Ireland Calling Me Home Sonnets

Telescopic Moon

  A lifeless solitude--an angry waste,

  Searing our alien eyes with horrors bare;

  No fertilizing cloud--no genial air

  To mitigate its savageness of breast;

  The light itself all undiffusive there;

  Motionless terror clinging to the crest

  Of steepmost pinnacles; as by despair

  Unfathomable caverns still possessed!

  How shall we designate such world forlorn?

  What nook of Heaven abhors this portent dark?

  Lo! where the Moon reveals her gentle ray,

  Waking the nightingale's and poet's lay;

  Speeding benign the voyager's return;

  And lighting furtive kisses to their mark!

  Sir Samuel Ferguson (1810-1886)

  Paul Veronese: Three Sonnets

  I Paul, let thy faces from the canvas look

  Haply less clearly than Pietro's can,

  Less lively than in tints of Titian,

  Or him who both the bay-wreath-chaplets took:

  Yet shalt thou therefore have no harsh rebuke

  Of me whom, while with eager eye I scan

  O'er painted pomps of Brera and Vatican,

  The first delight thou gavest ne'er forsook.

  For in thy own Verona, long ago,

  Before one masterpiece of cool arcades,

  I made a friend; and such a friend was rare.

  For him, I love thy velvet's glorious show,

  Thy sheens of silk 'twixt marble balustrades,

  Thy breathing-space and full translucent air.

  ILoved for themselves, too. Oft as I behold,

  A down the curtain'd gallery's sumptuous gloom,

  A separate daylight shining in the room,

  There find I still thy groupings manifold

  Of holy clerks, of nobles grave and bold,

  Swart slaves, brave gallants, maidens in their bloom,

  With what of Persian and Ligarian loom

  May best consort with marble dome and gold:

  There find thy dog, whose teeth Time's teeth defy

  To raze the name from less enduring leaves

  Of loved Canossa: there, in cynic ease,

  Thy monkey: and beneath the pearly sky

  See lovely ladies wave their handkerchiefs,

  And lend sweet looks from airy balconies.

  III

  They err who say this long-withdrawing line

  Of palace-fronts Palladian, this brocade

  From looms of Genoa, this gold-inlaid

  Resplendent plate of Milan, that combine

  To spread soft lustre through the grand design,

  Show but in fond factitious masquerade

  The actual feast by leper Simon made

  For that great Guest, of old, in Palestine.

  Christ walks amongst us still; at liberal table

  Scorns not to sit: no sorrowing Magdalene

  But of these dear feet kindly gets her kiss

  Now, even as then; and thou, be honorable,

  Who, by the might of thy majestic scene,

  Bringest down that age and minglest it with this.

  Edmond G. A. Holmes

  From Shannon to Sea

  The Shannon bore me to thy bosom wide:

  I wandered with it on its winding way

  By fields of yellow corn and new mown hay,

  And far blue hills that rose on either side,

  And low dark woods that fringed the ebbing tide;

  And ever as its waters neared the west,

  Out of the slumber of its broadening breast

  Faint momentary ripples rose and died

  And rose again before the breeze and grew

  To wavelets dancing in the noonday light,

  And these were changed to waves of ocean blue,

  And creek and headland faded from the sight,

  And oh! at last--at last I floated free

  On the long rollers of the open sea.

  Eternal Vigil

  Oh! once again upon thy heaving breast

  I floated, like a seabird when it braves

  The shoreward onset of thy flowing waves

  And leaps triumphant on each rushing crest:

  Round me in dark magnificent unrest,

  The billows of the wild Atlantic rolled

  Far, far away, into the gates of gold,

  The sunlit portals of the stormy west:

  O never wearied! In the hush of noon

  Thy billows break the paths of golden sleep:

  They break the dreamlike lustre of the moon

  Earth knows the hours of darkness: thou dost keep

  Eternal vigil: still thy surges white

  Flash through the deepest gloom of starless night.

  Thomas Caulfield Irwin (1823-1892)

  Sonnets

  The rough green wealth of wheaten fields that sway

  In the low wind of midsummer all day;

  The morning valley's warm perfumed breeze

  Floating from southern sycamore shadowed rills,

  The singing forest on the dawn-topped hills,

  The living depth of azure spacing seas:

  Still, brooding shadows upon mossy walls,

  Aerial vapours crumbling down the heights,

  Silence of woods amid green mellow lights,

  And sighs of distant drizzling waterfalls:

  The sweet faint breath of the short moonlit nights

  From misty meadows where the quaint crake calls;

  Rare pageants in the western day withdrawn,

  And fleets of rich light-laden clouds at dawn.

  The rainbow o'er the sea of afternoon

  Whence comes the fresh sound of the distant wave;

  The mirrored lights that roof the lonely cave,

  Where roll the waters from the rising moon;

  The airs that stir the grasses on the grave,

  And whisper spirit-like to one beneath,

  That love in Summer grieves no more for death:

  The first sweet secret touch of lips grown dear

  In happy twilight woods when none are near;

  Sweet fancies just awaked at morn, when still

  The level red cloud lies beyond the hill:--

  Such are the thoughts and objects that appear,

  To lap in sacred sadness, or inspire

  Thy strings to Beauty's moods, oh, Summer lyre.

  Regions of soft clear air, of cold green leaves,

  Heaths, grasses, solitary as a sea:

  Vistas of gold and violet radiancy,

  Isles where the surge and the lone wave-bird grieves;

  White-citied plains, hill-cinctured, whence there flow

  Eurotean rivulets pellucidly

  'Mid laurels, reeds, blue lilies;--in the glow

  A cape, with sheep, and ruins like ripe sheaves;

  Fallen columns smooth as aged ivory:

  Some citadel remote or rocky pyre

  The sunset turns to purple and to fire;

  Gardens of thyme and groves of olives brown

  Along the slopes Olympian vapours crown,

  Like gods in commune, formless, divine and dire.

