The Song of Arda: (From “Annatanam”.)
LOW as a lute, my love, beneath the call
Of storm, I hear a melancholy wind;
The memorably mournful wind of yore
Which is the very brother of the one
That wanders, like a hermit, by the mound
Of Death, in lone Annatanam. A song
Was shaped for this, what time we heard outside
The gentle falling of the faded leaf
In quiet noons: a song whose theme doth turn
On gaps of Ruin and the gay-green clifts
Beneath the summits haunted by the moon.
Yea, much it travels to the dens of dole;
And in the midst of this strange rhyme, my lords,
Our Desolation like a phantom sits
With wasted cheeks and eyes that cannot weep
And fastened lips crampt up in marvellous pain.
A song in whose voice is the voice of the foam
And the rhyme of the wintering wave,
And the tongue of the things that eternally roam
In forest, in fell or in cave;
But mostly ’tis like to the Wind without home
In the glen of a desolate grave—
Of a deep and desolate grave.
The torrent flies over the thunder-struck clift
With many and many a call;
The leaves are swept down, and a dolorous drift
Is hurried away with the fall.
But mostly ’tis like the Wind without home
In the glen of a desolate grave—
Of a deep and desolate grave.
Whoever goes thither by night or by day
Must mutter, O Father, to Thee,
For the shadows that startle, the sounds that waylay
Are heavy to hear and to see;
And a step and a moan and a whisper for aye
Have made it a sorrow to be—
A sorrow of sorrows to be.
Oh! cover your faces and shudder, and turn
And hide in the dark of your hair,
Nor look to the Glen in the Mountains, to learn
Of the mystery mouldering there;
But rather sit low in the ashes and urn
Dead hopes in your mighty despair—
In the depths of your mighty despair.
poem by Henry Kendall
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The wind
(THE TALE)
Cometh the Wind from the garden, fragrant and full of sweet singing--
Under my tree where I sit cometh the Wind to confession.
"Out in the garden abides the Queen of the beautiful Roses--
Her do I love and to-night wooed her with passionate singing;
Told I my love in those songs, and answer she gave in her blushes--
She shall be bride of the Wind, and she is the Queen of the Roses!"
"Wind, there is spice in thy breath; thy rapture hath fragrance Sabaean!"
"Straight from my wooing I come--my lips are bedewed with her kisses--
My lips and my song and my heart are drunk with the rapture of loving!"
(THE SONG)
The Wind he loveth the red, red Rose,
And he wooeth his love to wed:
Sweet is his song
The Summer long
As he kisseth her lips so red;
And he recketh naught of the ruin wrought
When the Summer of love is sped!
(AGAIN THE TALE)
Cometh the Wind from the garden, bitter with sorrow of winter.
"Wind, is thy love-song forgot? Wherefore thy dread lamentations?"
Sigheth and moaneth the Wind: "Out of the desolate garden
Come I from vigils with ghosts over the grave of the Summer!"
"Thy breath that was fragrant anon with rapture of music and loving,
It grieveth all things with its sting and the frost of its wailing
displeasure."
The Wind maketh ever more moan and ever it giveth this answer:
"My heart it is numb with the cold of the love that was born of the
Summer--
I come from the garden all white with the wrath and the sorrow of Winter;
I have kissed the low, desolate tomb where my bride in her loveliness
lieth
And the voice of the ghost in my heart is the voice that forever
outcrieth!"
(AGAIN THE SONG)
The Wind he waileth the red, red Rose
When the Summer of love is sped--
He waileth above
His lifeless love
With her shroud of snow o'erspread--
Crieth such things as a true heart brings
To the grave of its precious dead.
poem by Eugene Field
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The Voice in the Wild Oak
Twelve years ago, when I could face
High heaven’s dome with different eyes—
In days full-flowered with hours of grace,
And nights not sad with sighs—
I wrote a song in which I strove
To shadow forth thy strain of woe,
Dark widowed sister of the grove!—
Twelve wasted years ago.
But youth was then too young to find
Those high authentic syllables,
Whose voice is like the wintering wind
By sunless mountain fells;
Nor had I sinned and suffered then
To that superlative degree
That I would rather seek, than men,
Wild fellowship with thee!
