New Poems (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SAINT BRANDAN. O AINT Brandan sails the northern main; The brotherhoods of saints are glad. He greets them once, he sails again. So late !?such storms!?The Saint is mad ! He heard across the howling seas Chime convent bells on wintry nights, He saw on spray-swept Hebrides Twinkle the monastery lights; But north, still north, Saint Brandan steer'd; And now no bells, no convents more! The hurtling Polar lights are near'd, The sea without a human shore. At last?(it was the Christmas night, Stars shone after a day of storm)? He sees float past an iceberg white, And on it?Christ!?a living form ! That furtive mien, that scowling eye, Of hair that red and tufted fell It is?Oh, where shall Brandan fly The traitor Judas, out of hell! Palsied with terror, Brandan sate; The moon was bright, the iceberg near. He hears a voice sigh humbly: " Wait! By high permission I am here. " One moment wait, thou holy man! On earth my crime, my death, they knew; My name is under all men's ban; Ah, tell them of my respite too ! "Tell them, one blessed Christmas night? (It was the first after I came, Breathing self-murder, frenzy, spite, To rue my guilt in endless flame)? "I felt, as I in torment lay 'Mid the souls plagued by heavenly power, An angel touch mine arm, and say: Go hence, and cool thyself an hour ! "' Ah, whence this mercy, Lord ?' I said. The Leper recollect, said he, Who ask'd the passers-by for aid, In Joppa, and thy charity. " Then I remember'd how I went, In Joppa, through the public street, One morn, when the sirocco spent Its storms of dust, with burning heat; "And in the street a Leper sate, Shivering with fever, naked, old; Sand raked his sores from heel to pate, The hot wind fever'd him five-fold. " He gazed upon me as I pass'd...