Poems - Denis Florence MacCarthy (good books to read .txt) 📗

Without the one no dreams has fancy wove,
Without the other soon these dreams decline, Weak children of the heart, which fade away and pine!

Strong have I been in love, if not in will;
Affections crowd and people all the past,
And now, even now, they come and haunt me still,
Even from the graves where once my hopes were cast.
But not with spectral features-all aghast-
Come they to fright me; no, with smiles and tears,
And winding arms, and breasts that beat as fast
As once they beat in boyhood's opening years, Come the departed shades, whose steps my rapt soul hears.

Youth has passed by, its first warm flush is o'er,
And now, 'tis nearly noon; yet unsubdued
My heart still kneels and worships, as of yore,
Those twin-fair shapes, the Beautiful and Good!
Valley and mountain, sky and stream, and wood,
And that fair miracle, the human face,
And human nature in its sunniest mood,
Freed from the shade of all things low and base,- These in my heart still hold their old accustom'd place.

'Tis not with pride, but gratitude, I tell
How beats my heart with all its youthful glow,
How one kind act doth make my bosom swell,
And down my cheeks the sweet, warm, glad tears flow.
Enough of self, enough of me you know,
Kind reader, but if thou wouldst further wend,
With me, this wilderness of weak words thro',
Let me depict, before the journey end, One whom methinks thou'lt love, my brother and my friend.

Ah! wondrous is the lot of him who stands
A Christian Priest, with a Christian fane,
And binds with pure and consecrated hands,
Round earth and heaven, a festal, flower chain;
Even as between the blue arch and the main,
A circling western ring of golden light
Weds the two worlds, or as the sunny rain
Of April makes the cloud and clay unite, Thus links the Priest of God the dark world and the bright.

All are not priests, yet priestly duties may
And should be all men's: as a common sight
We view the brightness of a summer's day,
And think 'tis but its duty to be bright;
But should a genial beam of warming light
Suddenly break from out a wintry sky,
With gratitude we own a new delight,
Quick beats the heart and brighter beams the eye, And as a boon we hail the splendour from on high.

'Tis so with men, with those of them at least
Whose hearts by icy doubts are chill'd and torn;
They think the virtues of a Christian Priest
Something professional, put on and worn
Even as the vestments of a Sabbath morn:
But should a friend or act or teach as he,
Then is the mind of all its doubting shorn,
The unexpected goodness that they see Takes root, and bears its fruit, as uncoerced and free!

One I have known, and haply yet I know,
A youth by baser passions undefiled,
Lit by the light of genius and the glow
Which real feeling leaves where once it smiled;
Firm as a man, yet tender as a child;
Armed at all points by fantasy and thought,
To face the true or soar amid the wild;
By love and labour, as a good man ought, Ready to pay the price by which dear truth is bought!

'Tis not with cold advice or stern rebuke,
With formal precept, or wit face demure,
But with the unconscious eloquence of look,
Where shines the heart so loving and so pure:
'Tis these, with constant goodness, that allure
All hearts to love and imitate his worth.
Beside him weaker natures feel secure,
Even as the flower beside the oak peeps forth, Safe, though the rain descends, and blows the biting North!

Such is my friend, and such I fain would be,
Mild, thoughtful, modest, faithful, loving, gay,
Correct, not cold, nor uncontroll'd though free,
But proof to all the lures that round us play,
Even as the sun, that on his azure way
Moveth with steady pace and lofty mien,
Though blushing clouds, like syrens, woo his stay,
Higher and higher through the pure serene, Till comes the calm of eve and wraps him from the scene.


THE SPIRIT OF THE IDEAL.

Sweet sister spirits, ye whose starlight tresses
Stream on the night-winds as ye float along, Missioned with hope to man-and with caresses

To slumbering babes-refreshment to the strong-
And grace the sensuous soul that it's arrayed in: As the light burden of melodious song

Weighs down a poet's words;-as an o'erladen
Lily doth bend beneath its own pure snow; Or with its joy, the free heart of a maiden:-

Thus, I behold your outstretched pinions grow
Heavy with all the priceless gifts and graces God through thy ministration doth bestow.

Do ye not plant the rose on youthful faces?
And rob the heavens of stars for Beauty's eyes? Do ye not fold within love's pure embraces

All that Omnipotence doth yet devise
For human bliss, or rapture superhuman- Heaven upon earth, and earth still in the skies?

