I admit the briar Entangled in my hair Did not injure me; My blenching and trembling, Nothing but dissembling,

WHAT if I bade you leave The cavern of the mind? There’s better exercise In the sunlight and wind. I never bade you go

The old priest Peter Gilligan Was weary night and day For half his flock were in their b… Or under green sods lay. Once, while he nodded in a chair

MAY God be praised for woman That gives up all her mind, A man may find in no man A friendship of her kind That covers all he has brought

What’s riches to him That has made a great peacock With the pride of his eye? The wind-beaten, stone-grey, And desolate Three Rock

I found that ivory image there Dancing with her chosen youth, But when he wound her coal-black h… As though to strangle her, no scre… Or bodily movement did I dare,

Acquaintance; companion; One dear brilliant woman; The best-endowed, the elect, All by their youth undone, All, all, by that inhuman

WHY should not old men be mad? Some have known a likely lad That had a sound fly-fisher’s wris… Turn to a drunken journalist; A girl that knew all Dante once

SHE might, so noble from head To great shapely knees The long flowing line, Have walked to the altar Through the holy images

I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. I have passed with a nod of the he…

Between extremities Man runs his course; A brand, or flaming breath. Comes to destroy All those antinomies

THIS night has been so strange t… As if the hair stood up on my head… From going-down of the sun I have… That women laughing, or timid or w… In rustle of lace or silken stuff,

‘Those Platonists are a curse,’ h… ‘God’s fire upon the wane, A diagram hung there instead, More women born than men.’