Poems MacCarthy, Florence Denis

186
Now lift their marble shoulders o'er
The rippling glass, or sink with fear,
As if the wind approaching near
Were some wild wooer from the shore.
Or else the parent turns to these,
The younglings born beneath her eye,
And hangs the baby-buds close by,
In wind-rocked cradles from the trees.
And as the branches fall and rise,
Each leafy-folded swathe expands:
And now are spread their tiny hands,
And now are seen their starry eyes.
But soon the feast concludes the day,
And yonder in the sun-warmed dell,
The happy circle meet to tell
Their labours since the bygone May.
A bright-faced youth is first to raise
His cheerful voice above the rest,
Who bears upon his hardy breast
A golden star with silver rays:[109]
Worthily won, for he had been
A traveller in many a land,
And with his slender staff in hand
Had wandered over many a green:
Had seen the Shepherd Sun unpen
Heaven's fleecy flocks, and let them stray
Over the high-pealed Himalay,
Till night shut up the fold again:
Had sat upon a mossy ledge,
O'er Baiae in the morning's beams,
Or where the sulphurous crater steams
Had hung suspended from the edge: