# The Complete Poems of Francis Ledwidge/Songs of Peace/A Dream of Artemis

AT HOME
A DREAM OF ARTEMIS
There was soft beauty on the linnet's tongue To see the rainbow's coloured bands arch wide. The thunder darted his red fangs among South mountains, but the East was like a bride Drest for the altar at her mother's door Weeping between two loves. The fields were pied With May's munificence of flowers, that wore The fashion of the days when Eve was young, God's kirtles, ere the first sweet summer died. The blackbird in a thorn of waving white Sang bouquets of small tunes that bid me turn From twilight wanderings thro' some old delight ​I heard in my far memory making mourn. Such music fills me with a joy half pain, And beats a track across my life I spurn In sober moments. Ah, this wandering brain Could play its hurdy-gurdy all the night To vagrant joys of days beyond the bourn.
I heard the river warble sweetly nigh To meet the warm salt tide below the weir, And saw a coloured line of cows pass by,— And then a voice said quickly, "Iris here!" "What message now hath Hera?" then I woke, An exile in Arcadia, and a spear Flashed by me, and ten nymphs fleet-footed broke Out of the coppice with a silver cry, Into the bow of lights to disappear. ​For one blue minute then there was no sound Save water-noise, slow round a rushy bend, And bird-delight, and ripples on the ground Of windy flowers that swelling would ascend The coloured hill and break all beautiful And, falling backwards, to the woods would send The full tide of their love. What soft moons pull Their moving fragrance? did I ask, and found Sad Io in far Egypt met a friend.— It was my body thought so, far away In the grey future, not the wild bird tied That is the wandering soul. Behind the day We may behold thee, soft one, hunted wide By the loud gadfly; but the truant soul Knows thee before thou lay by night's dark side, Wed to the dimness; long before its dole ​Was meted it, to be thus pound in clay That daubs its whiteness and offends its pride.
There were loud questions in the rainbow's end, And hurried answers, and a sound of spears. And through the yellow blaze I saw one bend Down on a trembling white knee, and her tears Fell down in globes of light, and her small mouth Was filled up with a name unspoken. Years Of waiting love, and all their long, long drought Of kisses parched her lips, and did she spend Her eyes blue candles searching thro' her fears. "She hath loved Ganymede, the stolen boy." Said one, and then another, "Let us sing To Zeus that he may give her living joy Above Olympus, where the cool hill-spring ​Of Lethe bubbles up to bathe the heart Sorrow's lean ringers bruised. There eagles wing To eyries in the stars, and when they part Their broad dark wings a wind is born to buoy The bee home heavy in the far evening."
HYMN TO ZEUS
"God, whose kindly hand doth sow The rainbow showers on hill and lawn, To make the young sweet grasses grow And fill the udder of the fawn. Whose light is life of leaf and flower, And all the colours of the birds. Whose song goes on from hour to hour Upon the river's liquid words. ​Reach out a golden beam of thine And touch her pain. Your finger-tips Do make the violets' blue eclipse Like milk upon a daisy shine.
God, who lights the little stars, And over night the white dew spills. Whose hand doth move the season's cars And clouds that mock our pointed hills. Whose bounty fills the cow-trod wold, And fills with bread the warm brown sod. Who brings us sleep, where we grow old 'Til sleep and age together nod.
Reach out a beam and touch the pain A heart has oozed thro' all the years. Your pity dries the morning's tears And fills the world with joy again!" ​The rainbow's lights were shut, and all the maids Stood round the sad nymph in a snow-white ring, She rising spoke, "A blue and soft light bathes Me to the fingers. Lo, I upward swing!" And round her fell a mantle of blue light. "Watch for me on the forehead of evening." And lifting beautiful went out of sight. And all the flowers flowed backward from the glades, An ebb of colours redolent of Spring.
