Glamour

As I walked at dusk in Eyré Square

Of a sudden I became aware

Of one who walked beside me there.

I could not hear his footfall's beat,

He spoke no word my soul to greet,

But I felt his mastering curious stare;

And when I sought his eyes to meet

In the infrequent places where

The dingy dust-veiled street-lamps flare,

He wrapped him in the misty glare

Or hid in clouds of phantom sleer.

He had corn-coloured, sea-bleached hair,

He had pampooties on his feet,

His shaking fingers lithe and spare

Moved like long wind-waves in tall wheat,

And at the corner of the street

He sang a stave so piercing fair

It stung like arrows the thin air.

"A faery wind against the sheet,

And opal glimmers on the sea,

And far-strayed green-lipped mystery!

What thing in your dull world of care

Is wiser-hearted and more sweet

Than the wind of faery in the sheet,

The voices rocking on the sea?

Sure that's the ship for you and me

Come sad-eyed poet if you dare!"

The wind whirled over a breached wall.

I turned. He was not there at all

But a drugged dream he'd laid upon

The grass, the statue, and the gun,

The silly solemn houses ranged

About the square.

All things were changed

With some Atlantic magic dim

And in enchantment seemed to swim.

I thought a green bewitchment splashed

Along the street, and pale gleams flashed

Out of the clouded luring west

A Danaan dream into my breast.

And through all weathers and all climes

I've chased that spinner of quaint rhymes;

I've followed through sharp whirling sands

The waving of his fading hands;

And seen his antic shadow pass

The railings of St. Nicholas;

And heard his thin and silver laugh

Along the Claddagh, on the wharf,

Round foam-bespattered ledges drear

Of Inishmaan and Inisheer,

And in and out the standing stones

That guard the Firbolg's powdered bones;

But never find that hooker fleet

With glamoured wind against the sheet,

Nor that strange Aran Islander

Who walked with me in Eyré Square,

Through all days in the rainy year

Or when the shy stars blink and peer

I seek his shadow up and down

The mouldering streets of Galway Town.