  Remote from smoky cities, aged and grey,

  I pass the long-drawn Summer sea-side day:

  Now reading in the garden arbour where

  In light and silence comes the freckled morn

  When dews are on the leaf, and cool the air;

  The faint wave wash is heard the beach along,

  Whence a warm wind waves languidly the corn;

  And poised in haze the lark shakes out her song;

  Now hearing in deep grass the sweeping scythe,

  And, in the sultry stillness voices blythe,

  'Till day is done. Blue coolness comes once more:

  The reapers bind in twilight the last sheaf,

  And the fresh spring-tide foams the sloaky reef

  As floats the white moon up the
lonely land.

  Into the wood at close of rainy day

  I walk, dim cloud above, green leaves around;

  Upon the humid air only the sound

  Of drop on drop stirring the stillness grey:

  Almost I hear the rose leaves fall away

  Too heavily weighed with damp to cling o'er-blown

  To their wet branches straggling o'er the copse;

  Until the faint waved twilight airs entone

  Tide-like along the blossom'd beech tree-tops;

  And amid showers and flowers scattering, alone

  Pass from the fresh dusk solitude among

  Meadows in clouded moonlight, glimmeringly

  Seen like the low blue hills; and hear the song

  Of the last bird, and wash of the cool sea.

  Awakened, I behold through dewy leaves

  Wavering in the air, the pale dawn's level glow;

  And hear the sparrow's twitter on the eaves,

  The engine's quick steam throb, the first cock's crow:

  And soon a prayer-bell toll, remote and slow:

  And then a-while with light-reclosed eyes

  I float upon my pillow as a cloud,

  Unto a land whose snowy ruins rise

  Along a plain girt by blue mountains proud;

  And under solitary Egerean skies,

  Bright verdure and bright marbles, in a dell

  Deserted, where within a recluse well,

  Through leafy lights I see a nymph's face beam,

  Which fades not when in daylight dies my dream.

  Upon an upland orchard's sunny side,

  I pass the quiet blue September day:

  There winds through tented fields they sometimes hide,

  Past woods and meadows green, the dusty way,

  Down to the ship-speckled level of the bay,

  And amber sands in crescent spreading wide.

  Last night the winds were in the trees, and here

  In golden moss a few red apples lie,

  And from the copse a thrush flutes strong and clear,

  And faintly humming flits the emerald fly:

  All things autumnalised are rich and calm;

  Steam-plumed argosies surge up the main,

  And o'er the singing woodlands breathing balm,

  One superb white cloud passes, dropping rain.

  The apples ripen under yellowing leaves,

  And in the farm yards by the little bay

  The shadows come and go amid the sheaves,

  And on the long dry inland winding way:

  Where, in the thinning boughs each air bereaves,

  Faint sunlights golden, and the spider weaves.

  Grey are the low-laid sleepy hills, and grey

  The autumn solitude of the sea day,

  Where from the deep 'mid-channel, less and less

  You hear along the pale east afternoon

  A sound, uncertain as the silence, swoon--

  The tide's sad voice ebbing toward loneliness:

  And past the sands and seas' blue level line,

  Ceaseless, the faint far murmur of the brine.

  An isle of trees full foliaged in a meadow,

  Along whose quiet grassy shores below

  The white sheep bathe in level lengths of shadow,

  And sweet airs amiable as summer blow

  Warmly and faint among the happy leaves,

  Loving each other in a green repose

  Folded; or waking in the slumbrous glow

  Where the wind passing, indolently weaves

  A net of lazy listless whisperings,

  Most like the liquid lullaby of springs

  Pulsing demure and quaintly in some cool

  Dell of the woods; unseen save of some ray

  Piercing the boughs, having somewhat to say

  To fairies couched on bubbles round the pool.

  When I had turned Catullus into rhyme,

  And stars shone from the sea's blue southern zone,

  Breathing in slumber tranquil as my own,

  Above those pages of the antique time

  Laid in a casement near me, where the vines

  Trembled their shade: lo! on a sudden rose

  Beautiful Venus naked amid glows

  Of roseate cloud, and all the Lesbian lines

  With her white finger touching as she smiled,

  Stooped her, and kissed them, for a space beguiled,

  'Till with a sigh she vanished. Then above

  The sheaf of song in darkness I beheld

  Impassioned foreheads as of poet gods

  Bend their gold curls, and o'er them muse enspelled;

  And wild and epic music from their abodes,

  Heard blend in the high night with those of love.

  Ye two fair trees that I so long have known

  And loved, as living over dust so dear;

  Who silently have seen tear after tear

  Rise from my heart, when to the engraved stone

  I came to pray, and with true love alone

  Live back old times, amid a world so drear

  With cares and changes of a many a year,

  And loss of most things I could love or own:

  Now 'mid the calm of this blue April noon

  While the fresh wind breathes warm from the clear west,

  Put fancy once more with thy leaves in tune

  Green genial Muse of the grey grave:--for soon

  By the dear dust it roofs, I too shall rest.

  A roadside inn this summer Saturday:--

  The doors are open to the wide warm air,

  The parlour, whose old window views the bay,

  Garnished with cracked delph full of flowers fair

  From the fields round, and whence you see the glare

  Fall heavy on the hot slate roofs and o'er

  The wall's tree shadows drooping in the sun.

  Now rumbles slowly down the dusty street

  The lazy drover's clattering cart; and crows

  Fainter through afternoon the