| where light is dim |
| By a broad water-lily leaf; |
| Or mice in the one wheaten sheaf |
| Forgotten at the threshing-
place; |
| Or birds lost in the one clear space |
| Of morning light in a dim sky; |
| Or, it may be, the eyelids of
one eye, |
| Or the door-pillars of one house, |
| Or two sweet blossoming apple-boughs |
| That have one shadow
on the ground; |
| Or the two strings that made one sound |
| Where that wise harper’s finger ran. |
| For this
young girl and this young man |
| Have happiness without an end, |
| Because they have made so good a
friend. |
|
|
|
|
| They know all wonders, for they pass |
| The towery gates of Gorias, |
| And Findrias and Falias, |
| And
long-forgotten Murias, |
| Among the giant kings whose hoard, |
| Cauldron and spear and stone and sword, |
| Was robbed before earth gave the wheat; |
| Wandering from broken street to street |
| They come where
some huge watcher is, |
| And tremble with their love and kiss. |
|
|
|
|
| They know undying things, for they |
| Wander
where earth withers away, |
| Though nothing troubles the great streams |
| But light from the pale stars, and
gleams |
| From the holy orchards, where there is none |
| But fruit that is of precious stone, |
| Or apples of the
sun and moon. |
|
|
|
|
| What were our praise to them? They eat |
| Quiet’s wild heart, like daily meat; |
| Who when
night thickens are afloat |
| On dappled skins in a glass boat, |
| Far out under a windless sky; |
| While over
them birds of Aengus fly, |
| And over the tiller and the prow, |
| And waving white wings to and fro |
| Awaken
wanderings of light air |
| To stir their coverlet and their hair. |
|
|
|
|
| And poets found, old writers say, |
| A yew tree
where his body lay; |
| But a wild apple hid the grass |
| With its sweet blossom where hers was; |
| And being in
good heart, because |
| A better time had come again |
| After the deaths of many men, |
| And that long fighting
at the ford, |
| They wrote on tablets of thin board, |
| Made of the apple and the yew, |
| All the love stories that
they knew. |
|
|
|
|
| Let rush and bird cry out their fill |
| Of the harper’s daughter if they will, |
| Beloved, I am not
afraid of her. |
| She is not wiser nor lovelier, |
| And you are more high of heart than she, |
| For all her wanderings
over-sea; |
| But I’d have bird and rush forget |
| Those other two; for never yet |
| Has lover lived, but longed to
wive |
| Like them that are no more alive. |
