Poem by William Watson

Ireland

In the wild and lurid desert, in the thunder-travelled ways,
'Neath the night that ever hurries to the dawn that still delays,
There she clutches at illusions, and she seeks a phantom goal
With the unattaining passion that consumes the unsleeping soul:
And calamity enfolds her, like the shadow of a ban,
And the niggardness of Nature makes the misery of man:
And in vain the hand is stretched to lift her, stumbling in the gloom,
While she follows the mad fen-fire that conducts her to her doom. 

1. On Landor's “Hellenics”
2. Scentless Flow'rs I Bring Thee
3. In Laleham Churchyard
4. Mensis Lacrimarum
5. The Blind Summit

Dora Sigerson Shorter Ireland ("'Twas the dream of a God")

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