Do ye not sow the fruitful heart of woman
With tenderest charities and faith sincere, To feed man's sterile soul and to illumine

His duller eyes, that else might settle here,
With the bright promise of a purer region- A starlight beacon to a starry sphere?

Are they not all thy children, that bright legion-
Of aspirations, and all hopeful sighs That in the solemn train of grave Religion

Strew heavenly flowers before man's longing eyes,
And make him feel, as o'er life's sea he wendeth, The far-off odorous airs of Paradise?-

Like to the breeze some flowery island sendeth
Unto the seaman, ere its bowers are seen, Which tells him soon his weary wandering endeth-

Soon shall he rest, in bosky shades of green,
By daisied meadows prankt with dewy flowers, With ever-running rivulets between.

These are thy tasks, my sisters-these the powers
God in his goodness gives into thy hands:- 'Tis from thy fingers fall the diamond showers

Of budding Spring, and o'er the expectant lands
June's odorous purple and rich Autumn's gold: And even when needful Winter wide expands

His fallow wings, and winds blow sharp and cold
From the harsh east, 'tis thine, o'er all the plain, The leafless woodlands and the unsheltered wold,

Gently to drop the flakes of feathery rain-
Heaven's warmest down-around the slumbering seeds, And o'er the roots the frost-blanched counterpane.

What though man's careless eye but little heeds
Even the effects, much less the remoter cause, Still, in the doing of beneficent deeds-

By God and his Vicegerent Nature's laws-
Ever a compensating joy is found. Think ye the rain-drop heedeth if it draws

Rankness as well as Beauty from the ground?
Or that the sullen wind will deign to wake Only Aeolian melodies of sound-

And not the stormy screams that make men quake
Thus do ye act, my sisters; thus ye do Your cheerful duty for the doing's sake-

Not unrewarded surely-not when you
See the successful issue of your charms, Bringing the absent back again to view-

Giving the loved one to the lover's arms-
Smoothing the grassy couch in weary age- Hushing in death's great calm a world's alarms.

I, I alone upon the earth's vast stage
Am doomed to act an unrequited part- I, the unseen preceptress of the sage-

I, whose ideal form doth win the heart
Of all whom God's vocation hath assigned To wear the sacred vesture of high Art-

To pass along the electric sparks of mind
From age to age, from race to race, until The expanding truth encircles all mankind.

What without me were all the poet's skill?-
Dead, sensuous form without the quickening soul. What without me the instinctive aim of will?-

A useless magnet pointing to no pole.
What the fine ear and the creative hand? Most potent spirits free from man's control.

I, THE IDEAL, by the poet stand
When all his soul o'erflows with holy fire, When currents of the beautiful and grand

Run glittering down along each burning wire
Until the heart of the great world doth feel The electric shock of his God-kindled lyre:-

Then rolls the thunderous music peal on peal,
Or in the breathless after-pause, a strain Simpler and sweeter through the hush doth steal-

Like to the pattering drops of summer rain
Or rustling grass, when fragrance fills the air And all the groves are vocal once again:

Whatever form, whatever shape I bear,
The Spirit of high Impulse, and the Soul Of all conceptions beautiful and rare,

Am I; who now swift spurning all control,
On rapid wings-the Ariel of the Muse- Dart from the dazzling centre to the pole;

Now in the magic mimicry of hues
Such as surround God's golden throne, descend In Titian's skies the boundaries to confuse

Betwixt earth's heaven and heaven's own heaven to blend
In Raphael's forms the human and divine, Where spirit dawns, and matter seems to end.

Again on wings of melody, so fine
They mock the sight, but fall upon the ear Like tuneful rose-leaves at the day's decline-

And with the music of a happier sphere
Entrance some master of melodious sound, Till startled men the hymns of angels hear.

Happy for me when, in the vacant round
Of barren ages, one great steadfast soul Faithful to me and to his art is found.

But, ah! my sisters, with my grief condole;
Join in my sorrows and respond my sighs; And let your sobs the funeral dirges toll;

Weep those who falter in the great emprise-
Who, turning off upon some poor pretence, Some worthless guerdon or some paltry prize,

Down from the airy zenith through the immense
Sink to the low expedients of an hour, And barter soul for all the slough of sense,-

Just when the mind had reached its regal power,
And fancy's wing its perfect plume unfurl'd,- Just when the bud of promise in the flower

Of all completeness opened on the world-
When the pure fire that heaven itself outflung Back to its native empyrean curled,

Like vocal incense from a censer swung:-
Ah, me! to be subdued when all seemed won- That I