Garland of Youth

O gift of God!  O perfect day:
Whereon shall no man work, but play;
Whereon it is enough for me,
Not to be doing, but to be! 

Through every fibre of my brain,
Through every nerve, through every vein,
I feel the electric thrill, the touch
Of life, that seems almost too much.
 
I hear the wind among the trees
Playing celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument. 

And over me unrolls on high
The splendid scenery of the sky,
Where though a sapphire sea the sun
Sails like a golden galleon, 

Towards yonder cloud-land in the West,
Towards yonder Islands of the Blest,
Whose steep sierra far uplifts
Its craggy summits white with drifts. 

Blow, winds! and waft through all the rooms
The snow-flakes of the cherry-blooms!
Blow, winds! and bend within my reach
The fiery blossoms of the peach! 

O Life and Love! O happy throng
Of thoughts, whose only speech is song!
O heart of man! canst thou not be
Blithe as the air is, and as free? 

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Charm me asleep, and melt me so
With thy delicious numbers,
That, being ravish'd, hence I go
Away in easy slumbers.
Ease my sick head,
And make my bed,
Thou power that canst sever
From me this ill,
And quickly still,
Though thou not kill
My fever.

Thou sweetly canst convert the same
From a consuming fire
Into a gentle licking flame,
And make it thus expire.
Then make me weep
My pains asleep;
And give me such reposes
That I, poor I,
May think thereby
I live and die
'Mongst roses.

Fall on me like [a]1 silent dew,
Or like those maiden showers
Which, by the peep of day, do strew
A baptism o'er the flowers
Melt, melt my [pains]2
With thy soft strains;
That, having ease me given,
With full delight
I leave this light,
And take my flight
[For]3 Heaven.

A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!
  Rose plot,
  Fringed pool,
Fern'd grot --
  The veriest school
  Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not --
Not God! in Gardens! when the eve is cool?
  Nay, but I have a sign;
  'Tis very sure God walks in mine.

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.