Sidney Royse Lysaght

“ Gold of the evening, rose of the sunset, twilight grey.
But the way, the way was unknown, and each turn of the way unguessed,
And the spell of the unforeseen transfigured the things we knew,
And filled the whispering woods and the flowers that hung in the dew,
And dreamed on the darkening hills and the roselit cloud in the west.
Twilight fell on the land, and clear against vistas dim
Near things stood large,—the towers of ancient elms{55}
Loomed on glimmering fields, dark keeps of shadowy realms;
And the first stars shone in the eastern sky on the upland’s rim. ”

“ The skies that roofed them, and to link the lone
Illimitable paths of heaven with our own.
But for far heavenly paths we had no care
While still that road before us was untried,
And the world called to us its joys to share,
Its lore to read, its destinies to guide.{52}
Our hearts were filled with a terrestrial pride;
We loved our world and gloried in the fame
Of those who in its service lived and died,
Who fought and laboured to create its claim
Amid the countless spheres to hold an honoured name.
To other gods than ours the past has knelt,
And creed and cause may sever us or bind ”

“ That we, whom Death and Change have shown our fate,
We, the chance progeny of Earth and Time,
Should ask for more than Earth and Time create,
And, goalless and without the strength to climb,{122}
Should dare to climb where we were born to grope;
That we the lowly could conceive the great,
Dream in our dust of destinies sublime,
And link our moments to immortal hope.
No lesson of the brain can teach the soul
That ’twas not born to share
A nobler purpose, a sublimer care
Than those which end in paths without a goal ”

“ Lay dim in the rose of the twilight sky
And shone in the starlight’s gold.
For the meaning that dwells in all things,
The story of every heart,
Is the same,—the infinite story of all
Whereof each telleth a part:—
Tidings mightier, graver,
Than a single voice can utter,
Too deep and solemn a secret
To sleep in a single breast;{103}
But the voice of each makes truer
The voices of all the rest;
And each repeats of the story
The part that it loves the best.
{104} LIFE AND LOVE
Weeds and flowers grow and die ”

“ Weakness, not strength, in numbers, where no cause,
No common faith unites them; now we hear
The sound of the great moving multitude
That marches without goal or leader, nay,
That marches not, but spreads.
What profits it
That man shall gain the world and lose his soul?
What that he conquer nature and enslave
Her forces, if he stands himself a slave
Ruled by his own inventions? What that bread
Be cheaper to the poor, if life itself
Have lost its savour, and the daily toil{75}
Grown so mechanical, themselves become
But parts of the machine they tend? ”

“ We have seen loveliness that shall not pass;
We have beheld immortal destinies;{120}
We have seen Heaven and Hell and joined their strife;
Ay, we whose flesh shall perish as the grass
Have flung the passion of the heart that dies
Into the hope of everlasting life.
Oh, miracle of human sight!
That leaps beyond our earthly prison bars
To wander in the pathways of the stars
Across the lone abysses of the night. ”

“ Our evening and our twilight always lay;
And when the night fell all the unknown stars
Grew homely shining through our window bars.{41}
Now we have fared to the country o’er the hill,
And unknown journeys lie beyond us still;—
Ways unadventured, countless paths to roam,
But none that leads us in the evening home.
Onward, not homeward, some adventure calls
With every dawn, and every evening falls
Over new horizons, wild-rose or grey,
And old stars shining on the unknown way
Strange look and far, not those we saw of old
Safe moored in haven skies above our fold. ”

“ Dull sons of a mechanic age
Who claim but miss the rights of man,—
They have no dreams beyond their cage,
They know not of the haunts of Pan.
Here, wandering through mills and mines
And dreary streets each like the last,
Enclosed by brick horizon lines,
I found an island of the past.{107}
A few sad fields, a few old trees,
In that new world of grime and smoke
Told me the time was springtime; these
Alone remembered and awoke.
And in the grass were stars and bells,
The immemorial blossomings
That spring to greet us from the wells
Of Beauty at the heart of things. ”

“ Dreams of what should be and what might have been,—
If as a crippled battle-ship that sinks,
Flying her fighting colours to the fleet,
We face the end,—is there no fountain-head
Of strength divine from which such strength is fed?
Must not our lives be bound with unseen links
To some great heart that cannot know defeat. ”

