Of fusion: when, set free

From semblance of mortality,

Yielding its dust the richer to endue

A common avenue

Of earth for other souls to journey through,
It shall put on in purer guise

The mutual beauty of its destiny.
And who shall fear for his identity,
And who shall cling to the poor privacy
Of incompleteness, when the end explains
That what pride forfeits, beauty gains!
Therefore, O spirit, as a runner strips
Upon a windy afternoon,

Be unencumbered of what troubles you-
Arise with grace

And greatly go, the wind upon your face!

Grieve not for the invisible transported brow
On which like leaves the dark hair grew;
Nor for the lips of laughter that are now
Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew;
Nor for the limbs that, fallen low
And seeming faint and slow,

Shall alter and renew

Their shape and hue

Like birches white before the moon,

Or a young apple-tree

In spring, or the round sea;

And shall pursue

More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips

Among . . . and find more winds than ever blew

The straining sails of unimpeded ships!

For never beauty dies

That lived. Nightly the skies

Assemble stars, the light of many eyes,

And daily brood on the communal breath-
Which we call death.

The swaying corn-haulms

In the heavy places of the field
Cry to be gathered.

Apples redden, and drop from their rods.
Out of their sheath of prickly leaves
The marrows creep, fat and white.

The blue pallor of ripeness

Comes on the fruit of the vine.

Fecund and still fecund

After æons of bearing:

Not old, not dry, not wearied out;

But fresh as when the unseen Right Hand

First moved on Brí,

And the candle of day was set,

And dew fell from the stars' feet,

And cloths of greenness covered thee.

Let me kiss thy breasts:

I am thy son and lover.

Womb-fellow am I of the sunburnt wheat,

Friendly gossip of the mearings;

Womb-fellow of the dark and sweet-scented apple;

Womb-fellow of the gourd and of the grape:

Like begotten, like born.

And yet,

Without a lover's knowledge of thy secrets
I would walk the ridges of the hills,

Kindless and desolate.

What is the storm-driven moon to me, Seed of another father?

What the flooding of the well of dawn? What the hollow, red with rowan fire? What the king-fern?

What the belled heath?

What the spread of heron's wing,

Or glint of spar,

Caught from the pit

Of a deserted quarry?

Let me kiss thy breasts:
I am thy son and lover.

ON WAKING

Sleep, gray brother of death,

Has touched me,

And passed on.

I arise, facing the east

Golden termon

From which light,

Signed with dew and fire,
Dances.

Hail, essence, hail!

Fill the windows of my soul

With beauty:

Pierce and renew my bones:
Pour knowledge into my heart
As water

From a quenchless spring.

Cualann is bright before thee.

Its rocks melt and swim:

The secret they have kept

From the ancient nights of darkness

Flies like a bird.

What mourns?

Cualann's secret flying,

A lost voice

In lonely fields.

What rejoices?

My song lifted praising thee.

Praise! Praise! Praise!

Praise out of tubas, whose bronze
Is the unyoked strength of bulls;
Praise upon harps, whose strings
Are the light movements of birds;
Praise of leaf, praise of blossom,
Praise of the red, human clay;
Praise of grass,

Fire-woven veil of the temple;
Praise of the shapes of clouds;
Praise of the shadows of wells;

Praise of worms, of fetal things,
And of the things in time's thought
Not yet begotten:

To thee, queller of sleep,

Looser of the snare of death.

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.

Nancy Campbell

THE APPLE-TREE

I saw the archangels in my apple-tree last night,
I saw them like great birds in the starlight--
Purple and burning blue, crimson and shining white.

And each to each they tossed an apple to and fro,
And once I heard their laughter gay and low;
And yet I felt no wonder that it should be so.

But when the apple came one time to Michael's lap
I heard him say: "The mysteries that enwrap

The earth and fill the heavens can be read here, mayhap."

Then Gabriel spoke: "I praise the deed, the hidden thing." "The beauty of the blossom of the spring

I praise," cried Raphael. Uriel: "The wise leaves I sing."

And Michael: "I will praise the fruit, perfected, round,
Full of the love of God, herein being bound

His mercies gathered from the sun and rain and ground."

So sang they till a small wind through the branches stirred, And spoke of coming dawn; and at its word

Each fled away to heaven, winged like a bird.

THE MONKEY

I saw you hunched and shivering on the stones,
The bleak wind piercing to your fragile bones,