# The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems/The Wanderings of Oisin

Book I
S. Patrick. You who are bent, and bald, and blind, With a heavy heart and a wandering mind, Have known three centuries, poets sing, Of dalliance with a demon thing.
Oisin. Sad to remember, sick with years, The swift innumerable spears, The horsemen with their floating hair, And bowls of barley, honey, and wine, Those merry couples dancing in tune, And the white body that lay by mine; But the tale, though words be lighter than air. Must live to be old like the wandering moon.
Caoilte, and Conan, and Finn were there, When we followed a deer with our baying hounds. With Bran, Sceolan, and Lomair, And passing the Firbolgs’ burial-mounds, Came to the cairn-heaped grassy hill Where passionate Maeve is stony-still; And found On the dove-grey edge of the sea A pearl-pale, high-born lady, who rode On a horse with bridle of findrinny; And like a sunset were her lips, A stormy sunset on doomed ships; A citron colour gloomed in her hair, But down to her feet white vesture flowed, And with the glimmering crimson glowed Of many a figured embroidery; And it was bound with a pearl-pale shell That wavered like the summer streams, As her soft bosom rose and fell.
S. Patrick. You are still wrecked among heathen dreams.
Oisin. ‘Why do you wind no horn?’ she said ‘And every hero droop his head? The hornless deer is not more sad That many a peaceful moment had, More sleek than any granary mouse, In his own leafy forest house Among the waving fields of fern: The hunting of heroes should be glad.’
‘O pleasant woman,’ answered Finn, ‘We think on Oscar’s pencilled urn, And on the heroes lying slain On Gabhra’s raven-covered plain; But where are your noble kith and kin, And from what country do you ride?’
‘My father and my mother are Aengus and Edain, my own name Niamh, and my country far Beyond the tumbling of this tide.’ ‘What dream came with you that you came Through bitter tide on foam-wet feet? Did your companion wander away From where the birds of Aengus wing?’
Thereon did she look haughty and sweet: ‘I have not yet, war-weary king, Been spoken of with any man; Yet now I choose, for these four feet Ran through the foam and ran to this That I might have your son to kiss.’
‘Were there no better than my son That you through all that foam should run?’ ‘I loved no man, though kings besought, Until the Danaan poets brought Rhyme that rhymed upon Oisin’s name,
And now I am dizzy with the thought Of all that wisdom and the fame Of battles broken by his hands, Of stories builded by his words That are like coloured Asian birds At evening in their rainless lands.’
O Patrick, by your brazen bell, There was no limb of mine but fell Into a desperate gulph of love! ‘You only will I wed,’ I cried, ‘And I will make a thousand songs, And set your name all names above, And captives bound with leathern thongs Shall kneel and praise you, one by one, At evening in my western dun.’
‘O Oisin, mount by me and ride To shores by the wash of the tremulous tide, Where men have heaped no burial-mounds, And the days pass by like a wayward tune, Where broken faith has never been known And the blushes of first love never have flown; And there I will give you a hundred hounds; No mightier creatures bay at the moon; And a hundred robes of murmuring silk, And a hundred calves and a hundred sheep Whose long wool whiter than sea-froth flows, And a hundred spears and a hundred bows, And oil and wine and honey and milk, And always never-anxious sleep; While a hundred youths, mighty of limb, But knowing nor tumult nor hate nor strife, And a hundred ladies, merry as birds, Who when they dance to a fitful measure Have a speed like the speed of the salmon herds, Shall follow your horn and obey your whim, And you shall know the Danaan leisure;
And Niamh be with you for a wife.’ Then she sighed gently, ‘It grows late. Music and love and sleep await, Where I would be when the white moon climbs, The red sun falls and the world grows dim.’
And then I mounted and she bound me With her triumphing arms around me, And whispering to herself enwound me; But when the horse had felt my weight, He shook himself and neighed three times: Caoilte, Conan, and Finn came near, And wept, and raised their lamenting hands, And bid me stay, with many a tear; But we rode out from the human lands.
