Book III

Fled foam underneath us, and around us, a wandering and milky smoke,High as the saddle girth, covering away from our glances the tide;And those that fled, and that followed, from thefoam-pale distance broke;The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their faces, and sighed.

I mused on the chase with the Fenians, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair,And never a song sang Niam, and over my finger-tipsCame now the sliding of tears and sweeping of mist-cold hair,And now the warmth of sighs, and after the quiver of lips.

Were we days long or hours long in riding, when rolled in a grisly peace,An isle lay level before us, with dripping hazel and oak?And we stood on a sea's edge we saw not; for whiterthan new-washed fleeceFled foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke.

And we rode on the plains of the sea's edge; the sea's edgebarren and gray,Gray sand on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten awayLike an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.

But the trees grew taller and closer, immense in their wrinkling bark;Dropping; a murmurous dropping; old silence and that one sound;For no live creatures lived there, no weasels moved in the dark:Long sighs arose in our spirits, beneath us bubbled the ground.

And the ears of the horse went sinking away in the hollow night,For, as drift from a sailor slow drowning the gleamsof the world and the sun,Ceased on our hands and our faces, on hazel and oak leaf, the light,And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the world was one.

Till the horse gave a whinny; for, cumbrous with stemsof the hazel and oak,A valley flowed down from his hoofs, and there in the long grass lay,Under the starlight and shadow, a monstrous slumbering folk,Their naked and gleaming bodies poured out and heaped in the way.

And by them were arrow and war-axe, arrow and shield and blade;And dew-blanched horns, in whose hollow a child of three years oldCould sleep on a couch of rushes, and all inwrought and inlaid,And more comely than man can make them with bronze and silver and gold.

And each of the huge white creatures was huger than fourscore men;The tops of their ears were feathered, their hands werethe claws of birds,And, shaking the plumes of the grasses and the leaves of the mural glen,The breathing came from those bodies, long-warless,grown whiter than curds.

The wood was so spacious above them, that He who had stars for His flocksCould fondle the leaves with His fingers, nor go fromHis dew-cumbered skies;So long were they sleeping, the owls had builded their nestsin their locks,Filling the fibrous dimness with long generations of eyes.

And over the limbs and the valley the slow owls wandered and came,Now in a place of star-fire, and now in a shadow place wide;And the chief of the huge white creatures, his kneesin the soft star-flame,Lay loose in a place of shadow: we drew the reins by his side.

Golden the nails of his bird-claws, flung loosely along the dim ground;In one was a branch soft-shining, with bells more many than sighs,In midst of an old man's bosom; owls ruffling and pacing around,Sidled their bodies against him, filling the shade with their eyes.

And my gaze was thronged with the sleepers; no,not since the world began,In realms where the handsome were many, nor in glamours by demons flung,Have faces alive with such beauty been known to the salt eye of man,Yet weary with passions that faded when the seven-fold seas were young.

And I gazed on the bell-branch, sleep's forebear,far sung by the Sennachies.I saw how those slumberers, grown weary, there camping in grasses deep,Of wars with the wide world and pacing the shores of the wandering seas,Laid hands on the bell-branch and swayed it, and fed of unhuman sleep.

Snatching the horn of Niam, I blew a lingering note;Came sound from those monstrous sleepers, a sound likethe stirring of flies.He, shaking the fold of his lips, and heaving the pillar of his throat,Watched me with mournful wonder out of the wells of his eyes.

I cried, "Come out of the shadow, king of the nails of gold!"And tell of your goodly household and the goodly works of your hands,"That we may muse in the starlight and talk of the battles of old;"Your questioner, Usheen, is worthy, he comes from the Fenian lands."

Half open his eyes were, and held me, dull withthe smoke of their dreams;His lips moved slowly in answer, no answer out of them came;Then he swayed in his fingers the bell-branch, slow droppinga sound in faint streamsSofter than snow-flakes in April and piercing the marrow like flame.

Wrapt in the wave of that music, with weariness more than of earth,The moil of my centuries filled me; and gone like a sea-covered stoneWere the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the memoriesof the whole of my mirth,And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.

In the roots of the grasses, the sorrels, I laid my body as low;And the pearl-pale Niam lay by me, her brow on the midst of my breast;And the horse was gone in the distance, and years after years 'gan flow;Square leaves of the ivy moved over us, binding us down to our rest.

And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot;How the fetlocks drip blood in the battle, whenthe fallen on fallen lie rolled;How the falconer follows the falcon in the weeds of the heron's plot,And the names of the demons whose hammers made armour for Conhor of old.

And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot;That the spear-shaft is made out of ashwood, the shieldout of ozier and hide;How the hammers spring on the anvil, on the spearhead's burning spot;How the slow, blue-eyed oxen of Finn low sadly at evening tide.

But in dreams, mild man of the croziers, driving the dustwith their throngs,Moved round me, of seamen or landsmen, all who are winter tales;Came by me the kings of the Red Branch, with roaringof laughter and songs,Or moved as they moved once, love-making or piercingthe tempest with sails.

Came Blanid, Mac Nessa, tall Fergus who feastward of old time slunk,Cook Barach, the traitor; and warward, the spittleon his beard never dry,Dark Balor, as old as a forest, car borne, his mighty head sunkHelpless, men lifting the lids of his weary and death-making eye.

And by me, in soft red raiment, the Fenians moved in loud streams,And Grania, walking and smiling, sewed with her needle of bone,So lived I and lived not, so wrought I and wrought not,with creatures of dreams,In a long iron sleep, as a fish in the water goes dumb as a stone.

At times our slumber was lightened. When the sun was on silver or gold;When brushed with the wings of the owls, in the dimnessthey love going by;When a glow-worm was green on a grass leaf, lured fromhis lair in the mould;Half wakening, we lifted our eyelids, and gazed on the grass with a sigh.

