I lived among great houses,
Riches drove out rank,
Base drove out the better blood,
And mind and body shrank.
No Oscar ruled the table,
But I'd a troop of friends
That knowing better talk had gone
Talked of odds and ends.
Some knew what ailed the world
But never said a thing,
So I have picked a better trade
And night and morning sing:
Tall dames go walking in grass-green Avalon.

Am I a great Lord Chancellor
That slept upon the Sack?
Commanding officer that tore
The khaki from his back?
Or am I de Valera,

In years defaced and lost,
   Two sat here, transport-tossed,
   Lit by a living love
The wilted world knew nothing of:
   Scared momently
   By gaingivings,
   Then hoping things
   That could not be.

   Of love and us no trace
   Abides upon the place;
   The sun and shadows wheel,
Season and season sereward steal;
   Foul days and fair

(The Doubter lays aside his book.)

"Answered a score of times." Oh, looked for teacher,
is this all you will teach me? I in the dark
reaching my hand for you to help me forth
to the happy sunshine where you stand, "Oh shame,
to be in the dark there, prisoned!" answer you;
"there are ledges somewhere there by which strong feet
might scale to daylight: I would lift you out
with just a touch, but that your need's so slight;
for there are ledges." And I grope and strain,
think I've found footing, and slip baffled back,

If this our little life is but a day
In the Eternal, - if the years in vain
Toil after hours that never come again, -
If everything that hath been must decay,
Why dreamest thou of joys that pass away,
My soul, that my sad body doth restrain?
Why of the moment’s pleasure art thou fain?
Nay, thou hast wings, - nay, seek another stay.

There is the joy whereto each soul aspires,
And there the rest that all the world desires,
And there is love, and peace, and gracious mirth;
And there in the most highest heavens shalt thou

Sons of the South, awake! arise!
Sons of the South, and do.
Banish from under your bonny skies
Those old-world errors and wrongs and lies.
Making a hell in a Paradise
That belongs to your sons and you.


Sons of the South, make choice between
(Sons of the South, choose true),
The Land of Morn and the Land of E'en,
The Old Dead Tree and the Young Tree Green,
The Land that belongs to the lord and the Queen,
And the Land that belongs to you.


Sons of the South, your time will come –

(1894)

High headlands all jealously hide thee,
   O fairest of sea-girdled towns!
Thine Ocean-spouse smileth beside thee,
   While each headland threatens and frowns.
Like Venice, upheld on sea-pinion,
   And fated to reign o'er the free,
Thou wearest, in sign of dominion,
   The zone of the sea.

No winter thy fertile slope hardens,
   O new Florence, set in the South!
All lands give their flowers to thy gardens,

Would some little joy to-day
Visit us, heart!
Could it but a moment stay,
Then depart,
With the flutter of its wings
Stirring sense of brighter things.

Like a butterfly astray
In a dark room;
Telling:--Outside there is day,
Sweet flowers bloom,
Birds are singing, trees are green
Runnels ripple silver sheen.

Heart! we now have been so long
Sad without change,
Shut in deep from shine and song
Nor can range;
It would do us good to know
That the world is not all woe.

In the rapture of life and of living,
I lift up my head and rejoice,
And I thank the great Giver for giving
The soul of my gladness a voice.
In the glow of the glorious weather,
In the sweet-scented, sensuous air,
My burdens seem light as a feather –
They are nothing to bear.

In the strength and the glory of power,
In the pride and the pleasure of wealth
(For who dares dispute me my dower
Of talents and youth-time and health?) ,
I can laugh at the world and its sages –
I am greater than seers who are sad,

Oh, light was the world that he weighed in his hands!
Oh, heavy the tale of his fiefs and his lands!
He has gone from the guddee and put on the shroud,
And departed in guise of bairagi avowed!

Now the white road to Delhi is mat for his feet.
The sal and the kikar must guard him from heat.
His home is the camp, and waste, and the crowd --
He is seeking the Way as bairagi avowed!

He has looked upon Man, and his eyeballs are clear --
(There was One; there is One, and but One, saith Kabir);

I come from nothing; but from where
Come the undying thoughts I bear?
Down, through the long links of death and birth,
From the past poets of the earth,
My immortality is there.

I am like the blossom of an hour.
But long, long vanished sun and shower
Awoke my breath i' the young world's air;
I track the past back everywhere
Through seed and flower and seed and flower.

Or I am like a stream that flows
Full of the cold springs that arose
In morning lands, in distant hills;
And down the plain my channel fills