Autumn in Ireland

Calm falls the evening : lo ! yon delicate ash,
Whose smooth grey bole dark mossy tufts emboss,
Gloats with full foliage in the mellow light.
Each slim leaf dainty dabbling in the glow
And dallying with shadow subtly fine ;
While underneath, thin shadow of a tree
Branches upon a slope of lawn greengold
Soft vague as veins meander, and allows
A flow of gleam with gracious whim to stray
About it gentle, yielding light- bubble.
The foliage is paling yellowing
And sheds to-day an amber scattering
Upon the grass as if reflected there.
Below the lawn a billowy sweep of wood
Pours to a glen and fills it fair and far
With undulating topaz, chrj-sohte,
\Miose fervour quickens into ember-fire
Anon or silent burn of tarnished gold.
Into the hue wherewith the robin's breast
Glows now in autumn perched in yonder ash
And ruffling his full throat with melody.

Yon billowy leafage-river seems to pour
And gather from afar insensibly.
Where those vast mountains shadowy upheave
Fisted, uncertain, bathed in molten pearl,
Robed in mild light of sweep magnificent
With luminous folds of blue gloom interchanged.
Yet through the heavenly vesture halfbetrayed
Their native tones of sombre olive-green,
Rust-brown, or tint of the yew's inner rind.
Behold yon kingly form with storm-beaten
Yet dauntless everlasting rugged face
Over huge shoulder of his brother there !
The far-off mountain purples now with eve,
Yields, melts his proud and stern solidity
To vaporous amethyst that seems to poise.
And brood on mingling with unbodied light.
Anon he looks a vast anemone
Translucent steeped in a clear sea of air,
An air how supple soft and fathomless
Enshrining all, here molten chrysolite.
The inner hue of bursting chestnut sheaths
Vhat time the chestnut drops from leaf to leaf,
There heaven for souls of vanished violets ;
Wherein a crescent moon swims tilted high
On end shell-frail, a shallop half submerged.

Calm falls the evening, tender every tone
The mild air pillows ; only now and then
Some flitting bird with irrepressible
And innocent bliss brims over in the leaves,
Song fragile fitful as the fitful gleam
Of silken rainbow gossamer at hand
A freckled spider swings from leaf to leaf.
Such voices, and the hushed-with-distance call
Of yonder torrent in the wooded glen.
These only haunt the tranquil-hearted air,
Spirits benign congenial unto it.
While I upon the moss extended lie,
A fairy fir-forest of mazy moss,
Noting some metal-sharded insect thrid
Their labyrinths, and over the frail growth
Of shamrock tiny, or fungus coral-red.

I know ye mountains ! tell what hollow lone
Or stern rocksteep of yours defies me long !
I love ye all, love communing with all,
Courting fair deadly face of danger, queen
Among ye — timorous tepid-souled men
Know not the fierce delight of meeting her
With blanching cheek and loudly thumping heart,
Yet with teeth set, and will unconquerable —
Beautiful spirit, playmate of the storm !
Hard by the eagle's eyrie, when the eagle
Sweeps brooding o'er it dauntless and unmoved
For all the rush of hurricane and scud
Of torn grey cloudrack, poised on wing sublime ;
What time blind rain leaves slippery the stalks
Of heather and bilberry in crevices
Of giddy granite precipice, and scarce
For drifting mist I see the rowan beads
Or holly berries, clutching at their stems.

And ah ! what glories, secret treasuries
Of beauty and delight we come upon,
Fresh, unfamiliar, where the gaze profane
Of vulgar and unsympathising eyes
Hath never fallen, blighting, tarnishing ;
Unbreathed upon, unfingered as a flower
Fresh budded from its sheath, impearled with morn !
How light, how buoyant, all your breezes blow.
Ye mountains ; how we bound upon your heath !
For illness, with the fretting cares of life,
Unhealthful toil with books, and weary thought
Heaving through waste and wandering seas of doubt.
Hungering with unfathomable want ;
Yea even the burden of some deadlier grief ;
All these like fevered dreams we fling from us,
Sipping the sparkle of your liberal air !
And now though, v/ounded climbing in your crags,
Awhile I may not move, my spirit roves
Rejoicing still, while I serene as you
Lie lapped like you in tranquil-waning light !

And thou fierce torrent in the wooded glen !
How often have I watched thee from a rock
Hard by yon thunder-vs'aterfall of thine.
Thy crush of waters tawny as the mane
Of some huge lion crashing like a fate
With raucous roar on a dissolving doe,
And foam resurgent vanishing like cloud
'Mid swirl of bright delirious air-bubbles
In splintering agate of the gulf profound,
While fragile froth v/hite, lacelike, delicate,
Frills tremulous the waterworn grey stone,
Ever blown out, and ever anon relit —
Till in the spume some shadow seems to flit ;
Nay ! solid thing of life, that unaware
Leaps to my startled vision, leaps in air,
Along the flashing cataract, a fish,
A salmon opal-flanked and mottled fine
His back with shifting purple, to subside la the seethe baftled yet abide his time.

Ah ! splendid torrent, hast thou ne'er a soul,
Art thou no god as men were wont believe ?
If not a god, yet verily and full
Pulses in thee the universal God I
Doth not thy full triumphant rush of life
Inevitably leap up into me.
Aching and thrilling inarticulate
Till it can break in me to consciousness,
To its own worship, love, and sympathy?
In solitude I blend my voice with thine.
Shouting for brotherhood and fellowship !
Insanely lust headlong to flash with thee,
Or long to plunge, O lover ! in thy pools
Shadowy, fathomless, contemplative,
Dyed of the peat deep coftee ; fury-spume
Indolent starring, clinging at the rock,
Grey crag empurpled, hollowed-undcr, cloven
With such long violent importunity.

Lo ! where the listless foam-fleck on the main
'Mid-current dallies, seeming motionless ;
Visibly now astir smooth slides along
Yon oily waterlapse ; glides giddily
Anon to where, volumed like solid glass,
The flood slips eager into the abyss,
Fired with a parting sunkiss, passionate —
To wander far, now strenuous now calm,
Dreamy and listless under all the dense
Impleached greenery of mossy wood,
Twirling sere leaves, umbrageous and cool,
Now smoke-cairngorm, now shallower jasper clear,
Smiling when Day puts by the leaves to look
And variegate with limpid tortoiseshell.