But he who hears this autumn day
Thy more than deep autumnal rhyme,
Is one whose hair was shot with grey
By Grief instead of Time.
He has no need, like many a bard,
To sing imaginary pain,
Because he bears, and finds it hard,
The punishment of Cain.
No more he sees the affluence
Which makes the heart of Nature glad;
For he has lost the fine, first sense
Of Beauty that he had.
The old delight God’s happy breeze
Was wont to give, to Grief has grown;
And therefore, Niobe of trees,
His song is like thine own!
But I, who am that perished soul,
Have wasted so these powers of mine,
That I can never write that whole,
Pure, perfect speech of thine.
Some lord of words august, supreme,
The grave, grand melody demands;
The dark translation of thy theme
I leave to other hands.
Yet here, where plovers nightly call
Across dim, melancholy leas—
Where comes by whistling fen and fall
The moan of far-off seas—
A grey, old Fancy often sits
And fills thy strong, strange rhyme by fits
With awful utterings.
Then times there are when all the words
Are like the sentences of one
Shut in by Fate from wind and birds
And light of stars and sun,
No dazzling dryad, but a dark
Dream-haunted spirit doomed to be
Imprisoned, crampt in bands of bark,
For all eternity.
Yea, like the speech of one aghast
At Immortality in chains,
What time the lordly storm rides past
With flames and arrowy rains:
Some wan Tithonus of the wood,
White with immeasurable years—
An awful ghost in solitude
With moaning moors and meres.
And when high thunder smites the hill
And hunts the wild dog to his den,
Thy cries, like maledictions, shrill
And shriek from glen to glen,
As if a frightful memory whipped
Thy soul for some infernal crime
That left it blasted, blind, and stript—
A dread to Death and Time!
But when the fair-haired August dies,
And flowers wax strong and beautiful,
Thy songs are stately harmonies
By wood-lights green and cool—
Most like the voice of one who shows
Through sufferings fierce, in fine relief,
A noble patience and repose—
A dignity in grief.
But, ah! conceptions fade away,
And still the life that lives in thee—
The soul of thy majestic lay—
Remains a mystery!
And he must speak the speech divine—
The language of the high-throned lords—
Who’d give that grand old theme of thine
Its sense in faultless words.
By hollow lands and sea-tracts harsh,
With ruin of the fourfold gale,
Where sighs the sedge and sobs the marsh,
Still wail thy lonely wail;
And, year by year, one step will break
The sleep of far hill-folded streams,
And seek, if only for thy sake
Thy home of many dreams.
poem by Henry Kendall
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By the Cliffs of the Sea
In a far-away glen of the hills,
Where the bird of the night is at rest,
Shut in from the thunder that fills
The fog-hidden caves of the west—
In a sound of the leaf, and the lute
Of the wind on the quiet lagoon,
I stand, like a worshipper, mute
In the flow of a marvellous tune!
And the song that is sweet to my sense
Is, “Nearer, my God, unto Thee”;
But it carries me sorrowing hence,
To a grave by the cliffs of the sea.
So many have gone that I loved—
So few of the fathers remain,
That where in old seasons I moved
I could never be happy again.
In the breaks of this beautiful psalm,
With its deep, its devotional tone,
And hints of ineffable calm,
I feel like a stranger, alone.
No wonder my eyes are so dim—
Your trouble is heavy on me,
O widow and daughter of him
Who sleeps in the grave by the sea!
The years have been hard that have pressed
On a head full of premature grey,
Since Stenhouse went down to his rest,
And Harpur was taken away.
In the soft yellow evening-ends,
The wind of the water is faint
By the home of the last of my friends—
The shrine of the father and saint.
The tenderness touching—the grace
Of Ridley no more is for me;
And flowers have hidden the face
Of the brother who sleeps by the sea.
The vehement voice of the South
Is loud where the journalist lies;
But calm hath encompassed his mouth,
And sweet is the peace in his eyes.
Called hence by the Power who knows
When the work of a hero is done,
He turned at the message, and rose
With the harness of diligence on.
