Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ST. CAMPION AND THE MAID OF WICKLOW, by NEWMAN HOWARD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ST. CAMPION AND THE MAID OF WICKLOW, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: A highland glen and one white cottage there
Last Line: "drink! You are thirsty, climbing all the day."
Subject(s): Dreams; Flowers; Heaven; Soul; Nightmares; Paradise


A HIGHLAND glen and one white cottage there:
He watched it from the hills, and when the sun
Sank, and the rocks' recumbent majesty
Rolled in dark billows to the distant sea,
Dropping toward the vale he knew that one
Walked in the fragrant dusk divinely fair,
His soul's white wonder for eternity.

Well shapen, like a goddess, where the brook
Sang in the twilight, silently she moved;
The wild flowers sleeping on the mountain side,
And that wan lake the Titan's slumbering bride
Loved her, and he too looked on her and loved:
Oh, and her deep eyes answered him that look!
'Twere well if in that rapture he had died!

They spoke; she gave him water from the stream:
"Drink! you are thirsty climbing all the day!"
Her white hands drew the wave and filled the bowl;
He drank, and thought Heaven dropped an aureole
Upon her brow, and all the girl's array
Shone like the Holy Virgin's : so his dream
Apparelled her, and so within his soul

This virgin bore the Christ. Now fifteen years
His feet clomb other rocks, and grew full sore,
But stumbled not nor often went astray;
For that one draught upheld him all the way.
Ah, when he ranged the lonely hills no more,
But blindly groped to cross the glen of tears
I wonder, did she touch his lips and say,
"Drink! you are thirsty, climbing all the day."





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