In what far kingdom do you go’ Ah Fenians, with the shield and bow? Or are you phantoms white as snow, Whose lips had life’s most prosperous glow? O you, with whom in sloping vallcys, Or down the dewy forest alleys, I chased at morn the flying deer, With whom I hurled the hurrying spear, And heard the foemen’s bucklers rattle, And broke the heaving ranks of battle! And Bran, Sceolan, and Lomair, Where are you with your long rough hair? You go not where the red deer feeds, Nor tear the foemen from their steeds.
S. Patrick. Boast not, nor mourn with drooping head Companions long accurst and dead, And hounds for centuries dust and air.
Oisin. We galloped over the glossy sea: I know not if days passed or hours, And Niamh sang continually Danaan songs, and their dewy showers Of pensive laughter, unhuman sound, Lulled weariness, and softly round My human sorrow her white arms wound. We galloped; now a hornless deer Passed by us, chased by a phantom hound All pearly white, save one red ear; And now a lady rode like the wind With an apple of gold in her tossing hand; And a beautiful young man followed behind With quenchless gaze and fluttering hair.
‘Were these two born in the Danaan land, Or have they breathed the mortal air?’
‘Vex them no longer,’ Niamh said, And sighing bowed her gentle head, And sighing laid the pearly tip Of one long finger on my lip.
But now the moon like a white rose shone In the pale west, and the sun’s rim sank, And clouds arrayed their rank on rank About his fading crimson ball: The floor of Almhuin’s hosting hall Was not more level than the sea, As, full of loving fantasy, And with low murmurs, we rode on, Where many a trumpet-twisted shell That in immortal silence sleeps Dreaming of her own melting hues, Her golds, her ambers, and her blues, Pierced with soft light the shallowing deeps. But now a wandering land breeze came And a far sound of feathery quires; It seemed to blow from the dying flame, They seemed to sing in the smouldering fires. The horse towards the music raced, Neighing along the lifeless waste; Like sooty fingers, many a tree Rose ever out of the warm sea; And they were trembling ceaselessly, As though they all were beating time, Upon the centre of the sun, To that low laughing woodland rhyme. And, now our wandering hours were done, We cantered to the shore, and knew The reason of the trembling trees: Round every branch the song-birds flew, Or clung thereon like swarming bees; While round the shore a million stood Like drops of frozen rainbow light, And pondered in a soft vain mood Upon their shadows in the tide, And told the purple deeps their pride, And murmured snatches of delight; And on the shores were many boats With bending sterns and bending bows, And carven figures on their prows Of bitterns, and fish-eating stoats, And swans with their exultant throats: And where the wood and waters meet We tied the horse in a leafy clump, And Niamh blew three merry notes Out of a little silver trump; And then an answering whispering flew Over the bare and woody land, A whisper of impetuous feet, And ever nearer, nearer grew; And from the woods rushed out a band Of men and ladies, hand in hand, And singing, singing all together; Their brows were white as fragrant milk, Their cloaks made out of yellow silk, And trimmed with many a crimson feather; And when they saw the cloak I wore Was dim with mire of a mortal shore, They fingered it and gazed on me And laughed like murmurs of the sea; But Niamh with a swift distress Bid them away and hold their peace; And when they heard her voice they ran And knelt there, every girl and man, And kissed, as they would never cease, Her pearl-pale hand and the hem of her dress. She bade them bring us to the hall Where Aengus dreams, from sun to sun, A Druid dream of the end of days When the stars are to wane and the world be done.
They led us by long and shadowy ways Where drops of dew in myriads fall, And tangled creepers every hour Blossom in some new crimson flower, And once a sudden laughter sprang From all their lips, and once they sang Together, while the dark woods rang, And made in all their distant parts, With boom of bees in honey-marts, A rumour of delighted hearts. And once a lady by my side Gave me a harp, and bid me sing, And touch the laughing silver string; But when I sang of human joy A sorrow wrapped each merry face, And, patrick! by your beard, they wept, Until one came, a tearful boy; ‘A sadder creature never stept Than this strange human bard,’ he cried; And caught the silver harp away, And, weeping over the white strings, hurled It down in a leaf-hid, hollow place That kept dim waters from the sky; And each one said, with a long, long sigh, ‘O saddest harp in all the world, Sleep there till the moon and the stars die!’ And now, still sad, we came to where A beautiful young man dreamed within A house of wattles, clay, and skin; One hand upheld his beardless chin, And one a sceptre flashing out Wild flames of red and gold and blue, Like to a merry wandering rout Of dancers leaping in the air; And men and ladies knelt them there And showed their eyes with teardrops dim, And with low murmurs prayed to him, And kissed the sceptre with red lips, And touched it with their finger-tips.