In the midst of magnificent toil,
He bowed at the holy decree;
And green is the grass on the soil
Of the grave by the cliffs of the sea.
I knew him, indeed; and I knew,
Having suffered so much in his day,
What a beautiful nature and true
In Bennett was hidden away.
In the folds of a shame without end,
When the lips of the scorner were curled,
I found in this brother a friend—
The last that was left in the world.
Ah! under the surface austere
Compassion was native to thee;
I send from my solitude here
This rose for the grave by the sea.
To the high, the heroic intent
Of a life that was never at rest,
He held, with a courage unspent,
Through the worst of his days and the best.
Far back in the years that are dead
He knew of the bitterness cold
That saddens with silver the head
And makes a man suddenly old.
The dignity gracing his grief
Was ever a lesson to me;
He lies under blossom and leaf
In a grave by the cliffs of the sea.
Above him the wandering face
Of the moon is a loveliness now,
And anthems encompass the place
From lutes of the luminous bough.
The forelands are fiery with foam
Where often and often he roved;
He sleeps in the sight of the home
That he built by the waters he loved.
The wave is his fellow at night,
And the sun, shining over the lea,
Sheds out an unspeakable light
On this grave by the cliffs of the sea.
poem by Henry Kendall
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The dancing whirling leaves
I will befall into my tomb
As a waning river falls to the sea
I embrace death the existence of ‘not to be’
As a child welcomes his calm night dream
I walked in the shadows of darkness and sorrow
Unfriendly and cold and alone
As dismally gurgle besides me
The bleak river desolate moan
The rise of the volleying thunder
The mountain’s lone echoes repeat
The roar whirl wind around me
The galling autumn leaves at my feet
I stooped in shadows of darkness and sorrow
Uncheered by the moon’s spangled ray
Not a friend that I love but is dead
Not a hope I have but have faded away
Oh Shall I rest in the tomb
Wrapped about with the chill winding white sheet
For the roar of the wind is around me
And the waving yellow leaves above my head
I heed not the blasts that sweep over me
I mind not the hail the storm and the raging sea
I blame not the tempest of night
They are not the foes who have banished
The visions of youthful delight
I hail the wild sound of their raving
Their merciless presence I greet
Oh let it be! Let me join these eternal elements
And roam the land and rove the vexed sea
Yet my fate is the roar of the wind engulfing me
And the piling reddened leaves at my feet
In this waste of existence and solitude, for solace
On whom shall my lone spiral call?
Shall I seek shall I fly to the friends of my bosom
My God I have buried them all
They are dead they are gone they are cold
My embrace no longer they meet or feel
Fall to the roar of the wind around me
The yellow leaves hissing in a macabre music at my feet
Those eyes that glanced love into mine
With motionless and cold slumber are pressed
Those hearts which once throbbed are no more in line
They are chill as the earth where they rest
Then around me my wan withered form
Let the pestilent gale beat
Submit to the howling wind around me
While the mocking leaves dance at my feet
Like the voice of the owl in the hall
Where the song of choir and the banquet ceased
Where the green weeds have mantled the hearth
Where raise the proud flame of feast
So I cry to the storm whose dark wings
Scatter on my eyes the wild driving sleet
Let the roar of the wind around me
And the dancing whirling clan leaves at my feet
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The Autumn
Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
Do hymn an autumn sound.
The summer sun is faint on them --
The summer flowers depart --
Sit still -- as all transform'd to stone,
Except your musing heart.
How there you sat in summer-time,
May yet be in your mind;
And how you heard the green woods sing
Beneath the freshening wind.
Though the same wind now blows around,
You would its blast recall;
For every breath that stirs the trees,
Doth cause a leaf to fall.
Oh! like that wind, is all the mirth
That flesh and dust impart:
We cannot bear its visitings,
When change is on the heart.
Gay words and jests may make us smile,
When Sorrow is asleep;
But other things must make us smile,
When Sorrow bids us weep!
The dearest hands that clasp our hands, --
Their presence may be o'er;
The dearest voice that meets our ear,
That tone may come no more!
