Читать книгу: «The Mountainy Singer»

This book is made up of a selection from the Author’s early books, with many new poems added.

A LINE’S A SPEECH

 
A line’s a speech;
So here’s a line
To say this pedlar’s pack
Of mine
Is not a book —
But a journey thro’
Mountainy places,
Ever in view
Of the sea and the fields,
With the rough wind
Blowing over the leagues
Behind!
 

I AM THE MOUNTAINY SINGER

 
I am the mountainy singer —
The voice of the peasant’s dream,
The cry of the wind on the wooded hill,
The leap of the fish in the stream.
 
 
Quiet and love I sing —
The carn on the mountain crest,
The cailin in her lover’s arms,
The child at its mother’s breast.
 
 
Beauty and peace I sing —
The fire on the open hearth,
The cailleach spinning at her wheel,
The plough in the broken earth.
 
 
Travail and pain I sing —
The bride on the childing bed,
The dark man labouring at his rhymes,
The ewe in the lambing shed.
 
 
Sorrow and death I sing —
The canker come on the corn,
The fisher lost in the mountain loch,
The cry at the mouth of morn.
 
 
No other life I sing,
For I am sprung of the stock
That broke the hilly land for bread,
And built the nest in the rock!
 

WHEN ROOKS FLY HOMEWARD

 
When rooks fly homeward
And shadows fall,
When roses fold
On the hay-yard wall,
When blind moths flutter
By door and tree,
Then comes the quiet
Of Christ to me.
 
 
When stars look out
On the Children’s Path
And grey mists gather
On carn and rath,
When night is one
With the brooding sea,
Then comes the quiet
Of Christ to me.
 

I SPIN MY GOLDEN WEB

 
I spin my golden web in the sun:
The cherries tremble, the light is done.
 
 
A sudden wind sweeps over the bay,
And carries my golden web away!
 

CHERRY VALLEY

 
In Cherry Valley the cherries blow:
The valley paths are white as snow.
 
 
And in their time with clusters red
The scented boughs are crimsonèd.
 
 
Even now the moon is looking thro’
The glimmer of the honey dew.
 
 
A petal trembles to the grass,
The feet of fairies pass and pass.
 
 
By them, I know, all beauty comes
To me, a habitan of slums.
 
 
I sing no rune, I say no line:
The gift of second sight is mine!
 

DARKNESS

 
Darkness.
I stop to watch a star shine in the boghole —
A star no longer, but a silver ribbon of light.
I look at it, and pass on.
 

MY FIDIL IS SINGING

 
My fidil is singing
Into the air;
The wind is stirring,
The moon is fair.
 
 
A shadow wanders
Along the road;
It stops to listen,
And drops its load.
 
 
Dreams for a space
Upon the moon,
Then passes, humming
My mountain tune.
 

THE GOAT-DEALER

 
Did you see the goat-dealer
All in his jacket green?
I met him on the rocky road
’Twixt this and Baile-doirin.
 
 
A hundred nannies ran before,
And a she-ass behind,
And then the old wanderer himself,
Burnt red with sun and wind.
 
 
He gave me the time-a-day
And doitered over the hill,
Walloping his gay ashplant
And shouting his fill.
 
 
I think I hear him yet,
Tho’ it’s a giant’s cry
From where I hailed him first,
Standing up to the sky.
 
 
Is that Puck Green I see beyond?
It is, and the stir is there.
By the holy hat, I know then —
He’s making for Puck Fair!
 

WHY CRUSH THE CLARET ROSE

 
Why crush the claret rose
That blows
So rarely on the tree?
Wherefore the enmity, dear girl,
Betwixt the rose and thee?
Art thou not fair enough
With that dark beauty given thee,
That thou must crush the rose
That blows
So rarely on the tree!
 

LAMENT OF PADRAIC MOR MAC CRUIMIN OVER HIS SONS

 
I am Padraic Mor mac Cruimin,
Son of Domhnall of the Shroud,
Piper, like my kind before me,
To the household of MacLeod.
 
 
Death is in the seed of Cruimin —
All my music is a wail;
Early graves await the poets
And the pipers of the Gael.
 
 
Samhain gleans the golden harvests
Duly in their tide and time,
But my body’s fruit is blasted
Barely past the Bealtein prime.
 