He held that flashing sceptre up. ‘Joy drowns the twilight in the dew, And fills with stars night’s purple cup, And wakes the sluggard seeds of corn, And stirs the young kid’s budding horn, And makes the infant ferns unwrap, And for the peewit paints his cap, And rolls along the unwieldy sun, And makes the little planets run: And if joy were not on the earth,
There were an end of change and birth, And Earth and Heaven and Hell would die, And in some gloomy barrow lie Folded like a frozen fly; Then mock at Death and Time with glances And wavering arms and wandering dances.
‘Men’s hearts of old were drops of flame That from the saffron morning came, Or drops of silver joy that fell Out of the moon’s pale twisted shell; But now hearts cry that hearts are slaves, And toss and turn in narrow caves; But here there is nor law nor rule, Nor have hands held a weary tool; And here there is nor Change nor Death, But only kind and merry breath, For joy is God and God is joy.’ With one long glance for girl and boy And the pale blossom of the moon, He fell into a Druid swoon.
And in a wild and sudden dance We mocked at Time and Fate and Chance And swept out of the wattled hall And came to where the dewdrops fall Among the foamdrops of the sea, And there we hushed the revelry; And, gathering on our brows a frown, Bent all our swaying bodies down, And to the waves that glimmer by That sloping green De Danaan sod Sang, ‘God is joy and joy is God, And things that have grown sad are wicked, And things that fear the dawn of the morrow Or the grey wandering osprey Sorrow.’
We danced to where in the winding thicket The damask roses, bloom on bloom, Like crimson meteors hang in the gloom. And bending over them softly said, Bending over them in the dance, With a swift and friendly glance From dewy eyes: ‘Upon the dead Fall the leaves of other roses, On the dead dim earth encloses: But never, never on our graves, Heaped beside the glimmering waves, Shall fall the leaves of damask roses. For neither Death nor Change comes near us, And all listless hours fear us, And we fear no dawning morrow,
Nor the grey wandering osprey Sorrow.’ The dance wound through the windless woods; The ever-summered solitudes; Until the tossing arms grew still Upon the woody central hill; And, gathered in a panting band, We flung on high each waving hand, And sang unto the starry broods. In our raised eyes there flashed a glow Of milky brightness to and fro As thus our song arose: ‘You stars, Across your wandering ruby cars Shake the loose reins: you slaves of God. He rules you with an iron rod, He holds you with an iron bond, Each one woven to the other, Each one woven to his brother Like bubbles in a frozen pond; But we in a lonely land abide Unchainable as the dim tide, With hearts that know nor law nor rule, And hands that hold no wearisome tool, Folded in love that fears no morrow, Nor the grey wandering osprey Sorrow.’ O Patrick! for a hundred years I chased upon that woody shore The deer, the badger, and the boar. O patrick! for a hundred years At evening on the glimmering sands, Beside the piled-up hunting spears, These now outworn and withered hands Wrestled among the island bands. O patrick! for a hundred years We went a-fishing in long boats With bending sterns and bending bows, And carven figures on their prows Of bitterns and fish-eating stoats. O patrick! for a hundred years The gentle Niamh was my wife; But now two things devour my life; The things that most of all I hate: Fasting and prayers.
S. Patrick. Tell On.
Oisin. Yes, yes, For these were ancient Oisin’s fate Loosed long ago from Heaven’s gate, For his last days to lie in wait.
