Ballads of Peace in War | Page 8

of sky.
Once the yard was fertile and fair,
And lilac bushes near:
And a
Yankee counted with fretful care,
Under the solacing shadows there,

The gain of every year.
The crowded walls of trade arose
And gloomed the avenue:
But a
Munster man at each day's close
Built in the tree his hope's rainbows,

And saw his dreams come true.
The years have thickened the darkened air,
But the tree is still on
guard:
It comforts the young Italian there,
Who sees the future
blossoming fair
>From the tree in the tenement yard.

0. * *
America, Ireland and Italy
All have loved this poor old tree.
28
OLD HUDSON ROVERS
(For Joyce Kilmer)
When the dreamy night is on, up the Hudson river,
And the sheen of
modern taste is dim and far away,
Ghostly men on phantom rafts
make the waters shiver,
Laughing in the sibilance of the silver spray.

Yea, and up the woodlands, staunch in moonlit weather,
Go the
ghostly horsemen, adventuresome to ride,
White as mist the
doublet-braize, bandolier and feather,
Fleet as gallant Robin Hood in
an eventide.
Times are gone that knew the craft in the role of rovers,
Fellows of
the open, care could never load:
Unalarmed for bed or board, they
were leisure's lovers,
Summer bloomed in story on the Hyde Park
Road.
Summer was a blossom, but the fruit was autumn,
Fragrant
haylofts for a bed, cider-cakes in store,
Warmer was a cup they know,
when the north wind caught 'em
Down at Benny Havens' by the West
Point shore.
Idlers now-and loafers pass, joy is out of fashion,
Honest fun that
fooled a dog or knew a friendly gate,
Now the craft are vagabonds,
sick with modern passion,
Riding up and down the shore, on an
aching freight;
Sullen are the battered looks, cheerless talk or tipsy,

Sickly in the smoky air, starving in the day,
Pining for a city's noise
at Kingston or Po'keepsie,
Eager more for Gotham and a great White
Way.
Rich is all the countryside, but glory has departed,
What if yachts and
mansions be, by the river's marge!
Dim though was a hillside, lamps

were happy-hearted,
Near the cove of Rondout in a hut or barge.

Silken styles are tyrants, fashion kills the playtime,
Robs the heart of
largess that is kindly to the poor,
Richer were the freemen, welcome
as the Maytime,
Glad was boy or maiden, seeing Brennan of the
moor.
29
Old Hudson Rovers
Send us back the olden knights, tell no law to track 'em,
Give to boy
and maid the storytellers as of yore,
Millionaires in legend-wealth,
though no bank would back 'em, But old Benny Havens by the West
Point Shore.
Off with lazy vagabonds, social ghosts that shiver,

Give to worthy road-men the great green way,
And we'll hear a song
again up the Hudson river,
Ringing from a drifting raft, set in silver
spray.
30
A WINTER MINSTER
(For Fr. C. L. O'Donnell)
The interlacing trees
Arise in Gothic traceries,
As if a vast cathedral
deep and dim;
And through the solemn atmosphere
The low winds
hymn
Such thoughts as solitude will hear.
To lead your way across

Gray carpet aisles of moss
Unto the chantry stalls,
The sumach
candelabra are alight;
Along the cloister walls,
Like chorister and
acolyte,
The shrubs are vested white;
The dutiful monastic oak
In
his gray-friar cloak
Keeps penitential ways
And solemn orisons of
praise;
For beads upon the cincture-vine
Red berries warm with
color shine,
And to their constant rosary
The bedesmen firs incline;

And fair as frescoes be
Among the shrines of Italy,
These lights
and shadows are,
Impalpable in gray and green
Upon the hills afar


And the gold westering sun between.
The music! Hark!
Oh, an it
be no rapturous lark,
Yet has the lesser chant
The blessedness of
song.
The snowbird mendicant
Intones the antiphonEt
laboremus
nos;
31
A Winter Minster
And all the grottoed aisles along,
Where servitors rejoice,
The
chorused echoes run-
Oremus nos.
The inspiration of the breeze
Gives every reed a voice
>From
tenebrae and silences;
Over the valleys borne,
Come organ
harmonies;
And when the low winds call,
The pines with miserere
mourn
A requiem musical,
Softer than moonbeams fall
Across
the starry oriels of night,
Flooding the azure round
With hushed
delight
And sanctity of sound.
32
THE DARK LITTLE ROSE
IRELAND
When shall we find the spring come in,
And the fragrant air it blows?

And when shall the bounty of summer win
Fairer than fields of
Camolin
For the dark little Rose?
Long was the winter, the storms how long!
What flower may live i'
the snows!
No bloom shall last under heels of wrong,
If the
heart-blood be not deathless strong,
As the dark little Rose.
Sing hers the culture sweeter than rain
That healed old Europe's woes;


Older than bowers of Lille and Louvain
Grew by the Rhine and the
towns of Spain
>From the dark little Rose.
Leagues in the sunlight never shall fail
While the broad, round ocean
flows;
Though never a fleet goes up Kinsale,
See, all the world is
within the pale
Of the dark little Rose.
33
THE MONK MAELANFAID
Maelanfaid saw a tiny bird
A-grieving on the ground,
And O, the
sad lament he heard,
That sorrow's self might sound:
He could not
read a note or word
The song of grief inwound.
Maelanfaid went within his cell
To keep a fast and pray,
To listen
to