Chapter II: In Ulster

'TIS the time o' the year, if the quicken-bough be staunch,
The green like a breaker rolls steady up the branch,
And surges in the spaces, and floods the trunk, and heaves
In jets of angry spray that is the under-white of leaves;
And from the thorn in companies the foamy petals fall,
And waves of jolly ivy wink along a windy wall.

'Tis the time o' the year the marsh is full of sound,
And good and glorious it is to smell the living ground.
The crimson-headed catkin shakes above the pasture-bars,
The daisy takes the middle field and spangles it with stars,
And down the hedgerow to the lane the primroses do crowd,
All coloured like the twilight moon, and spreading like a cloud!

'Tis the time o' the year, in early light and glad,
The lark has a music to drive a lover mad;
The rocks are dripping nightly, the breathèd damps arise,
Deliciously the freshets cool the grayling's golden eyes,
And lying in a row against the chilly north, the sheep
Inclose a place without a wind for tender lambs to sleep.

'Tis the time o' the year I turn upon the height
To watch from my harrow the dance of going light;
And if before the sun be hid, come slowly up the vale
Honora with her dimpled throat, Honora with her pail,
Hey, but there's many a March for me, and many and many a lass!--
I fall to work and song again, and let Honora pass.

_The Japanese Anemone_

ALL summer the breath of the roses around
Exhales with a delicate passionate sound;
And when from a trellis, in holiday places,
They croon and cajole, with their slumberous faces,
A lad in the lane must slacken his paces.

Fragrance of these is a voice from a bower:
But low by the wall is my odourless flower,
So pure, so controlled, not a fume is above her,
That poet or bee should delay there and hover;
For she is a silence, and therefore I love her.

And never a mortal by morn or midnight
Is called to her hid little house of delight;
And she keeps from the wind, on his pillages olden,
Upon a true stalk in rough weather upholden,
Her winter-white gourd with the hollow moon-golden.

While ardours of roses contend and increase,
Methinks she has found how noble is peace,
Like a spirit besought from the world to dissever,
Not absent to men, though resumed by the Giver,
And dead long ago, being lovely for ever.

_Orisons_

ORANGE and olive and glossed bay-tree,
And air of the evening out at sea,
And out at sea on the steep warm stone,
A little bare diver poising alone.

Flushed from the cool of Sicilian waves,
Flushed as the coral in clean sea-caves,
"I am!" he cries to his glorying heart,
And unto he knows not what: "THOU art!"

He leaps, he shines, he sinks and is gone:
He will climb to the golden ledge anon.
Perfecter rite can none employ,
When the god of the isle is good to a boy.

_The Inner Fate: a Chorus_

NOT weak with eld
The stars beheld
Proud Persia coming to her doom;
Not battle-broke, nor tempest-tossed,
The long luxurious galleys lost
Their souls at Actium.

Not outer arts
Of hostile hearts
Seduced the arm of France to be
The wreckage of his wars at last,
The orphan of the kingdoms, cast
Upon the mothering sea.

Man evermore doth work his will,
And evermore the gods are still,
Applauding him alone who stands
Too just for Heaven-accusing groans,
But in his house of havoc owns
The doing of his hands:
Transgressor, yet divinely taught
To suffer all, blaspheming naught,
When fair-begun must foul conclude:
Himself progenitor of death
Who breeds, within, the only breath
Can kill beatitude.

_The Acknowledgment_

SINCE first I knew it our divine employ
To beat beyond the reach of soiling care,
As at Philippi, well of doom aware,
The Prætor called and heard the singing-boy;
Since first my soul so jealous was of joy,
That any facile linden-bloom in air,
Or fall of water on a wildwood stair,
Annulled for her all dragging dull annoy;
Though word of thanks I lacked, though, dumb, I smiled
Long, long, at such august amends up-piled,
Let this the debt redeem: that when Ye drop
Death's aloe-leaf within my honeyed cup,
On thoughtful knee your much-beholden child,
Immortals! unto You will drink it up.

_By the Trundle-bed_

LOST love, be never beyond Love's calling!
For this I claim of you, strong heart, sweet
As fontal water in Arden falling,
As first-mown hay in the April heat:

To tend from heaven, to rear, to harden,
And bring to bloom in the outer cold,
Our daffodil bud of a walled-in garden,
Our son that is like you, and six years old;

And lest his worth be the worth unreal,
To ward him not from the mortal blast,
But suffer your own, through a long ordeal,
Verily like you to be at the last,

And hear men murmur, if so he merit
In your old place with your look to arise:
"The sign of a saved soul who can inherit?--
You have earned, O King! those beautiful eyes."

_Arboricide_

A WORD of grief to me erewhile:
_We have cut the oak down, in our isle._

And I said: "Ye have bereaven
The song-thrush and the bee,
And the fisher-boy at sea
Of his sea-mark in the even;
And gourds of cooling shade, to lie
Within the sickle's sound;
And the old sheep-dog's loyal eye
Of sleep on duty's ground;
And poets of their tent
And quiet tenement.
Ah, impious! who so paid
Such fatherhood, and made
Of murmurous immortality a cargo and a trade."

For the hewn oak a century fair,
A wound in earth, an ache in air.

And I said: "No pillared height
With a summer daïs over,
Where a dryad fled her lover
Through the long arcade of light;
Nor 'neath Arcturus rolleth more,
Since the loud leaves are gone,
Between the shorn cliff and the shore,
Pan's organ antiphon.
Some nameless envy fed
This blow at grandeur's head:
Some breathed reproach, o'erdue,
Degenerate men, ye drew!
Hence, for his too plain heavenliness, our Socrates ye slew."

_The Cherry Bough_

IN a new poet's and a new friend's honour,
Forth from the scornèd town and her gold-getting,
Come men with lutes and bowls, and find a welcome
Here in my garden,

Find bowers and deep shade and windy grasses,
And by the south wall, wet and forward-jutting,
One early branch fire-tipped with Roman cherries.
Oh, naught is absent,

Oh, naught but you, kind head that far in prison
Sunk on a weary arm, feels no god's pity
Stroking and sighing where the kingly laurels
Were once so plenty;

Nor dreams, from revel and strange faces turning,
How on the strength of my fair tree that knew you
I lean to-day, when most my heart is laden
With your rich verses!

Since, long ago, in other gentler weather,
Ere wrath and exile were, you lay beneath it
(Your symbol then, your innocent wild brother
Glad with your gladness),

What has befallen in the world of wonder,
That still it puts forth bubbles of sweet colour,
And you, and you that fed our eyes with beauty,
Are sapped and rotten?

Alas! When my young guests have done with singing,
I break it, leaf and fruit, my garden's glory,
And hold it high among them, and say after:
"O my poor Ovid,

"Years pass, and loves pass too; and yet remember
For the clear time when we were boys together,
These tears at home are shed; and with you also
Your bough is dying."

_The Wild Ride_