Gaze no more in the bitter glass The demons, with their subtle guile, Lift up before us when they pass, Or only gaze a little while; For there a fatal image grows, With broken boughs, and blackened leaves, And roots half hidden under snows Driven by a storm that ever grieves. For all things turn to barrenness In the dim glass the demons hold, The glass of outer weariness, Made when God slept in times of old. There, through the broken branches, go The ravens of unresting thought; Peering and flying to and fro To see men's souls bartered and bought. When they are heard upon the wind, And when they shake their wings; alas! Thy tender eyes grow all unkind: Gaze no more in the bitter glass. TO IRELAND IN THE COMING TIMES _Know, that I would accounted be True brother of that company, Who sang to sweeten Ireland's wrong, Ballad and story, rann and song; Nor be I any less of them, Because the red-rose-bordered hem Of her, whose history began Before God made the angelic clan, Trails all about the written page; For in the world's first blossoming age The light fall of her flying feet Made Ireland's heart begin to beat; And still the starry candles flare To help her light foot here and there; And still the thoughts of Ireland brood Upon her holy quietude._ _Nor may I less be counted one With Davis, Mangan, Ferguson, Because to him, who ponders well, My rhymes more than their rhyming tell Of the dim wisdoms old and deep, That God gives unto man in sleep. For the elemental beings go About my table to and fro. In flood and fire and clay and wind, They huddle from man's pondering mind; Yet he who treads in austere ways May surely meet their ancient gaze. Man ever journeys on with them After the red-rose-bordered hem. Ah, faeries, dancing under the moon, A Druid land, a Druid tune!_ _While still I may, I write for you The love I lived, the dream I knew. From our birthday, until we die, Is but the winking of an eye; And we, our singing and our love, The mariners of night above, And all the wizard things that go About my table to and fro. Are passing on to where may be, In truth's consuming ecstasy No place for love and dream at all; For God goes by with white foot-fall. I cast my heart into my rhymes, That you, in the dim coming times, May know how my heart went with them After the red-rose-bordered hem._ THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE _O Rose, thou art sick._ WILLIAM BLAKE. TO FLORENCE FARR MAURTEEN BRUIN BRIDGET BRUIN SHAWN BRUIN MARY BRUIN FATHER HART A FAERY CHILD _The Scene is laid in the Barony of Kilmacowen, in the County of Sligo, and at a remote time._