Dain Do Eimhir

XVII

Multitude of the skies, gold riddle of millions of stars, cold,
distant, lustrous, beautiful, silent, unconscious, unwelcoming.

Fullness of knowledge in their course, emptiness of chartless
ignorance, a universe moving in silence, a mind alone in its
bounds.

Not they moved my thoughts, not the marvel of their chill
course; to us there is no miracle but in love, lighting of a
universe in the kindling of your face.

XXII

I walked with my reason out beside the sea : we were together
but it kept a little distance from me.

Then it turned saying: Is it true you heard that your fair love
is marrying early on Monday?

I checked the heart that rose in my torn, swift breast and said:
most likely, why should I lie?

How should I think I would seize the radiant golden star, that
I could catch it and put it prudently in my pocket?

I did not take a cross's death in the sore extremity of Spain,
and how then should I expect the one new gift of fate?

I followed only a way that was small, mean, low, dry, and
lukewarm: and how then should I meet the thunderbolt of
love?

But had I the choice again, and stood on that headland, I
should leap from heaven or hell with a whole spirit and heart.

XXX

A Bolshevik who never gave heed to queen or to king, yet,
had we Scotland free, Scotland equal to our love, a white,
spirited, generous- Scotland, without petty, paltry, vapid bourgeoisie,
without the loathesomeness of capitalists, without
hateful, crass graft, the mettlesome Scotland of the free, the
Scotland of our blood, the Scotland of our love, I would
break the legitimate law of the kings, I would break the sure
law of the wise, I would proclaim you queen of Scotland in
spite of the new republic.

LIV

You were dawn on the Cuillin and benign day on the Clarach ,
the sun on his elbows in the golden stream and the white rose
that breaks the horizon.

Glitter of sails on a sunlit firth, blue of the ocean and aureate
sky, the young morning in your head of hair and in your
clear lovely cheeks.

My jewel of dawn and night your face and beloved kindness,
though with the grey shaft of grief my young morning is
transfixed.

LV

I do not see the sense of my toil putting thoughts in a dying
tongue, now when the whoredom of Europe is murder erect
and agony: but we have been given a million years, a fragment
of a sad, growing portion, the courage and patience of
the many and the marvel of a beautiful face.