD FRIENDS

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      Though you are in your shining days,

      Voices among the crowd

      And new friends busy with your praise,

      Be not unkind or proud,

      But think about old friends the most:

      Time’s bitter flood will rise,

      Your beauty perish and be lost

      For all eyes but these eyes.

A LOVER SPEAKS TO THE HEARERS OF HIS SONGS IN COMING DAYS

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      O, women, kneeling by your altar rails long hence,

      When songs I wove for my beloved hide the prayer,

      And smoke from this dead heart drifts through the violet air

      And covers

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