Beauty and Love are sisters of the heart, Love has no voice, and Beauty whispered song. Now in my own, drawn silently apart Love looked, and Beauty sang. I felt a strong ​Pulse on my wrist, a feeling like a pain In my quick heart, for Love with gazes long Was worshipping at Artemis, now lain Among the heaving flowers ... I longed to dart And fold her to my breast, nor saw the wrong. She lay there, a tall beauty by her spear, Her kirtle falling to her soft round knee. Her hair was like the day when evening's near, And her moist mouth might tempt the golden bee. Smile's creases ran from dimples pink and deep, And when she raised her arms I loved to see The white mounds of her muscles. Gentle sleep Threatened her far blue looks. The noisy weir Fell into a low murmuring lullaby. ​And then the flowers came back behind the heel Of hunted Io: she, poor maid, had fear Wide in her eyes looking half back to steal A glimpse of the loud gadfly fiercely near. In her right hand she held a slanting light, And in her left her train. Artemis here Raised herself on her palms, and took a white Horn from her side and blew a silver peal 'Til three hounds from the coppice did appear.
The white nine left the spaces of flowers, and now Went calling thro' the wood the hunter's call. Young echoes sleeping in the hollow bough Took up the shouts and handed them to all Their sisters of the crags, 'til all the day Was filled with voices loud and musical. ​I followed them across a tangled way 'Til the red deer broke out and took the brow Of a wide hill in bounces like a ball. Beside swift Artemis I joined the chase; We roused up kine and scattered fleecy flocks; Crossed at a mill a swift and bubbly race; Scaled in a wood of pine the knotty rocks; Past a grey vision of a valley town; Past swains at labour in their coloured frocks; Once saw a boar upon a windy down; Once heard a cradle in a lonely place, And saw the red flash of a frightened fox.
We passed a garden where three maids in blue Were talking of a queen a long time dead. We caught a green glimpse of the sea: then thro' A town all hills; now round a wood we sped ​And killed our quarry in his native lair. Then Artemis spun round to me and said, "Whence come you?" and I took her long damp hair And made a ball of it, and said, "Where you Are midnight's dreams of love." She dropped her head, No word she spoke, but, panting in her side, I heard her heart. The trees were all at peace, And lifting slowly on the grey evetide A large and lovely star. Then to release Her hair, my hand dropped to her girded waist And lay there shyly. "O my love, the lease Of your existence is for ever: taste No less with me the love of earth," I cried. "Though for so short a while on lands and seas ​Our mortal hearts know beauty, and overblow, And we are dust upon some passing wind, Dust and a memory. But for you the snow That so long cloaks the mountains to the knees Is no more than a morning. It doth go And summer comes, and leaf upon the trees: Still you are fair and young, and nothing find In all man's story that seems long ago. I have not loved on Earth the strife for gold, Nor the great name that makes immortal man, But all that struggle upward to behold What still is left of Beauty undisgraced, The snowdrop at the heel of winter cold And shivering, and the wayward cuckoo chased ​By lingering March, and, in the thunder's van The poor lambs merry on the meagre wold, By-ways and cast-off things that lie therein, Old boots that trod the highways of the world, The schoolboy's broken hoop, the battered bin That heard the ragman's story, blackened places Where gipsies camped and circuses made din, Fast water and the melancholy traces Of sea tides, and poor people madly whirled Up, down, and through the black retreats of sin. These things a god might love, and stooping bless With benedictions of eternal song.— ​But I have not loved Artemis the less For loving these, but deem it noble love To sing of live or dead things in distress And wake memorial memories above.
Such is the soul that comes to plead with you Oh, Artemis, to tend you in your needs. At mornings I will bring you bells of dew From honey places, and wild fish from streams Flowing in secret places. I will brew Sweet wine of alder for your evening dreams, And pipe you music in the dusky reeds When the four distances give up their blue.
And when the white procession of the stars Crosses the night, and on their tattered wings, Above the forest, cry the loud night-jars, We'll hunt the stag upon the mountain-side, ​Slipping like light between the shadow bars 'Til burst of dawn makes every distance wide. Oh, Artemis—what grief the silence brings! I hear the rolling chariot of Mars!"