Youth fades; and then, the joys of youth,
Which once refresh'd our mind,
Shall come -- as, on those sighing woods,
The chilling autumn wind.
Hear not the wind -- view not the woods;
Look out o'er vale and hill-
In spring, the sky encircled them --
The sky is round them still.
Come autumn's scathe -- come winter's cold --
Come change -- and human fate!
Whatever prospect Heaven doth bound,
Can ne'er be desolate.
poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Ulla, Or The Adjuration
'Thou'rt gone!–thou'rt slumb'ring low,
With the sounding seas above thee;
It is but a restless wo,
But a haunting dream to love thee!
Thrice the glad swan has sung,
To greet the spring-time hours,
Since thine oar at parting flung
The white spray up in showers.
There's a shadow of the grave on thy hearth and round thy home;
Come to me from the ocean's dead!–thou'rt surely of them–come!'
'Twas Ulla's voice–alone she stood
In the Iceland summer night,
Far gazing o'er a glassy flood,
From a dark rock's beetling height.
'I know thou hast thy bed
Where the sea-weed's coil hath bound thee;
The storm sweeps o'er thy head,
But the depths are hush'd around thee.
What wind shall point the way
To the chambers where thou'rt lying?
Come to me thence, and say
If thou thought'st on me in dying?
I will not shrink to see thee with a bloodless lip and cheek–
Come to me from the ocean's dead!–thou'rt surely of them–speak!'
She listen'd–'twas the wind's low moan,
'Twas the ripple of the wave,
'Twas the wakening osprey's cry alone,
As it started from its cave.
'I know each fearful spell
Of the ancient Runic lay,
Whose mutter'd words compel
The tempest to obey.
But I adjure not thee
By magic sign or song,
My voice shall stir the sea
By love,–the deep, the strong!
By the might of woman's tears, by the passion of her sighs,
Come to me from the ocean's dead!–by the vows we pledg'd–arise!'
Again she gazed with an eager glance,
Wandering and wildly bright;–
She saw but the sparkling waters dance
To the arrowy northern light.
'By the slow and struggling death
Of hope that loath'd to part,
By the fierce and withering breath
Of despair on youth's high heart;
By the weight of gloom which clings
To the mantle of the night,
By the heavy dawn which brings
Nought lovely to the sight,
By all that from my weary soul thou hast wrung of grief and fear,
Come to me from the ocean's dead–awake, arise, appear!'
Was it her yearning spirit's dream,
Or did a pale form rise,
And o'er the hush'd wave glide and gleam,
With bright, still, mournful eyes?
'Have the depths heard?–they have!
My voice prevails–thou'rt there,
Dim from thy watery grave,
Oh! thou that wert so fair!
Yet take me to thy rest!
There dwells no fear with love;
Let me slumber on thy breast,
While the billow rolls above!
Where the long-lost things lie hid, where the bright ones have their home,
We will sleep among the ocean's dead–stay for me, stay!–I come!'
There was a sullen plunge below,
A flashing on the main,
And the wave shut o'er that wild heart's wo,
Shut,–and grew still again.
poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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Neverending Song (The Song Of A mournful Heart)
Hear the child’s song,
As he sings his mournful cry to the skies above his head.
The only music in his words is the rain drops on the roof.
He watches with tears flowing down his cheeks,
He watches the wind blow the branches that scape against the walls.
Hear his song as he longs for a loving touch,
A mother’s hug.
In his own silent afterlife he watches,
As the world carries on around him.
His arms wrapped tight around his legs,
His hair uncut and knotted,
As tears stain his cheeks with salt water so rich,
Hear his silent song as he sings to those few who see him,
In his solitary windowsill in the house that was once his home he sits and Sings.
Nothing mattering to him but that that has past,
Nothing breaking his everlasting chorus,
But be careful do not listen for to long or his sorrow shall become your own,
You shall fall into rhythm with his voice,
And you will not leave,
But stay and melt into the stars that he rests his feet apon.
His prison will become your sanctuary,
His tomb, your grave,
His song, shall be your own form of reality.
In the dark stairwell you will stay with him.
Watching the endless lightnight lighting the sky,
The endless thunder the keeping time with the wind which is the music to his song.
