From southern Iceland sweeps the cool sea breeze
To fan the earth and bless the suffering trees,
And bears dense clouds with bursting weight of rain
To soothe with moisture all the parching pain.
Thrice-welcomed clouds from seaward settle down
O’er thirsting Nature. Now the trees’ dull brown
Is washed away, and leaflet buds appear,
And youngling undergrowth, and far and near
The bush is whispering in her pent-up glee,
As myriad roots bestir them to be free,
And drink the soaking moisture. Then bright heaven
Shows clear, as inland are the spent clouds driven —
And oh! that arch, that sky’s intensate hue!
That deep, God-painted, unimagined blue
Through which the golden sun now smiling sails.
And sends his love to fructify the vales
That late he seemed to curse.
Earth throbs and heaves
With pregnant prescience of life and leaves.
The shadows darken neath the tall trees’ screen.
While round their stems the rank and velvet green
Of undergrowth is deeper still. And there,
Within the double shade and steaming air,
The scarlet palm has fixed its noxious root,
And hangs the glorious poison of its fruit;
The steel-blue silent birds take rapid flight
From earth to tree and tree to earth; and there
The crimson-plumaged parrot cleaves the air
Like flying fire, and huge brown owls awake
To watch, far down, the stealing carpet snake,
Fresh-skinned and glowing in his changing dyes.
With evil wisdom in the cruel eyes
That glint like gems as o’er his head flits by
The blue-black armour of the Emperor-fly.
High overhead is colour: round and round
The towering gums and tuads, closely wound
Like cables, creep the climbers to the sun,
And over all the reaching branches run
And hang, and still send shoots that climb and wind
Till every arm and spray and leaf is twined.
And miles of trees, like brethren joined in love.
Are drawn and laced. Around them and above.
When all is knit, the creeper rests for days
As gathering might; and then, one blinding blaze
Of very glory sends, in wealth and strength,
Of scarlet flowers o’er the forest’s length.
And all the humid earth displays its powers
Of prayer, with incense from the hearts of flowers
That load the air with beauty and with wine
Of mingled colour, as with one design
Of making there a carpet to be trod
In woven splendour, by the feet of God.
And in the stranger’s heart the thoughts grew deep
With listening to the solemn rustling sweep
From wings of silence, and the earth’s great psalm
Intoned forever by the forest’s calm.
From: O’Reilly, John Boyle, Selected Poems, 1913, P. J. Kenedy & Sons: New York, pp. 61-62.
(https://archive.org/details/PoemsJohnBoyleOReilly/)
Date: 1873 (original); 1913 (excerpt)
By: John Boyle O’Reilly (1844-1890)
From Troubles of The World 