Part 8 (1/2)
A hard north-easter fifty winters long Has bronzed and shrivelled sere her face and neck; Her locks are wild and grey, her teeth a wreck; Her foot is vast, her bowed leg spare and strong.
A wide blue cloak, a squat and st.u.r.dy throng Of curt blue coats, a mutch without a speck, A white vest broidered black, her person deck, Nor seems their picked, stern, old-world quaintness wrong.
Her great creel forehead-slung, she wanders nigh, Easing the heavy strap with gnarled, brown fingers, The spirit of traffic watchful in her eye, Ever and anon imploring you to buy, As looking down the street she onward lingers, Reproachful, with a strange and doleful cry.
BACK-VIEW--To D. F.
I watched you saunter down the sand: Serene and large, the golden weather Flowed radiant round your peac.o.c.k feather, And glistered from your jewelled hand.
Your tawny hair, turned strand on strand And bound with blue ribands together, Streaked the rough tartan, green like heather, That round your lissome shoulder spanned.
Your grace was quick my sense to seize: The quaint looped hat, the twisted tresses, The close-drawn scarf, and under these The flowing, flapping draperies - My thought an outline still caresses, Enchanting, comic, j.a.panese!
CROLUIS--To G. W.
The beach was crowded. Pausing now and then, He groped and fiddled doggedly along, His worn face glaring on the thoughtless throng The stony peevishness of sightless men.
He seemed scarce older than his clothes. Again, Grotesquing thinly many an old sweet song, So cracked his fiddle, his hand so frail and wrong, You hardly could distinguish one in ten.
He stopped at last, and sat him on the sand, And, grasping wearily his bread-winner, Stared dim towards the blue immensity, Then leaned his head upon his poor old hand.
He may have slept: he did not speak nor stir: His gesture spoke a vast despondency.
ATTADALE WEST HIGHLANDS--To A. J.
A black and gla.s.sy float, opaque and still, The loch, at furthest ebb supine in sleep, Reversing, mirrored in its luminous deep The calm grey skies; the solemn spurs of hill; Heather, and corn, and wisps of loitering haze; The wee white cots, black-hatted, plumed with smoke; The braes beyond--and when the ripple awoke, They wavered with the jarred and wavering glaze.
The air was hushed and dreamy. Evermore A noise of running water whispered near.
A straggling crow called high and thin. A bird Trilled from the birch-leaves. Round the s.h.i.+ngled sh.o.r.e, Yellow with weed, there wandered, vague and clear, Strange vowels, mysterious gutturals, idly heard.
FROM A WINDOW IN PRINCES STREET--To M. M. M'B.
Above the Crags that fade and gloom Starts the bare knee of Arthur's Seat; Ridged high against the evening bloom, The Old Town rises, street on street; With lamps bejewelled, straight ahead, Like rampired walls the houses lean, All spired and domed and turreted, Sheer to the valley's darkling green; Ranged in mysterious disarray, The Castle, menacing and austere, Looms through the lingering last of day; And in the silver dusk you hear, Reverberated from crag and scar, Bold bugles blowing points of war.
IN THE DIALS
To GARRYOWEN upon an organ ground Two girls are jigging. Riotously they trip, With eyes aflame, quick bosoms, hand on hip, As in the tumult of a witches' round.
Youngsters and youngsters round them prance and bound.