You will fade to nothing at his feet, and he won’t even pause.
He will continue his cry to the god he once knew,
Crying for salvation for forgiveness, for the one thing that he can never have again.
And his tears will flow on running down his face to his tattered clothing,
His eyes ever fixed on the dark sky outside that expresses his pain, his agony,
His heart still in a ody somewhere, never to beat the beat of life again,
And still he will sing his mournful cry.
Listen to the child’s cry, but don’t stay long,
Or you will become the rain that beats down on the fortress around him,
Your own sorrowful tears that you shed for him, shall become the music,
To the child’s mournful cry.
poem by Bethany Maxwell
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At Euroma
They built his mound of the rough, red ground,
By the dip of a desert dell,
Where all things sweet are killed by the heat,
And scattered o'er flat and fell;
In a burning zone they left him alone,
Past the uttermost western plain,
And the nightfall dim heard his funeral hymn
In the voices of wind and rain.
The songs austere of the forests drear,
And the echoes of clift and cave,
When the dark is keen where the storm hath been,
Fleet over the far-away grave.
And through the days when the torrid rays
Strike down on a coppery gloom,
Some spirit grieves in the perished leaves,
Whose theme is that desolate tomb.
No human foot or paw of brute
Halts now where the stranger sleeps;
But cloud and star his fellows are,
And the rain that sobs and weeps.
The dingo yells by the far iron fells,
The plover is loud in the range,
But they never come near to the slumberer here,
Whose rest is a rest without change.
Ah! in his life, had he mother or wife,
To wait for his step on the floor?
Did beauty wax dim while watching for him
Who passed through the threshold no more?
Doth it trouble his head? He is one with the dead;
He lies by the alien streams;
And sweeter than sleep is death that is deep
And unvexed by the lordship of dreams.
poem by Henry Kendall
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Charles Harpur
Where Harpur lies, the rainy streams,
And wet hill-heads, and hollows weeping,
Are swift with wind, and white with gleams,
And hoarse with sounds of storms unsleeping.
Fit grave it is for one whose song
Was tuned by tones he caught from torrents,
And filled with mountain breaths, and strong,
Wild notes of falling forest currents.
So let him sleep, the rugged hymns
And broken lights of woods above him!
And let me sing how sorrow dims
The eyes of those that used to love him.
As April in the wilted wold
Turns faded eyes on splendours waning,
What time the latter leaves are old,
And ruin strikes the strays remaining;
So we that knew this singer dead,
Whose hands attuned the harp Australian,
May set the face and bow the head,
And mourn his fate and fortunes alien.
The burden of a perished faith
Went sighing through his speech of sweetness,
With human hints of time and death,
And subtle notes of incompleteness.
But when the fiery power of youth
Had passed away and left him nameless,
Serene as light, and strong as truth,
He lived his life, untired and tameless.
And, far and free, this man of men,
With wintry hair and wasted feature,
Had fellowship with gorge and glen,
And learned the loves and runes of Nature.
Strange words of wind, and rhymes of rain,
And whispers from the inland fountains
Are mingled, in his various strain,
With leafy breaths of piny mountains.
But as the undercurrents sigh
Beneath the surface of a river,
The music of humanity
Dwells in his forest-psalms for ever.
No soul was he to sit on heights
And live with rocks apart and scornful:
Delights of men were his delights,
And common troubles made him mournful.
The flying forms of unknown powers
With lofty wonder caught and filled him;
But there were days of gracious hours
When sights and sounds familiar thrilled him.
The pathos worn by wayside things,
The passion found in simple faces,
Struck deeper than the life of springs
Or strength of storms and sea-swept places.
But now he sleeps, the tired bard,
The deepest sleep; and, lo! I proffer
These tender leaves of my regard,
With hands that falter as they offer.
poem by Henry Kendall
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From the Grave
When the first sere leaves of the year were falling,
I heard, with a heart that was strangely thrilled,
Out of the grave of a dead Past calling,
A voice I fancied forever stilled.
All through winter and spring and summer,
Silence hung over that grave like a pall,
But, borne on the breath of the last sad comer,
I listen again to the old-time call.