When one day by the tide I stood, I found in that forgetfulness Of dreamy foam a staff of wood From some dead warrior’s broken lance: I turned it in my hands; the stains Of war were on it, and I wept, Remembering how the Fenians stept Along the blood-bedabbled plains, Equal to good or grievous chance: Thereon young Niamh 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,’ Niamh 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, Yet love and kiss on dim shores far away Rolled round with music of the sighing spray: Yet 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 Niamh 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 stair 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 ashen 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 that you found a man unbid, The saddest of all men.’
A lady 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 Niamh 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, Hearing Aedh touch the mournful strings of gold.’
‘Is he So dreadful?’ ‘Be not over-bold, But fly while still you may.’ And thereon I: ‘This demon shall be battered till he die, And his loose bulk be thrown in the loud tide.’
‘Flee from him,’ pearl-pale Niamh weeping cried, ‘For all men flee the demons’; but moved not My angry king-remembering soul one jot. There was no mightier soul of Heber’s line; Now it is old and mouse-like. For a sign I burst the chain: still earless, nerveless, blind, Wrapped in the things of the unhuman mind, In some dim memory or ancient mood, Still earless, nerveless, blind, the eagles stood.
And then we climbed the stair to a high door; A hundred horsemen on the basalt floor Beneath had paced content: we held our way And stood within: clothed in a misty ray I saw a foam-white seagull drift and float Under the roof, and with a straining throat Shouted, and hailed him: he hung there a star, For no man’s cry shall ever mount so far; Not even your God could have thrown down that hall; Stabling His unloosed lightnings in their stall, He had sat down and sighed with cumbered heart, As though His hour were come.
We sought the part That was most distant from the door; green slime Made the way slippery, and time on time Showed prints of sea-born scales. while down through it The captive’s journeys to and fro were writ Like a small river, and where feet touched came A momentary gleam of phosphorus flame. Under the deepest shadows of the hall That woman found a ring hung on the wall, And in the ring a torch, and with its flare Making a world about her in the air, Passed under the dim doorway, out of sight, And came again, holding a second light Burning between her fingers, and in mine Laid it and sighed: I held a sword whose shine No centuries could dim, and a word ran Thereon in Ogham letters, ‘Manannan’; That sea-god’s name, who in a deep content Sprang dripping, and, with captive demons sent Out of the sevenfold seas, built the dark hall Rooted in foam and clouds, and cried to all The mightier masters of a mightier race; And at his cry there came no milk-pale face Under a crown of thorns and dark with blood, But only exultant faces. Niamh stood With bowed head, trembling when the white blade shone, But she whose hours of tenderness were gone Had neither hope nor fear. I bade them hide Under the shadows till the tumults died Of the loud-crashing and earth-shaking fight, Lest they should look upon some dreadful sight; And thrust the torch between the slimy flags. A dome made out of endless carven jags, Where shadowy face flowed into shadowy face, Looked down on me; and in the self-same place I waited hour by hour, and the high dome, Windowless, pillarless, multitudinous home Of faces, waited; and the leisured gaze Was loaded with the memory of days Buried and mighty. When through the great door The dawn came in, and glimmered on the floor With a pale light, I journeyed round the hall And found a door deep sunken in the wall, The least of doors; beyond on a dim plain A little runnel made a bubbling strain, And on the runnel’s stony and bare edge A dusky demon dry as a withered sedge Swayed, crooning to himself an unknown tongue: In a sad revelry he sang and swung Bacchant and mournful, passing to and fro His hand along the runnel’s side, as though The flowers still grew there: far on the sea’s waste Shaking and waving, vapour vapour chased, While high frail cloudlets, fed with a green light, Like drifts of leaves, immovable and bright, Hung in the passionate dawn. He slowly turned: A demon’s leisure: eyes, first white, now burned Like wings of kingfishers; and he arose Barking. We trampled up and down with blows Of sword and brazen battle-axe, while day Gave to high noon and noon to night gave way; And when he knew the sword of Manannan Amid the shades of night, he changed and ran Through many shapes; I lunged at the smooth throat Of a great eel; it changed, and I but smote A fir-tree roaring in its leafless top; And thereupon I drew the livid chop Of a drowned dripping body to my breast; Horror from horror grew; but when the west Had surged up in a plumy fire, I drave Through heart and spine; and cast him in the wave Lest Niamh shudder.
