Classic Poem

Through lane or black archway,
The praying people hurry,
When shadows have been walled,
At market hall and gate,
By low fires after nightfall;
The bright sodalities
Are bannered in the churches;
But I am only roused
By horsemen of de Burgo
That gallop to my house.

Gold slots of the sunlight
Close up my lids at evening.
Half clad in silken piles
I lie upon a hot cheek.
Half in dream I lie there
Until bad thoughts have bloomed
In flushes of desire.
Drowsy with indulgence,
I please a secret eye
That opens at the Judgment.

I am the bright temptation
In talk, in wine, in sleep.
Although the clergy pray,
I triumph in a dream.
Strange armies tax the south,
Yet little do I care
What fiery bridge or town
Has heard the shout begin —
That Ormond's men are out
And the Geraldine is in.

The women at green stall
And doorstep on a weekday,
Who have been chinned with scorn
Of me, would never sleep
So well, could they but know
Their husbands turn at midnight,
And covet in a dream
The touching of my flesh.
Small wonder that men kneel
The longer at confession.

Bullies, that fight in dramshop
For fluttered rags and bare side
At beggars' bush, may gamble
To-night on what they find.
I laze in yellow lamplight —
Young wives have envied me —
And laugh among lace pillows,
For a big-booted captain
Has poured the purse of silver
That glitters in my lap.

Heavily on his elbow,
He turns from a caress
To see — as my arms open —
The red spurs of my breast.
I draw fair pleats around me
And stay his eye at pleasure,
Show but a white knee-cap
Or an immodest smile —
Until his sudden hand
Has dared the silks that bind me.

See! See, as from a lathe
My polished body turning!
He bares me at the waist
And now blue clothes uncurl
Upon white haunch. I let
The last bright stitch fall down
For him as I lean back,
Straining with longer arms
Above my head to snap
The silver knots of sleep.

Together in the dark —
Sin-fast — we can enjoy
What is allowed in marriage.
The jingle of that coin
Is still the same, though stolen:
But are they not unthrifty,
Who spend it in a shame
That brings ill and repentance,
When they might pinch and save
Themselves in lawful pleasure?
...

Young girls, keep from dance-hall
And dark side of the road;
My common ways began
In idle thought and courting.
I strayed the mountain fields
And got a bad name down
In Beare. Yes, I became
So careless of my placket,
That after I was blamed,
I went out to the islands.

Pull the boats on the roller
And rope them in the tide!
For the fire has got a story
That while the nets were drying,
I stretched to plank and sun
With strong men in their leather;
In scandal on the wave,
I fled with a single man
And caught behind a sail
The air that goes to Ireland.

He drew me from the seas
One night, without an oar,
To strip between the beach
And dark ribs of that boat.
Hard bed had turned to softness —
We drowsed into small hours.
How could I tell the glancing
Of men that awakened me,
When daylight in my lashes
Thickened with yellow sleep?

My fear was less than joy
To gallop from the tide;
Hooded among his horsemen,
MacWilliam bore me tighter.
The green land by Lough Corrib
Spoke softly and all day
We followed through a forest
The wet heel of the axe,
Where sunlight had been trestled
In clearing and in gap.

At dark a sudden threshold
Was squared in light. Men cast
Their shadows as we rode up
That fiery short-cut. Bench
And board were full at night.
Unknown there to the clergy,
I stayed with him to sin.
Companies of carousing —
Was I not for a winter
The darling of your house?
...

Women, obey the mission —
Be modest in your clothes.
Each manly look and wish
Is punished but the more.
In king's house, I have called
Hurlers and men that fight.
It is my grief that time
Cannot appease my hunger;
I flourish where desire is
And still, still I am young.

I prosper, for the towns
Have made my skin but finer.
Hidden as words in mouth,
My fingers can entice
Until the sight is dim
And conscience lost in flame.
Then, to a sound of bracelets,
I look down and my locks
Are curtailed on a nape
That leads men into wrong.

Ships glide in Limerick
Between tall houses, isled
By street and castle: there
Are flighted steps to climb.
Soon with a Flemish merchant
I lodged at Thomond Gate.
I had a painted bedpost
Of blue and yellow ply,
A bright pot and rich curtains
That I could pull at night.

But in that corner house
Of guilt, my foreign face
Shook voices in the crowd,
As I leaned out to take
The twilight at my sill.
When tide had filled the boat-rings,
Few dealers could be tempted
Who drank upon the fair-day:
The black friars preached to them
And frightened me with prayers.

As I came to the Curragh
I heard how, at their ease,
Bands of the Geraldine
Gather with joy to see
The going of young horses
At morning on the plain.
A mile from Scholars Town
I turned to ask the way
And laughing with the chapmen,
I rode into the Pale.

The summer had seen plenty;
I saw but a black crop
And knew the President
Of Munster had come back.
All day, in high and low street,
His orderlies ran by.
At night I entertained him
Between the wine and map;
I whispered with the statesmen,
The lawyers that break land.
...

I am the dark temptation
Men know — and shining orders
Of clergy have condemned me.
I fear, alone, that lords
Of diocese are coped
With gold, their staven hands
Upraised again to save
All those I have corrupted:
I fear, lost and too late,
The prelates of the Church.

In darker lane or archway,
I heard an hour ago
The men and women murmur;
They came back from Devotions.
Half-wakened by the tide,
Ships rise along the quay
As though they were unloading.
I turn a drowsy side —
That dreams, the eye has known,
May trouble souls to-night.