And Cumhal saw like a drifting smoke All manner of blessed souls, Women and children, young men with books, And old men with croziers and stoles. ‘Praise God and God’s mother,’ Dathi said, ‘For God and God’s mother have sent The blessedest souls that walk in the world To fill your heart with content.’ ‘And which is the blessedest,’ Cumhal said, ‘Where all are comely and good? Is it these that with golden thuribles Are singing about the wood?’ ‘My eyes are blinking,’ Dathi said, ‘With the secrets of God half blind, But I can see where the wind goes And follow the way of the wind; ‘And blessedness goes where the wind goes, And when it is gone we are dead; I see the blessedest soul in the world And he nods a drunken head. ‘O blessedness comes in the night and the day And whither the wise heart knows; And one has seen in the redness of wine The Incorruptible Rose, ‘That drowsily drops faint leaves on him And the sweetness of desire, While time and the world are ebbing away In twilights of dew and of fire.’ THE SECRET ROSE FAR off, most secret, and inviolate Rose, Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre, Or in the wine vat, dwell beyond the stir And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise In Druid vapour and make the torches dim; Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him Who met Fand walking among flaming dew By a gray shore where the wind never blew, And lost the world and Emer for a kiss; And him who drove the gods out of their liss, And till a hundred morns had flowered red, Feasted and wept the barrows of his dead; And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods; And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods, And sought through lands and islands numberless years, Until he found with laughter and with tears, A woman, of so shining loveliness, That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress, A little stolen tress. I, too, await The hour of thy great wind of love and hate. When shall the stars be blown about the sky, Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die? Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows, Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose? MAID QUIET WHERE has Maid Quiet gone to, Nodding her russet hood? The winds that awakened the stars Are blowing through my blood. O how could I be so calm When she rose up to depart? Now words that called up the lightning Are hurtling through my heart. THE TRAVAIL OF PASSION