When spring blows over Lettermore To bloom the ragged furze with gold, The lovely south wind’s living breath Is laden with the smell of death: For fever breeds on Lettermore To waste the eyes of young and old. A black van comes to Lettermore; The horses stumble on the stones, The drivers curse,--for it is hard To cross the hills from Oughterard And cart the sick from Lettermore: A stinking load of rags and bones. But you will go to Lettermore When white sea-trout are on the run, When purple glows between the rocks About Lord Dudley’s fishing-box Adown the road to Lettermore, And wide seas tarnish in the sun. And so you’ll think of Lettermore As a lost island of the blest: With peasant lovers in a blue Dim dusk, with heather drench’d in dew, And the sweet peace of Lettermore Remote and dreaming in the West. LAMENT Once, I think, a finer fire Touched my lips, and then I sang Half the songs of my desire: With their splendour the world rang. And their sweetness made me free Of those starry ways whereby Planets make their minstrelsy In echoing, unending sky. So, before that spell was broken, Song of the wind, surge of the sea,-- Beautiful passionate things unspoken Rose like a breaking wave in me: Rose like a wave with curled crest That green sunlight splinters through... But the wave broke within my breast: And now I am a man like you. THE LEMON-TREE Last night, last night, a vision of you Sweetly troubled my waking dream: Beneath the clear Algerian blue You stood with lifted eyes: the beam Of a winter sun beat on the crown Of a lemon-tree, whose delicate fruit Like pale lamps hung airily down; And in your gazing eyes a mute And lovely wonder.... Have I sung Of slender things and naught beside? You were so beautifully young I must have kissed you or have died. PHTHONOS If, in high jealousy, God made me blind And laughed to see me stumble in the night, Driving his many-splintered arrows of light Into that lost dominion of my mind; Then, knowing me still unvext and unresigned, Stole from my ears all homely sounds that might Temper the darkness, saying, in heaven’s despite, I had not wholly left the world behind; So, sunless, soundless, if, to make an end, He smote the nerves that move, the nerves that feel: Even then, O jealous one, I would not complain If I were spared the wealth I cannot spend, If I were left the treasure none can steal: The lovely words that wander through my brain. EASTER