| Under my window-ledge the waters race, |
| Otters below and moor-hens on the top, |
| Run for a mile undimmed
in Heaven’s face |
| Then darkening through ‘dark’ Raftery’s ‘cellar’ drop, |
| Run underground, rise in a rocky
place |
| In Coole demesne, and there to finish up |
| Spread to a lake and drop into a hole. |
| What’s water
but the generated soul? |
|
|
|
|
| Upon the border of that lake’s a wood |
| Now all dry sticks under a wintry sun, |
| And in a copse of beeches there I stood, |
| For Nature’s pulled her tragic buskin on |
| And all the rant’s a
mirror of my mood: |
| At sudden thunder of the mounting swan |
| I turned about and looked where branches
break |
| The glittering reaches of the flooded lake. |
|
|
|
|
| Another emblem there! That stormy white |
| But seems
a concentration of the sky; |
| And, like the soul, it sails into the sight |
| And in the morning’s gone, no man
knows why; |
| And is so lovely that it sets to right |
| What knowledge or its lack had set awry, |
| So arrogantly
pure, a child might think |
| It can be murdered with a spot of ink. |
|
|
|
|
| Sound of a stick upon the floor, a sound |
| From somebody that toils from chair to chair; |
| Beloved books that famous hands have bound, |
| Old marble
heads, old pictures everywhere; |
| Great rooms where travelled men and children found |
| Content or joy; a
last inheritor |
| Where none has reigned that lacked a name and fame |
| Or out of folly into folly came. |
|
|
|
|
| A
spot whereon the founders lived and died |
| Seemed once more dear than life; ancestral trees, |
| Or gardens
rich in memory glorified |
| Marriages, alliances and families, |
| And every bride’s ambition satisfied. |
| Where
fashion or mere fantasy decrees |
| Man shifts about—all that great glory spent— |
| Like some poor Arab
tribesman and his tent. |
|
|
|
|
| We were the last romantics—chose for theme |
| Traditional sanctity and loveliness; |
| Whatever’s written in what poets name |
| The book of the people; whatever most can bless |
| The mind of
man or elevate a rhyme; |
| But all is changed, that high horse riderless, |
| Though mounted in that saddle
Homer rode |
| Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood. |
