This great purple butterfly,In the prison of my hands,Has a learning in his eyeNot a poor fool understands. Once he lived a schoolmasterWith a stark, denying look;A string of scholars…
ION the grey rock of Cashel the mind’s eyeHas called up the cold spirits that are bornWhen the old moon is vanished from the skyAnd the new still hides her…
From pleasure of the bed,Dull as a worm,His rod and its butting headLimp as a worm,His spirit that has fledBlind as a worm.
O WOMEN, kneeling by your altar-rails long hence,When songs I wove for my beloved hide the prayer,And smoke from this dead heart drifts through the violet airAnd covers away the…
INDIGNANT at the fumbling wits, the obscure spiteOf our old paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blindAmong the stones and thorn-trees, under morning light;Until a curlew cried and in the…
II SAW a staring virgin standWhere holy Dionysus died,And tear the heart out of his side.And lay the heart upon her handAnd bear that beating heart away;Of Magnus Annus at…
THOUGH the great song return no moreThere’s keen delight in what we have:The rattle of pebbles on the shoreUnder the receding wave.
Shepherd. That cry’s from the first cuckoo of the year.I wished before it ceased. Goatherd. Nor bird nor beastCould make me wish for anything this day,Being old, but that the old…
THE Colonel went out sailing,He spoke with Turk and Jew,With Christian and with Infidel,For all tongues he knew.“O what’s a wifeless man?’ said he,And he came sailing home.He rose the…
WHEN the flaming lute-thronged angelic door is wide;When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay;Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the wayCrowded with bitter faces, the wounds in…