Remembering how the Fenians stept
Along the blood-bedabbled plains,
Equal to good or grievous chance:
Thereon young Niam softly came
And caught my hands, but spake no word
Save only many times my name,
In murmurs, like a frighted bird.
We passed by woods, and lawns of clover,
And found the horse and bridled him,
For we knew well the old was over.
I heard one say "His eyes grow dim
"With all the ancient sorrow of men";
And wrapped in dreams rode out again
With hoofs of the pale findrinny
Over the glimmering purple sea:
Under the golden evening light.
The immortals moved among the fountains
By rivers and the woods' old night;
Some danced like shadows on the mountains,
Some wandered ever hand in hand,
Or sat in dreams on the pale strand;
Each forehead like an obscure star
Bent down above each hooked knee:
And sang, and with a dreamy gaze
Watched where the sun in a saffron blaze
Was slumbering half in the sea ways;
And, as they sang, the painted birds
Kept time with their bright wings and feet;
Like drops of honey came their words,
But fainter than a young lamb's bleat.
"An old man stirs the fire to a blaze,
"In the house of a child, of a friend, of a brother
"He has over-lingered his welcome; the days,
"Grown desolate, whisper and sigh to each other;
"He hears the storm in the chimney above,
"And bends to the fire and shakes with the cold,
"While his heart still dreams of battle and love,
"And the cry of the hounds on the hills of old.
"But we are apart in the grassy places,
"Where care cannot trouble the least of our days,
"Or the softness of youth be gone from our faces,
"Or love's first tenderness die in our gaze.
"The hare grows old as she plays in the sun
"And gazes around her with eyes of brightness;
"Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done
"She limps along in an aged whiteness;
"A storm of birds in the Asian trees
"Like tulips in the air a-winging,
"And the gentle waves of the summer seas,
"That raise their heads and wander singing.
"Must murmur at last 'Unjust, unjust';
"And 'My speed is a weariness,' falters the mouse
"And the kingfisher turns to a ball of dust,
"And the roof falls in of his tunnelled house.
"But the love-dew dims our eyes till the day
"When God shall come from the sea with a sigh
"And bid the stars drop down from the sky,
"And the moon like a pale rose wither away."
BOOK II
Now, man of croziers, shadows called our names
And then away, away, like whirling flames;
And now fled by, mist-covered, without sound,
The youth and lady and the deer and hound;
"Gaze no more on the phantoms," Niam said,
And kissed my eyes, and, swaying her bright head
And her bright body, sang of faery and man
Before God was or my old line began;
Wars shadowy, vast, exultant; faeries of old
Who wedded men with rings of Druid gold;
And how those lovers never turn their eyes
Upon the life that fades and flickers and dies,
But love and kiss on dim shores far away
Rolled round with music of the sighing spray:
But sang no more, as when, like a brown bee
That has drunk full, she crossed the misty sea
With me in her white arms a hundred years
Before this day; for now the fall of tears
Troubled her song.
I do not know if days
Or hours passed by, yet hold the morning rays
Shone many times among the glimmering flowers
Woven into her hair, before dark towers
Rose in the darkness, and the white surf gleamed
About them; and the horse of faery screamed
And shivered, knowing the Isle of many Fears,
Nor ceased until white Niam stroked his ears
And named him by sweet names.
A foaming tide
Whitened afar with surge, fan-formed and wide,
Burst from a great door marred by many a blow
From mace and sword and pole-axe, long ago
When gods and giants warred. We rode between
The seaweed-covered pillars, and the green
And surging phosphorus alone gave light
On our dark pathway, till a countless flight
Of moonlit steps glimmered; and left and right
Dark statues glimmered over the pale tide
Upon dark thrones. Between the lids of one
The imaged meteors had flashed and run
And had disported in the stilly jet,
And the fixed stars had dawned and shone and set,
Since God made Time and Death and Sleep: the other
Stretched his long arm to where, a misty smother,
The stream churned, churned, and churned—his lips apart,
As though he told his never slumbering heart
Of every foamdrop on its misty way:
Tying the horse to his vast foot that lay
Half in the unvesselled sea, we climbed the stairs
And climbed so long, I thought the last steps were
Hung from the morning star; when these mild words
Fanned the delighted air like wings of birds:
"My brothers spring out of their beds at morn,
"A-murmur like young partridge: with loud horn
"They chase the noontide deer;
"And when the dew-drowned stars hang in the air
"Look to long fishing-lines, or point and pare
"An ash-wood hunting spear.
"O sigh, O fluttering sigh, be kind to me;
"Flutter along the froth lips of the sea,
"And shores, the froth lips wet:
"And stay a little while, and bid them weep:
"Ah, touch their blue-veined eyelids if they sleep,
"And shake their coverlet.
"When you have told how I weep endlessly,
"Flutter along the froth lips of the sea
"And home to me again,
"And in the shadow of my hair lie hid,
"And tell me how you came to one unbid,
"The saddest of all men."
A maiden with soft eyes like funeral tapers,
And face that seemed wrought out of moonlit vapours,
And a sad mouth, that fear made tremulous
As any ruddy moth, looked down on us;
And she with a wave-rusted chain was tied
To two old eagles, full of ancient pride,
That with dim eyeballs stood on either side.
Few feathers were on their dishevelled wings,
For their dim minds were with the ancient things.
"I bring deliverance," pearl-pale Niam said.
"Neither the living, nor the unlabouring dead,
"Nor the high gods who never lived, may fight
"My enemy and hope; demons for fright
"Jabber and scream about him in the night;
"For he is strong and crafty as the seas
"That sprang under the Seven Hazel Trees,
"And I must needs endure and hate and weep,
"Until the gods and demons drop asleep,