It is only a love of a by-gone season,
A senseless folly that mocked at me
A reckless passion that lacked all reason,
So I killed it, and hid it where none could see.
I smothered it first to stop its crying,
Then stabbed it through with a good sharp blade,
And cold and pallid I saw it lying,
And deep—ah' deep was the grave I made.
But now I know that there is no killing
A thing like Love, for it laughs at Death.
There is no hushing, there is no stilling
That which is part of your life and breath.
You may bury it deep, and leave behind you
The land, the people, that knew your slain;
It will push the sods from its grave, and find you
On wastes of water or desert plain.
You may hear but tongues of a foreign people,
You may list to sounds that are strange and new;
But, clear as a silver bell in a steeple,
That voice from the grave shall call to you.
You may rouse your pride, you may use your reason.
And seem for a space to slay Love so;
But, all in its own good time and season,
It will rise and follow wherever you go.
You shall sit sometimes, when the leaves are falling,
Alone with your heart, as I sit to-day,
And hear that voice from your dead Past calling
Out of the graves that you hid away.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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A Voice On The Wind
I
She walks with the wind on the windy height
When the rocks are loud and the waves are white,
And all night long she calls through the night,
'O my children, come home!'
Her bleak gown, torn as a tattered cloud,
Tosses around her like a shroud,
While over the deep her voice rings loud,-
'O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!'
II
Who is she who wanders alone,
When the wind drives sheer and the rain is blown?
Who walks all night and makes her moan,
'O my children, come home!'
Whose face is raised to the blinding gale;
Whose hair blows black and whose eyes are pale,
While over the world goes by her wail,-
'O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!'
III
She walks with the wind in the windy wood;
The dark rain drips from her hair and hood,
And her cry sobs by, like a ghost pursued,
'O my children, come home!'
Where the trees loom gaunt and the rocks stretch drear,
The owl and the fox crouch back with fear,
As wild through the wood her voice they hear,-
'O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!'
IV
Who is she who shudders by
When the boughs blow bare and the dead leaves fly?
Who walks all night with her wailing cry,
'O my children, come home!'
Who, strange of look, and wild of tongue,
With wan feet wounded and hands wild-wrung,
Sweeps on and on with her cry, far-flung,-
'O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!'
V
'Tis the Spirit of Autumn, no man sees,
The mother of Death and of Mysteries,
Who cries on the wind all night to these,
'O my children, come home!'
The Spirit of Autumn, pierced with pain,
Calling her children home again,
Death and Dreams, through ruin and rain,-
'O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!'
poem by Madison Julius Cawein
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A Glen Song
There's a green glen in Eirinn,
A green glen in Eirinn!
Do you remember yet, a gradh, the sunshine of that day,
How the the river ran before us, and the fleckless blue hung o'er us,
And against the purple heather gleamed the yellow of the hay?
There's a green glen in Eirinn,
A green glen in Eirinn!
Where on a dew-wet swinging spray brown throstles trilled above,
And the blackbird carolled after in a silver rain of laughter,
And the little linnet piped its song that has no theme but Love.
There's a green glen in Eirinn,
A green glen in Eirinn!
'Twas sweet with you beside me in a world of harvest gold:
The sallaghs made a shadow in a corner of the meadow,
And your eyes were wells of kindness, and my hand lay in your hold.
There's a green glen in Eirinn,
A green glen in Eirinn!
The voice of Spring comes on the winds like cuckoo calling clear
She bids us fare together, nor heed the fitful weather–
And seek in yon green glen the joy that waits our hearts, my Dear.
poem by Anna Johnston MacManus
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The Banshee
Green, in the wizard arms
Of the foam-bearded Atlantic,
An isle of old enchantment,
A melancholy isle,
Enchanted and dreaming lies;
And there, by Shannon's flowing,
In the moonlight, spectre-thin,
The spectre Erin sits.
An aged desolation,
She sits by old Shannon's flowing,
A mother of many children,
Of children exiled and dead,
In her home, with bent head, homeless,
Clasping her knees she sits,
Keening, keening!
