James Stephens

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The Rivals

I heard a bird at dawn

Singing sweetly on a tree,

That the dew was on the lawn,

And the wind was on the lea;

But I didn't listen to him,

For he didn't sing to me.

I didn't listen to him,

For he didn't sing to me

That the dew was on the lawn

And the wind was on the lea;

I was singing at the time

Just as prettily as he.

I was singing all the time,

Just a prettily as he,

About the dew upon the lawn

And the wind upon the lea;

So I didn't listen to him

As he sang upon a tree.

The Goat Paths

The crooked paths go every way

Upon the hill -- they wind about

Through the heather in and out

Of the quiet sunniness.

And there the goats, day after day,

Stray in sunny quietness,

Cropping here and cropping there,

As they pause and turn and pass,

Now a bit of heather spray,

Now a mouthful of the grass.

In the deeper sunniness,

In the place where nothing stirs,

Quietly in quietness,

In the quiet of the furze,

For a time they come and lie

Staring on the roving sky.

If you approach they run away,

They leap and stare, away they bound,

With a sudden angry sound,

To the sunny quietude;

Crouching down where nothing stirs

In the silence of the furze,

Couching down again to brood

In the sunny solitude.

If I were as wise as they

I would stray apart and brood,

I would beat a hidden way

Through he quiet heather spray

To a sunny solitude;

And should you come I'd run away,

I would make an angry sound,

I would stare and turn and bound

To the deeper quietude,

To the place where nothing stirs

In the silence of the furze.

In that airy quietness

I would think as long as they;

Through the quiet sunniness

I would stray away to brood

By a hidden beaten way

In a sunny solitude.

I would think until I found

Something I can never find,

Something lying on the ground,

In the bottom of my mind.

The Snare

To A.E.

I hear a sudden cry of pain!

There is a rabbit in a snare;

Now I hear the cry again,

But I cannot tell from where.

But I cannot tell from where

He is calling out for aid;

Crying on the frightened air,

Making everything afraid.

Making everything afraid,

Wrinkling up his little face,

As he cries again for aid;

And I cannot find the place!

And I cannot find the place

Where his paw is in the snare:

Little one! Oh, little one!

I am searching everywhere.

In Woods and Meadows

Play to the tender stops, though cheerily:

Gently, my soul, my song: let no one hear:

Sing to thyself alone; thine ecstasy

Rising in silence to the inward ear

That is attuned to silence: do not tell

A friend, a bird, a star, lest they should say --

He danced in woods and meadows all the day,

Waving his arms, and cried as evening fell,

'O, do not come,' and cried, 'O, come, thou queen,

And walk with me unwatched upon the green

       Under the sky.

Deirdre

Do not let any woman read this verse;

It is for men, and after them their sons

And their sons' sons.

The time comes when our hearts sink utterly;

When we remember Deirdre and her tale,

And that her lips are dust.

Once she did tread the earth: men took her hand;

They looked into her eyes and said their say,

And she replied to them.

More than a thousand years it is since she

Was beautiful: she trod the waving grass;

She saw the clouds.

A thousand years! The grass is stil the same,

The clouds as lovely as they were that time

When Deirdre was alive.

But there has never been a woman born

Who was so beautiful, not one so beautiful

Of all the women born.

Let all men go apart and mourn together;

No man can ever love her; not a man

Can ever be her lover.

No man can bend before her: no man say --

What could one say to her? There are no words

That one could say to her!

Now she is but a story that is told

Beside the fire! No man can ever be

The friend of that poor queen.

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