Chapter I: Love the Din of Beating Drums

I love the din of beating drums,
The bellowing pipe, the shrieking fife:
The discord and the dissonance is my blood, my breath, my life!
The discord and the dissonance is my life!

Away with flutes and dancing lutes--
Such music likes but lovers' ears:
Give me the beating battledrum,
The gunpeal and the cheers!
The bellowing pipe and battledrum,
The gunpeal and the cheers!

THREE COLTS EXERCISING IN A SIX-ACRE

Three colts exercising in a six-acre,
A hilly sweep of unfenced grass over the road.

What a picture they make against the skyline!
Necks stretched, hocks moving royally, tails flying;
Farm-lads up, and they crouching low on their withers.

I have a journey to go--
A lawyer to see, and a paper to sign in the Tontine--
But I slacken my pace to watch them.

THE NATURAL

"Lend us the loan of a halfpenny, sir!"--
And he passed with his splendid nose in the air.

A gaunt, grey carcase of skin and bones,
As cold as the river, as hard as the stones.

To him the highway was table and bed,
Shift for the newborn and sheet for the dead.

The wind that blew from Beola crest
Seemed fire to fetter his wild unrest.

The rain that beat on his neck and face,
A goad to quicken him in his pace.

But sorrow a step he changed, and his prayer
Was still--"Lend us the loan of a halfpenny, sir!"

ON THE TOP-STONE

On the top-stone.
A nipping wind blowing.
Winter dusk closing in from the south Ards.
The moon rising, white and fantastic, over the loch and the town below.
I take off my hat, salute her, and descend into the darkness.

THE WOMEN AT THEIR DOORS

The babes were asleep in their cradles,
And the day's drudge was done,
And the women brought their suppers out
To eat them in the sun.

"To-night I will set my needles, Aine,
And Eoghan will have stockings to wear:
I spun the wool of the horny ewe
He bought at the hiring fair. . . .

"But what is that sound I hear, Nabla?--
It is like the cheering of men.
God keep our kind from the devil's snare!"
And the women answered, "Amen!"

Then the moon rose over the valley,
And the cheering died away,
And the women went within their doors
At the mouth of the summer day.

And no men came in at midnight,
And no men came in at the dawn,
And the women keened by their ashy fires
Till their faces were haggard and wan.

For they knew they had gone to the trysting
With pike and musketoon,
To fight for their hearths and altars
At the rising of the moon!

MY LITTLE DARK LOVE

My little dark love is a wineberry,
As swarth and as sweet, I hold;
But as the dew on the wineberry
Her heart is a-cold.

I would her love were as warm as the light
That lives in her eye of grey,
And then my heart would know the peace
It dreams in the hills away.

I would her love were as red as the rose
That blows on her cheek of brown,
And then my sunless soul would laugh
At the woe that weighs it down.

She dwells in the valley, my little dark love,
Where the river sings to the sea,
And an ogham-stone sits by her door,
And nigh to it hazels three.

And oft when the purple twilight comes,
And the blind bats flit in the air,
I wander down from the quiet hills
To seek my sweetheart there.

But she comes never--she loves not me,
Nor ever will love, I hold;
For tho' my heart is a peat of fire,
Her heart is a-cold!