And at her keen the fairy-grass
Trembles on dun and barrow;
Around the foot of her ancient crosses
The grave-grass shakes and the nettle swings;
In haunted glens the meadow-sweet
Flings to the night wind
Her mystic mournful perfume;
The sad spearmint by holy wells
Breathes melancholy balm.
Sometimes she lifts her head,
With blue eyes tearless,
And gazes athwart the reek of night
Upon things long past,
Upon things to come.
And sometimes, when the moon
Brings tempest upon the deep,
The roused Atlantic thunders from his caverns in the west,
The wolfhound at her feet
Springs up with a mighty bay,
And chords of mystery sound from the wild harp at her side,
Strung from the hearts of poets;
And she flies on the wings of tempest
With grey hair streaming:
A meteor of evil omen,
The spectre of hope forlorn,
Keening, keening!
She keens, and the strings of her wild harp shiver
On the gusts of night:
O'er the four waters she keens--over Moyle she keens,
O'er the Sea of Milith, and the Strait of Strongbow,
And the Ocean of Columbus.
And the Fianna hear, and the ghosts of her cloudy hovering heroes;
And the swan, Fianoula, wails o'er the waters of Inisfail,
Chanting her song of destiny,
The rune of weaving Fates.
And the nations hear in the void and quaking time of night,
Sad unto dawning, dirges,
Solemn dirges,
And snatches of bardic song;
Their souls quake in the void and quaking time of night,
And they dream of the weird of kings,
And tyrannies moulting, sick,
In the dreadful wind of change.
Wail no more, lonely one, mother of exiles, wail no more,
Banshee of the world--no more!
The sorrows are the world's, though art no more alone;
Thy wrongs, the world's.
poem by John Todhunter
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Jeckoyva
They made the warrior's grave beside
The dashing of his native time:
And there was mourning in the glen--
The strong wail of a thousand men--
O'er him thus fallen in his pride,
Ere mist of age - or blight or blast
Had o'er his might spirit past.
They made the warrior's grave beneath
The bending of the wild elm's wreath,
When the dark hunter's piercing eye
Had found that mountain rest on high,
Where, scattered by the sharp wind's breath,
Beneath the ragged cliff were thrown
The strong belt and the mouldering bone.
Where was the warrior's foot, when first
The red sun on the mountain burst?
Where -- when the sultry noon-time came
On the green vales with scorching flame,
And made the woodlands faint with thirst?
'Twas where the wind is keen and loud,
And the gray eagle breasts the cloud.
Where was the warrior's foot when night
Veiled in thick cloud the mountain-height?
None heard the loud and sudden crash--
None saw the fallen warrior dash
Down the bare rock so high and white!
But he that drooped not in the chase
Made on the hills his burial-place.
They found him there, when the long day
Of cold desertion passed away,
And traces on that barren cleft
Of struggling hard with death were left--
Deep marks and footprints in the clay!
And they have laid this feathery helm
By the dark river and green elm.
poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Why Moan, Why Wail You, Wind Of Night
Why moan, why wail you, wind of night,
With such despair, such frenzied madness?
Why is your voice now full of might,
Now piteous and tinged with sadness?
In tongue known to the heart, of pain
Unknown to it for ever chanting,
At times within it well-nigh frantic
Sounds you awaken and insane.
Sing not, O wind, your fearful song
Of chaos, for the hungry spirit,
Into night's world of shadows flung,
Exults in it and strains to hear it.
The bounds of mortal flesh 'twould fly
And merge with boundless ocean sweeping.
Take heed! Let slumbering tempests lie:
Beneath them chaos stirs unsleeping.
poem by Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev
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The Lament For Shuil Donald’s Daughter
I.
IN old Shuil Donald's cottage there are many voices weeping,
And stifled sobs, and murmurings of sorrow wild and vain,
For the old man's cherish'd blessing on her bed of death lies sleeping,--
The sleep from which no human wish can rouse her soul again.
Oh, dark are now those gentle eyes which shone beneath their lashes
So full of laughter and of love--it seems but yesterday--
Well may Shuil Donald mourn beside his hearth's forsaken ashes,
His lily of the valley is wither'd away!
II.
The spring shall come to other hearts with breezes and with showers,
But lonely winter still shall reign in old Shuil Donald's home;
Others may raise the song of joy, and laugh away the hours,
But he--oh! never more may joy to his lone dwelling come.
Her name shall be an empty sound, in idle converse spoken,
Forgotten shall she be by those who mourn her most to-day--
All, all but one, who wanders with his Highland spirit broken,
His lily of the valley is wither'd away!
III.
And he--long, long, at even-tide, when sunset rays are gleaming,
That sad old man shall sit within his lonely cottage door,
Desolate, desolate shall sit, and muse with idle dreaming
On days when her returning step came quick across the moor.
Oh! never more her quiet smile, her cheerful voice of greeting,
Shall rouse to warmth his aged heart, when darkly sinks the day--
Never, oh! never more on earth those loved ones may be meeting--
His lily of the valley is wither'd away!
poem by Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
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The Swallow Leaves Her Nest
THE swallow leaves her nest,
The soul my weary breast;
But therefore let the rain
On my grave
Fall pure; for why complain?
Since both will come again
O'er the wave.
The wind dead leaves and snow
Doth hurry to and fro;
And, once, a day shall break
O'er the wave,
When a storm of ghosts shall shake
The dead, until they wake
In the grave.
poem by Thomas Lovell Beddoes
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A Haunting Song!
A haunting song I hear comes like this..
The song.... coming..... in the wind…
The song coming...... in the wind…
The song coming in the wind...
The song spontaneously flows making eyes foggy…!
The song makes even the stone melt…!
The song makes even dead tree resurrect with leaves…!
The song kisses in many languages…!
The song makes forest animals listen with dizziness…!
When night Moon blossoms as breeze is walking,
A boy in blue colour stands blowing flute forever
And forever my heart melts in the thought of his love!
poem by Ramesh T A
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Daniel Henry Deniehy
TAKE the harp, but very softly for our brother touch the strings:
Wind and wood shall help to wail him, waves and mournful mountain-springs.
Take the harp, but very softly, for the friend who grew so old
Through the hours we would not hear of—nights we would not fain behold!
Other voices, sweeter voices, shall lament him year by year,
Though the morning finds us lonely, though we sit and marvel here:
Marvel much while Summer cometh, trammelled with November wheat,
Gold about her forehead gleaming, green and gold about her feet;
Yea, and while the land is dark with plover, gull, and gloomy glede,
Where the cold, swift songs of Winter fill the interlucent reed.
Yet, my harp—and oh, my fathers! never look for Sorrow’s lay,
Making life a mighty darkness in the patient noon of day;
Since he resteth whom we loved so, out beyond these fleeting seas,
Blowing clouds and restless regions paved with old perplexities,
In a land where thunder breaks not, in a place unknown of snow,
Where the rain is mute for ever, where the wild winds never go:
Home of far-forgotten phantoms—genii of our peaceful prime,
Shining by perpetual waters past the ways of Change and Time:
Haven of the harried spirit, where it folds its wearied wings,
Turns its face and sleeps a sleep with deep forgetfulness of things.
His should be a grave by mountains, in a cool and thick-mossed lea,
With the lone creek falling past it—falling ever to the sea.
His should be a grave by waters, by a bright and broad lagoon,
Making steadfast splendours hallowed of the quiet, shining moon.
There the elves of many forests—wandering winds and flying lights—
Born of green, of happy mornings, dear to yellow summer nights,
Full of dole for him that loved them, then might halt and then might go,
Finding fathers of the people to their children speaking low—
Speaking low of one who, failing, suffered all the poet’s pain,
Dying with the dead leaves round him—hopes which never grow again.
poem by Henry Kendall
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Song from the Waters
Act I, scene iv, lines 259-72
The swallow leaves her nest,
The soul my weary breast;
But therefore let the rain
On my grave
Fall pure; for why complain
Since both will come again
O'er the wave.
The wind dead leaves and snow
Doth hurry to and fro;
And, once, a day shall break
O'er the wave,
When a storm of ghosts shall shake
The dead, until they wake
In the grave.
poem by Thomas Lovell Beddoes
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