SHE left the close-aired land of trees | |
| And proud Mac William’s palace, | |
| For clear, bare Clare’s health-salted breeze, | |
| Her oarsmen and her galleys; | |
| And where beside the bending strand | 5 |
| The rock and billow wrestle, | |
| Between the deep sea and the land | |
| She built her Island Castle. | |
| |
| The Spanish captains, sailing by | |
| For Newport, with amazement | 10 |
| Beheld the cannoned longship lie | |
| Moored to the lady’s casement; | |
| And, covering coin and cup of gold | |
| In haste their hatches under, | |
| They whispered, “’T is a pirate’s hold; | 15 |
| She sails the seas for plunder!” | |
| |
| But no: ’t was not for sordid spoil | |
| Of barque or sea-board borough | |
| She ploughed, with unfatiguing toil, | |
| The fluent-rolling furrow; | 20 |
| Delighting, on the broad-backed deep, | |
| To feel the quivering galley | |
| Strain up the opposing hill, and sweep | |
| Down the withdrawing valley; | |
| |
| Or, sped before a driving blast, | 25 |
| By following seas uplifted, | |
| Catch, from the huge heaps heaving past, | |
| And from the spray they drifted, | |
| And from the winds that tossed the crest | |
| Of each wide-shouldering giant, | 30 |
| The smack of freedom and the zest | |
| Of rapturous life defiant. | |
| |
| For, O, the mainland time was pent | |
| In close constraint and striving,— | |
| So many aims together bent | 35 |
| On winning and on thriving, | |
| There was no room for generous ease, | |
| No sympathy for candor,— | |
| And so she left Burke’s buzzing trees, | |
| And all his stony splendor. | 40 |
| |
| For Erin yet had fields to spare, | |
| Where Clew her cincture gathers | |
| Isle-gemmed; and kindly clans were there, | |
| The fosterers of her fathers: | |
| Room there for careless feet to roam | 45 |
| Secure from minions’ peeping, | |
| For fearless mirth to find a home | |
| And sympathetic weeping. * * * * * | |
| And music sure was sweeter far | |
| For ears of native nurture, | 50 |
| Than virginals at Castlebar | |
| To tinkling touch of courtier, | |
| When harpers good in hall struck up | |
| The planxty’s gay commotion, | |
| Or pipers screamed from pennoned poop | 55 |
| Their pibroch over ocean. * * * * * | |
| Sweet, when the crimson sunsets glowed, | |
| As earth and sky grew grander, | |
| Adown the grassed, unechoing road | |
| Atlantic-ward to wander, | 60 |
| Some kinsman’s humbler hearth to seek, | |
| Some sick-bed side, it may be, | |
| Or onward reach, with footsteps meek, | |
| The low, gray, lonely abbey: | |
| |
| And where the storied stone beneath | 65 |
| The guise of plant and creature | |
| Had fused the harder lines of faith | |
| In easy forms of nature,— | |
| Such forms as tell the master’s pains | |
| ’Mong Roslin’s carven glories, | 70 |
| Or hint the faith of Pictish Thanes | |
| On standing stones of Forres; | |
| |
| The Branch; the weird cherubic Beasts; | |
| The Hart by hounds o’ertaken; | |
| Or, intimating mystic feasts, | 75 |
| The self-resorbent Dragon,— | |
| Mute symbols, though with power endowed | |
| For finer dogmas’ teaching, | |
| Than clerk might tell to carnal crowd | |
| In homily or preaching,— | 80 |
| |
| Sit; and while heaven’s refulgent show | |
| Grew airier and more tender, | |
| And ocean’s gleaming floor below | |
| Reflected loftier splendor, | |
| Suffused with light of lingering faith | 85 |
| And ritual light’s reflection, | |
| Discourse of birth and life and death, | |
| And of the resurrection. | |
| |
| But chiefly sweet from morn to eve, | |
| From eve to clear-eyed morning, | 90 |
| The presence of the felt reprieve | |
| From strangers’ note and scorning; | |
| No prying, proud, intrusive foes | |
| To pity and offend her;— | |
| Such was the life the lady chose; | 95 |
| Such choosing, we commend her. | |
| |
