The dark is full of whispers. Now

A fox-hound howls: and through the night, Like some old ghost from out its grave,

The moon comes misty white.

Madison Cawein

THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER

I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow.
And then I must scrub, and bake, and sweep,
Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;
But the young lie long and dream in their bed
Of the matching of ribbons, the blue and the red,
And their day goes over in idleness,

And they sigh if the wind but lift up a tress.
While I must work, because I am old

And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.

- William Butler Yeats

I AM THE MOUNTAINY SINGER

I am the mountainy singer

The voice of the peasant's dream,

The cry of the wind on the wooded hill,
The leap of the fish in the stream.

Quiet and love I sing

The carn on the mountain crest,
The cailin in her lover's arms,

The child at its mother's breast.

Beauty and peace I sing

The fire on the open hearth,

The cailleach spinning at her wheel,
The plough in the broken earth.

Travail and pain I sing

The bride on the childing bed,

The dark man laboring at his rhymes,
The ewe in the lambing shed.

Sorrow and death I sing

The canker come on the corn,

The fisher lost in the mountain loch,
The cry at the mouth of morn.

No other life I sing,

For I am sprung of the stock

That broke the hilly land for bread,

And built the nest in the rock!

-Joseph Campbell (Seosamh MacCathmhaoil)

THE OLD WOMAN

As a white candle

In a holy place,

So is the beauty
Of an aged face.

As the spent radiance

Of the winter sun,

So is a woman

With her travail done,

Her brood gone from her,
And her thoughts as still
As the waters

Under a ruined mill.

-Joseph Campbell (Seosamh Mac Cathmhaoil)

TRANSIENCE

Nay, do not grieve tho' life be full of sadness,
Dawn will not veil her splendor for your grief,
Nor spring deny their bright, appointed beauty
To lotus blossom and ashoka leaf.

Nay, do not pine, tho' life be dark with trouble,
Time will not pause or tarry on his way;
To-day that seems so long, so strange, so bitter,
Will soon be some forgotten yesterday.

Nay, do not weep; new hopes, new dreams, new faces,
The unspent joy of all the unborn years,

Will prove your heart a traitor to its sorrow,
And make your eyes unfaithful to their tears.

Sarojini Naidu

ENAMORED ARCHITECT OF AIRY RHYME

Enamored architect of airy rhyme,

Build as thou wilt, heed not what each man says:

Good souls, but innocent of dreamers' ways,

Will come, and marvel why thou wastest time;

Others, beholding how thy turrets climb

'Twixt theirs and heaven, will hate thee all thy days;

But most beware of those who come to praise.
O Wondersmith, O worker in sublime

And heaven-sent dreams, let art be all in all;
Build as thou wilt, unspoiled by praise or blame,
Build as thou wilt, and as thy light is given;
Then, if at last the airy structure fall,
Dissolve, and vanish - take thyself no shame.
They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

I SHALL BE LOVED AS QUIET THINGS

I shall be loved as quiet things

Are loved-white pigeons in the sun,
Curled yellow leaves that whisper down
One after one;

The silver reticence of smoke

That tells no secret of its birth

Among the fiery agonies

That turn the earth;

Cloud-islands; reaching arms of trees;
The frayed and eager little moon
That strays unheeded thru a high
Blue afternoon.

The thunder of my heart must go.
Under the muffling of the dust -
As my grey dress has guarded it
The grasses must;

For it has hammered loud enough,
Clamored enough, when all is said:
Only its quiet part shall live

When I am dead.

- Karle Wilson Baker

FALLING ASLEEP1

Voices moving about in the quiet house:
Thud of feet and a muffled shutting of doors:
Everyone yawning only the clocks are alert.

Out in the night there's autumn-smelling gloom
Crowded with whispering trees, looming of oaks
That roared in wild wet gales: across the park

The hollow cry of hounds like lonely bells:

And I know that the clouds are moving across the moon, The low, red, rising moon.

The herons call

And wrangle by their pool; and hooting owls
Sail from the wood across pale stooks of wheat.

Waiting for sleep, I drift from thoughts like these;
And where to-day was dream-like, build my dreams.
Music... there was a bright white room below,
And someone singing a song about a soldier,
One hour, two hours ago; and soon the song
Will be "last night": but now the beauty swings
Across my brain, ghost of remember'd chords
Which still can make such radiance in my dream
That I can watch the marching of my soldiers,
And count their faces; faces; sunlit faces.

1 By permission, from Picture-Show. Copyright by E. P. Dutton & Company