"Lazily She Lingered Cradling a Dream"

In the sleepy forest where the bluebells

Smouldered dimly through the night,

Dermuid saw the leaves like glad green waters

At daybreak flowing into light,

And exultant from his love upspringing

Strode with the sun upon the height.

Glittering on the hilltops

He saw the sunlit rain

Drift as around the spindle

A silver-threaded skein,

And the brown mist whitely breaking

Where arrowy torrents reached the plain.

A maddened moon

Leapt in his heart and whirled the crimson tide

Of his blood until it sang aloud of battle

Where the querns of dark death grind,

Till it sang and scorned in pride

Love—the froth-pale blossom of the boglands

That flutters on the waves of the wandering wind.

Flower-quiet in the rush-strewn sheiling

At the dawntime Grainne lay,

While beneath the birch-topped roof the sunlight

Groped upon its way

And stooped above her sleeping white body

With a wasp-yellow ray.

The hot breath of the day awoke her,

And wearied of its heat

She wandered out by the noisy elms

On the cool mossy peat,

Where the shadowed leaves like pecking linnets

Nodded around her feet.

She leaned and saw in the pale-grey waters,

By twisted hazel boughs,

Her lips like heavy drooping poppies

In a rich redness drowse,

Then swallow—lightly touched the ripples

Until her wet lips were

Burning as ripened rowan berries

Through the white winter air.

Lazily she lingered

Gazing so,

As the slender osiers

Where the waters flow,

As green twings of sally

Swaying to and fro.

Sleepy moths fluttered

In her dark eyes,

And her lips grew quieter

Than lullabies.

Swaying with the reedgrass

Over the stream

Lazily she lingered

Cradling a dream.

The Awakening of Dermuid by  Austin Clarke