“ Ours was a land of rose and grey.
{20} SHELTER AND FELLOWSHIP
In the midst of life unknown,
Spaces boundless, pathways lone,
Earth of things that pass and fade
Homely shelter round us made,—
Dropped a veil of changing light
O’er the changeless infinite,
Over the unfathomed drew
Morning’s gold and noonday’s blue,
Lifted in the evening skies
Rose-illumined boundaries,
Wove the light of moon and stars
Into silver prison-bars.{21}
We forget what deeps we winged
Ere we found our place on earth,
Ere the blue horizons ringed
Sheltered homelands of our birth. ”

“ He offers us the substance of the known,
He asks no faith in the unseen, he prompts
No sacrifice that earns not its reward.
Comfort and wealth he promises to man,
He shows the poor the gold he gave the rich
And bids them take it, and the rich he arms
Against the poor.
How different a world
From that we pictured, when we watched the dawn
Break on the blue horizon of the hills
That ringed our quiet homeland, and we dwelt{74}
Among the scattered friendly folk. Our dreams
Then told us of profounder tides of life,
Nobler activities, more glorious tasks,
Born of the strength of numbers ”

“ No lingering then;—a hundred things,
New schemes, imagined happenings,
Called us away to wood and field—
For any hour of life might yield
Some wonder, some unthought of bliss,
Some miracle we dared not miss.
And gladness, hidden in the springs
Of purpose at the heart of things,{5}
Showed us a world where work was play,
And common labours of the day
Sweet service; but we knew not then
The burdens men have laid on men,—
Nay, only those perennial tasks
Which earth of all her children asks
For fruitfulness ”

“ Here where the stars once watched above the fold,
Still watch the stars, but the sheepfold is empty;
Falls now the rain where the hearth glowed of old.
Here where the leagues of melancholy loughsedge
Moan in the wind round the grey forsaken shore,
Once waved the corn in the mid-month of autumn,
Once sped the dance when the corn was on the floor.
{119} BEYOND THE FARTHEST HORIZON
We have dreamed dreams beyond our comprehending,
Visions too beautiful to be untrue;
We have seen mysteries that yield no clue,
And sought our goals on ways that have no ending. ”

“ But not in flight of thought beyond the stars
Can we escape our mortal prison bars:
There the unfathomable depths remain
Blind alleys of the brain:
The sources of those sudden gleams of light{123}
That merge our finite in the infinite,
We look for there in vain;
For not upon the pathways that are barred
But those left open,—not where the unknown quest
Dismays the soul, but where it offers rest,
Are set those lights that point us heavenward. ”

“ The stars shone over the street where the folk were lingering still;{56}
The stars looked down on the stars in the dark pool under the mill;
The infinite deeps of the heaven were touched with the earth’s repose. ”

“ Impossible, and all becomes a dream;
And from their crazy watch-tower in the vast{121}
Those wild-winged thoughts again to earth descend
To hide from the unfathomed and unknown,
And seek the shelter love has made our own
On homely paths that in a graveyard end. ”

“ And left them bondsmen in temptation’s clutch;
Who ruled by appetites they dared not feed,
And cursed by passions that were meant to bless,
Learnt that to such abstention is decreed
Punishment stern as that which smites excess.{69}
The others no less warm of blood than they,
Like them by duty checked in the pursuit,
Disdained to peer through gates that barred the way,
And feed their fancies on forbidden fruit. ”

“ Still, still to trust the life whence springs our own.{89}
We have beheld the evil and the good,
And know, ourselves, the strength of wrong withstood.
May it not be that God is everywhere
Striving Himself against eternal wrong? ”

“ Had we not known those vanished hours that wove
Of homely human bonds immortal love;
Of flowers, and stars, and woods, and mountain streams,
And things that die, imperishable dreams?
{18} OUR HOMELAND [1]
Ours was a land of green and gold ”

“ Or hid among the stars. That broken road{36}
Taught us the boundaries of our abode,—
The gulf ’twixt heaven and earth. A bridge unseen
The hope or faith of man might build between
Our home on earth and some celestial shore;
But ’twas for us no longer to explore
The paths of brave adventure which we trod
In childhood, to the unknown lands of God.
{37} YOUTH
The child is not the dreamer ”

“ We have enjoyed our tour among Mr. Lysaght’s perplexities in no half-hearted fashion.”
Crown 8vo. 6s.
HER MAJESTY’S REBELS
MORNING POST.—“A most remarkable book, and no one on the look-out for the best in contemporary fiction can afford to miss it.”
WORLD.—“Rare and charming novel.... The story is intensely interesting, and every individual is alive and appealing.”
ACADEMY.—“To find fault with Her Majesty’s Rebels is difficult, and to praise it worthily is not easy; few Irish books of such good parts have come into our hands since Carleton’s days.” ”