So watched I when, man of the croziers, at the heel of a century fell,Weak, in the midst of the meadow, from his miles in the midst of the air,A starling like them that forgathered 'neath a moon wakingwhite as a shell.When the Fenians made foray at morning with Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair.

I awoke: the strange horse without summons out of the distance ran,Thrusting his nose to my shoulder; he knew in his bosom deepThat once more moved in my bosom the ancient sadness of man,And that I would leave the immortals, their dimness,their dews dropping sleep.

O, had you seen beautiful Niam grow white as the waters are white,Lord of the croziers, you even had lifted your hands and wept:But, the bird in my fingers, I mounted, remembering alone that delightOf twilight and slumber were gone, and that hoofs impatiently stept.

I cried, "O Niam! O white one! if only a twelve-houred day,"I must gaze on the beard of Finn, and move where the old men and young"In the Fenians' dwellings of wattle lean on the chessboards and play,"Ah, sweet to me now were even bald Conan's slanderous tongue!

"Like me were some galley forsaken far off in Meridian isle."Remembering its long-oared companions, sails turningto thread-bare rags;"No more to crawl on the seas with long oars mile after mile,"But to be amid shooting of flies and flowering of rushes and flags."

Their motionless eyeballs of spirits grown mild with mysterious thoughtWatched her those seamless faces from the valley's glimmering girth;As she murmured, "O wandering Usheen, the strength of thebell-branch is naught,"For there moves alive in your fingers the fluttering sadness of earth.

"Then go through the lands in the saddle and see what the mortals do,"And softly come to your Niam over the tops of the tide;"But weep for your Niam, O Usheen, weep; for if only your shoe"Brush lightly as haymouse earth's pebbles, you will comeno more to my side.

"O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?""I saw from a distant saddle; from the earth she made her moan;"I would die like a small withered leaf in the autumn,for breast unto breast"We shall mingle no more, nor our gazes empty their sweetness lone.

"In the isles of the farthest seas where only the spirits come."Were the winds less soft than the breath of a pigeonwho sleeps on her nest,"Nor lost in the star-fires and odours the sound of the sea's vague drum?"O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?"

The wailing grew distant; I rode by the woods of the wrinkling bark,Where ever is murmurous dropping, old silence and that one sound;For no live creatures live there, no weasels move in the dark;In a reverie forgetful of all things, over the bubbling ground.

And I rode by the plains of the sea's edge, where all is barren and gray,Gray sands on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away,Like an army of old men lounging for rest from the moan of the seas.

And the winds made the sands on the sea's edge turning and turning go,As my mind made the names of the Fenians. Far from the hazel and oak,I rode away on the surges, where, high as the saddle bow,Fled foam underneath me, and round me, a wandering and milky smoke.

Long fled the foam-flakes around me, the winds fled out of the vast,Snatching the bird in secret; nor knew I, embosomed apart,When they froze the cloth on my body like armour riveted fast,For Remembrance, lifting her leanness, keened in the gates of my heart.

Till fattening the winds of the morning, an odour of new-mown hayCame, and my forehead fell low, and my tears like berries fell down;Later a sound came, half lost in the sound of a shore far away,From the great grass-barnacle calling, and later the shore-weeds brown.

If I were as I once was, the strong hoofs crushingthe sand and the shells,Coming out of the sea as the dawn comes, a chaunt of love on my lips,Not coughing, my head on my knees, and praying, and wroth with the bells,I would leave no saint's head on his body from Rachlin to Bera of ships.

Making way from the kindling surges, I rode on a bridle-pathMuch wondering to see upon all hands, of wattles and woodwork made,Your bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the rath,And a small and a feeble populace stooping with mattock and spade.

Or weeding or ploughing with faces a-shining with much-toil wet;While in this place and that place, with bodies unglorious,their chieftains stood,Awaiting in patience the straw-death, croziered one, caught in your net:Went the laughter of scorn from my mouth like the roaringof wind in a wood.

And because I went by them so huge and so speedy with eyes so bright,Came after the hard gaze of youth, or an old man lifted his head:And I rode and I rode, and I cried out, "The Fenians huntwolves in the night,So sleep thee by daytime." A voice cried, "The Feniansa long time are dead."

A whitebeard stood hushed on the pathway, the fleshof his face as dried grass,And in folds round his eyes and his mouth, he sadas a child without milk;And the dreams of the islands were gone, and I knew howmen sorrow and pass,And their hound, and their horse, and their love, and their eyesthat glimmer like silk.

And wrapping my face in my hair, I murmured, "In old age they ceased";And my tears were larger than berries, and I murmured,"Where white clouds lie spread"On Crevroe or broad Knockfefin, with many of old they feast"On the floors of the gods." He cried, "No, the godsa long time are dead."

And lonely and longing for Niam, I shivered and turned me about,The heart in me longing to leap like a grasshopper into her heart;I turned and rode to the westward, and followed the sea's old shoutTill I saw where Maive lies sleeping till starlight and midnight part.

And there at the foot of the mountain, two carried a sack full of sand,They bore it with staggering and sweating, but fellwith their burden at length:Leaning down from the gem-studded saddle, I flung itfive yards with my hand,With a sob for men waxing so weakly, a sob for the Fenian's old strength.

The rest you have heard of, O croziered one; how, when divided the girth,I fell on the path, and the horse went away like a summer fly;And my years three hundred fell on me, and I rose,and walked on the earth,A creeping old man, full of sleep, with the spittleon his beard never dry.

How the men of the sand-sack showed me a church with its belfry in air;Sorry place, where for swing of the war-axe in my dim eyesthe crozier gleams;What place have Caolte and Conan, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair?Speak, you too are old with your memories, an old man surroundedwith dreams.