No longer homes are flame against
A lurid sky; the ash is gray
Where men have warred.
But through the dark a jackal cries,
The wolves of hate and hunger stalk—
Have mercy, Lord!

Across wide seas the children's sobs
Sound faint and far. War-worn,
We sheathe the sword;
Lest we neglect a torch to light
Our brethren groping through the night,
Be with us, Lord!

No longer homes are flame against
A lurid sky; the ash is gray
Where men have warred.
But through the dark a jackal cries,
The wolves of hate and hunger stalk—
Have mercy, Lord!

I knew a little dancer, a fairy little dancer,
Her heart was like a lily bud, her eyes were drops of dew.
Her lips, to every sweetest thought, were tremulous with answer.
Dear love was but a land of dreams her soul could loiter through.

I knew her when her dancing was still a maid's romancing,
When motion was but ecstasy and ecstasy was song.
Upon the tangles of her hair the morning sun was glancing,
How could she dream so early of midnight's throbbing gong?

I knew a little dancer, a weary little dancer,

Bright seas cast far upon her shore
White flowers of flying spray:
The blossoms of her fields are more,
Than blossomed yesterday:
The music of her winds and birds
Alone can tell the triumph words,
Her children cannot say.

The stars from solemn deeps look down
In favour and delight:
The glories of her day, they crown
With splendours of her night:
The queen of the adoring Gael,
Their radiant mother, Inisfail,
Reigns, by divinest right.

The perfume is the same, the same the hue
As that which erst my senses did delight:
But he who planted the fair avenue
Is here no more, alas! to please my sight!

Until the duck's short legs
grow as long as the crane's—
Until the crow has become white,
white as the white heron—
Enjoy enduring bliss

There is some little savour clinging
To the road's dust that rises.
We go swinging
Merrily Northward, and each footstep prizes
The wind athwart us and the dust that rises.
Sun in our eyes, and all the veld before us,
And in our hearts strange singing;
And for chorus
Tramp of our faring feet, and in the grasses
The ceaseless whisper of the wind that passes.

There is some little sadness clinging
To the road's dust that rises.
Without singing,
Steadily onward;—goes each step that prizes
The wind athwart us and the dust that rises.

Time passes, just as a steamer's red belly moves by,
like a flare of sunset by a granary,
the beautiful ringing in a black cat's ear,
time passes, unnoticed, softly casting a shadow, it passes.
Time passes, just as a steamer's red belly moves by.

The woods were dark.
The child with me
held my hand tight.
Two of us as one,
silent, for a time
we moved on.
It was there in the woods
my childhood lingered still.
A fawn was on the run.

Through the still air of night
Suddenly comes, alone and shrill,
Like the far-off voice of the distant light,
The single piping trill
Of a bird that has caught the scent of the dawn,
And knows that the night is over;
(She has poured her dews on the velvet lawn
And drenched the long grass and the clover),
And now with her naked white feet
She is silently passing away,
Out of the garden and into the street,
Over the long yellow fields of the wheat,
Till she melts in the arms of the day.
And from the great gates of the East,

To see the moment holds a madrigal,
To find some cloistered place, some hermitage
For free devices, some deliberate cage
Wherein to keep wild thoughts like birds in thrall;
To eat sweet honey and to taste black gall,
To fight with form, to wrestle and to rage,
Till at the last upon the conquered page
The shadows of created Beauty fall.

This is the sonnet, this is all delight
Of every flower that blows in every Spring,
And all desire of every desert place;
This is the joy that fills a cloudy night
When, bursting from her misty following,