Full of hope and dread Those two came carrying wine and meat and bread, And healed my wounds with unguents out of flowers That feed white moths by some De Danaan shrine; Then in that hall, lit by the dim sea-shine, We lay on skins of otters, and drank wine, Brewed by the sea-gods, from huge cups that lay Upon the lips of sea-gods in their day; And then on heaped-up skins of otters slept. And when the sun once more in saffron stept, Rolling his flagrant wheel out of the deep, We sang the loves and angers without sleep, And all the exultant labours of the strong.
But now the lying clerics murder song With barren words and flatteries of the weak. In what land do the powerless turn the beak Of ravening Sorrow, or the hand of Wrath? For all your croziers, they have left the path And wander in the storms and clinging snows, Hopeless for ever: ancient Oisin knows, For he is weak and poor and blind, and lies On the anvil of the world.
S. Patrick. Be still: the skies Are choked with thunder, lightning, and fierce wind, For God has heard, and speaks His angry mind; Go cast your body on the stones and pray, For He has wrought midnight and dawn and day.
Oisin. Saint, do you weep? I hear amid the thunder The Fenian horses; armour torn asunder; Laughter and cries. The armies clash and shock, And now the daylight-darkening ravens flock. Cease, cease, O mournful, laughing Fenian horn! We feasted for three days. On the fourth morn I found, dropping sea-foam on the wide stair, And hung with slime, and whispering in his hair, That demon dull and unsubduable; And once more to a day-long battle fell, And at the sundown threw him in the surge, To lie until the fourth morn saw emerge His new-healed shape; and for a hundred years So watred, so feasted, with nor dreams nor fears, Nor languor nor fatigue: an endless feast, An endless war.
The hundred years had ceased; I stood upon the stair: the surges bore A beech-bough to me, and my heart grew sore, Remembering how I had stood by white-haired Finn Under a beech at Almhuin and heard the thin Outcry of bats.
And then young Niamh came Holding that horse, and sadly called my name; I mounted, and we passed over the lone And drifting greyness, while this monotone, Surly and distant, mixed inseparably Into the clangour of the wind and sea.
‘I hear my soul drop And Mananna’s dark tower, stone after stone. Gather sea-slime and fall the seaward way, And the moon goad the waters night and day, That all be overthrown.
‘But till the moon has taken all, I wage War on the mightiest men under the skies, And they have fallen or fled, age after age. Light is man’s love, and lighter is man’s rage; His purpose drifts and dies.’
And then lost Niamh murmured, ‘Love, we go To the Island of Forgetfulness, for lo! The Islands of Dancing and of Victories Are empty of all power.’
‘And which of these Is the Island of Content?’
‘None know,’ she said; And on my bosom laid her weeping head.
Book III
Fled foam underneath us, and round 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 the foam-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, Sceolan, Lomair, And never a song sang Niamh, and over my finger-tips Came 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 whiter than newwashed fleece Fled 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 edge barren and grey, Grey sand 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 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 gleams of 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 stems of 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 old Could 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 were the 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 has stars for His flocks Could fondle the leaves with His fingers, nor go from His dewcumbered skies; So long were they sleeping, the owls had builded their nests in 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 knees in the soft starflame, 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 sevenfold 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 Niamh, I blew a long lingering note. Came sound from those monstrous sleepers, a sound like the 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, Oisin, is worthy, he comes from the Fenian lands.’
Half open his eyes were, and held me, dull with the 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 dropping a sound in faint streams Softer 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 stone Were the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the memories of
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 Niamh 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, when the fallen on fallen lie rolled; How the falconer follows the falcon in the weeds of the heron’s plot, And the name of the demon whose hammer made Conchubar’s sword-blade of old.
