Читать книгу Lyra Celtica: An Anthology of Representative Celtic Poetry онлайн

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“And now I wander in the woods

When summer gluts the golden bees,

Or in autumnal solitudes

Arise the leopard-coloured trees;

Or when along the wintry strands

The cormorants shiver on their rocks;

I wander on, and wave my hands,

And sing, and shake my heavy locks.

The gray wolf knows me; by one ear

I lead along the woodland deer;

The hares ran by me growing bold.

They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter

round me, the beech leaves old.”

Indeed, through all his work, “They will not hush; the leaves a-flutter, the beech leaves old”—the mystic leaves of life, touched by the wind of old romance. We can imagine him hearing often that fairy lure which his “Stolen Child” listed and yielded to—

“Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a fairy, hand in hand,

For the world’s more full of weeping than

you can understand.”

For him always there is the Beauty of Beauty, the Passion of Passion: the “Rose of the World.”

“Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,