Six Songs

When we are lost
Within the dust and sand of desert years,
Who then shall count the cost
of two lives chained at Destiny's command,
When we are lost.
The shadow of fear
Our winding path has crossed
The cloudy waves surge onward to the land.
Time's thundering storms sweep down with ice and frost,
To chill the songs of love.
That we must follow shadows and be tossed
Hither and thither by Fate's relentless hand.
When we are lost, when we are lost.

Wave, wave, green branches, wave me far away
To where the forest deepens and the hillwinds, sleeping, stay:
Where Peace doth fold her twilight wings, and through the heart of day
There goes the rumour of passing hours grown faint and grey.
Wave, wave, green branches, my heart like a bird doth hover
Above the nesting-place your green-gloom shadows cover:
O come to my nesting heart, come close, come close, bend over,
Joy of my heart, my life, my prince, my lover!

In the silences of the woods
I have heard all day and all night
The moving multitudes
Of the Wind in flight.
He is named Myriad:
And I am sad
Often, and often I am glad,
But oftener I am white
With fear of the dim broods
That are his multitudes.

I have seen all things pass and all men go
Under the shadow of the drifting leaf:
Green leaf, red leaf, brown leaf,
Grey leaf blown to and fro.
Blown to and fro.
I have seen happy dreams rise up and pass
Silent and swift as shadows on the grass:
Grey shadows of old dreams,
Grey beauty of old dreams,
Grey shadows in the grass.

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Up the aery mountain, 
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go ahunting
for fear of little men;

Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, Red cap
And white owl's feather.

Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes,
Of yellow tide foam;

Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watchdogs,
all night awake.

High on the hilltop the old king sits;
He is now so old and grey
He's nigh lost his wits
With a bridge of white mist...

Columkille he crosses
On his stately journies 
From Slieve
League to Rosses.

Or going up with music
On cold starry nights,
To sup with the queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget
for seven years long,
And when she came down again
Her friends were all gone.

They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought she was fast asleep,
But she was dead from sorrow.

They have kept her ever since
Deep within a lake,
On a bed of flag leaves,
Watching till she wake...

By the craggy hillside,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorntrees,
For pleasure here and there.

Is any man so daring,
As dig them up in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.