And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot That the spear-shaft is made out of ashwood, the shield out of osier 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 dust with their throngs, Moved round me, of seamen or landsmen, all who are winter tales; Came by me the kings of the Red Branch, with roaring of laughter and songs, Or moved as they moved once, love-making or piercing the tempest with sails.
Came Blanid, Mac Nessa, tall Fergus who feastward of old time slunk, Cook Barach, the traitor; and warward, the spittle on his beard never dry, Dark Balor, as old as a forest, car-borne, his mighty head sunk Helpless, 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 dimness they love going by; When a glow-worm was green on a grass-leaf, lured from his 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 waking white as a shell When the Fenians made foray at morning with Bran, Sceolan, Lomair.
I awoke: the strange horse without summons out of the distance ran, Thrusting his nose to my shoulder; he knew in his bosom deep That 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 Niamh 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 delight Of twilight and slumber were gone, and that hoofs impatiently stept.
I cried, ‘O Niamh! 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 chess-boards 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 turning to threadbare 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 thought, Watched her those seamless faces from the valley’s glimmering girth; As she murmured, ‘O wandering Oisin, the strength of the bellbranch 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 Niamh over the tops of the tide; But weep for your Niamh, O Oisin, weep; for if only your shoe Brush lightly as haymouse earth’s pebbles, you will come no 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 pigeon who 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 grey, Grey sand 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 longing 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 hay Came, 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 crushing the 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-path Much 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 roaring of wind in a wood.
And before 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 hunt wolves in the night, So sleep thee by daytime.’ A voice cried, ‘The Fenians a long time are dead.’
A whitebeard stood hushed on the pathway, the flesh of his face as dried grass, And in folds round his eyes and his mouth, he sad as a child without milk— And the dreams of the islands were gone, and I knew how men sorrow and pass, And their hound, and their horse, and their love, and their eyes that 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 gods a long time are dead.’
And lonely and longing for Niamh, 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 shout Till I saw where Maeve 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 fell with their burden at length. Leaning down from the gem-studded saddle, I flung it five yards with my hand, With a sob for men waxing so weakly, a sob for the Fenians’ old strength.
The rest you have heard of, O croziered man; 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 spittle on 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 eyes the crozier gleams; What place have Caoilte and Conan, and Bran, Sceolan, Lomair? Speak, you too are old with your memories, an old man surrounded with dreams.
S. Patrick. Where the flesh of the footsole clingeth on the burning stones is their place; Where the demons whip them with wires on the burning stones of wide Hell, Watching the blessed ones move far off, and the smile on God’s face, Between them a gateway of brass, and the howl of the angels who fell.
Oisin. Put the staff in my hands; for I go to the Fenians, O cleric, to chaunt The war-songs that roused them of old; they will rise, making clouds with their Breath, Innumerable, singing, exultant; the clay underneath them shall pant, And demons be broken in pieces, and trampled beneath them in death. And demons afraid in their darkness; deep horror of eyes and of wings, Afraid, their ears on the earth laid, shall listen and rise up and weep; Hearing the shaking of shields and the quiver of stretched bowstrings, Hearing Hell loud with a murmur, as shouting and mocking we sweep. We will tear out the flaming stones, and batter the gateway of brass And enter, and none sayeth ‘No’ when there enters the strongly armed guest; Make clean as a broom cleans, and march on as oxen move over young grass; Then feast, making converse of wars, and of old wounds, and turn to our rest.
S. Patrick. On the flaming stones, without refuge, the limbs of the Fenians are tost; None war on the masters of Hell, who could break up the world in their rage; But kneel and wear out the flags and pray for your soul that is lost Through the demon love of its youth and its godless and passionate age.
Oisin. Ah me! to be Shaken with coughing and broken with old age and pain, Without laughter, a show unto children, alone with remembrance and fear; All emptied of purple hours as a beggar’s cloak in the rain, As a hay-cock out on the flood, or a wolf sucked under a weir. It were sad to gaze on the blessed and no man I loved of old there; I throw down the chain of small stones! when life in my body has ceased, I will go to Caoilte, and Conan, and Bran, Sceolan, Lomair, And dwell in the house of the Fenians, be they in flames or at feast.