 
Cethlenn claims the fairest fighters
Fitly for her own, her own,
But my seven sons are stricken
Where no battle-pipe is blown.
 
 
Flowers of the forest fallen
On the sliding summer stream —
Light and life and love are with me,
Then are vanished into dream.
 
 
Berried branches of the rowan
Rifled in the wizard wind —
Clan and generation leave me,
Lonely on the heath behind.
 
 
Who will soothe a father’s sorrow
When his seven sons are gone?
Who will watch him in his sleeping?
Who will wake him at the dawn?
 
 
Seven sons are taken from me
In the compass of a year;
Every bone is bose within me,
All my blood is white with fear.
 
 
Seven youths of brawn and beauty
Moulder in their mountain bed,
Up in storied Inis-Scathach
Where their fathers reaped their bread.
 
 
Nevermore upon the mountain,
Nevermore in fair or field,
Shall ye see the seven champions
Of the silver-mantled shield.
 
 
I will play the “Cumhadh na Cloinne”
Wildest of the rowth of tunes
Gathered by the love of mortal
From the olden druid runes.
 
 
Wail ye! Night is on the water;
Wind and wave are roaring loud —
Caoine for the fallen children
Of the piper of MacLeod.
 

TO A TOWN GIRL

 
Violet mystery,
Ringleted gold,
Whiteness of whiteness,
Wherefore so cold?
 
 
Silent you sit there —
Spirit and mould —
Darkening the dream
That must never be told!
 

A MARCH MOON

 
A March moon
Over the mountain crest,
Ceanabhan blowing:
Her neck and breast.
 
 
Arbutus berries
On the tree head:
Her mouth of passion,
Dewy and red.
 
 
Cold as cold
And hot as hot,
She loves me..
And she loves me not!
 

A THOUSAND FEET UP

 
A thousand feet up: twilight.
Westwards, a clump of firtrees silhouetted against a bank of blue cumulus cloud;
The June afterglow like a sea behind.
The mountain trail, white and clear where human feet have worn it, zigzagging higher and higher till it loses itself in the southern skyline.
A patch of young corn to my right hand, swaying and swaying continuously, tho’ hardly an air stirs.
A falcon wheeling overhead.
The moon rising.
The damp smell of the night in my nostrils.
 
 
O hills, O hills,
To you I lift mine eyes!
I kneel down and kiss the grass under my feet.
The sense of the mystery and infinity of things overwhelms me, annihilates me almost.
I kneel down, and silently worship.
 

THE DARK

 
This is the dark.
This is the dream that came of the dark.
This is the dreamer who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.
This is the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.
 
 
This is the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.
 
 
This is the breast that fired the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.
 
 
This is the song was made to the breast that fired the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.
 
 
This is the sword that tracked the song was made to the breast that fired the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.
 
 
This is the rope that swung the sword that tracked the song was made to the breast that fired the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.
 
 
This is the dark that buried the rope that swung the sword that tracked the song was made to the breast that fired the love that followed the look the dreamer looked who dreamed the dream that came of the dark.
 
 
This is the dark, indeed!
 

REYNARDINE

 
If by chance you look for me
Perhaps you’ll not me find,
For I’ll be in my castle —
Enquire for Reynardine!
 
 
Sun and dark he courted me —
His eyes were red as wine:
He took me for his leman,
Did my sweet Reynardine.
 
 
Sun and dark the gay horn blows,
The beagles run like wind:
They know not where he harbours,
The fairy Reynardine.
 
 
If by chance you look for me
Perhaps you’ll not me find,
For I’ll be in my castle —
Enquire for Reynardine!
 

SNOW

 
Hills that were dark
At sparing-time last night
Now in the dawn-ring
Glimmer cold and white.
 

I AM THE GILLY OF CHRIST

 
I am the gilly of Christ,
The mate of Mary’s Son;
I run the roads at seeding time,
And when the harvest’s done.
 
 
I sleep among the hills,
The heather is my bed;
I dip the termon-well for drink,
And pull the sloe for bread.
 
 
No eye has ever seen me,
But shepherds hear me pass,
Singing at fall of even
Along the shadowed grass.
 
 
The beetle is my bellman,
The meadow-fire my guide,
The bee and bat my ambling nags
When I have need to ride.
 
 
All know me only the Stranger,
Who sits on the Saxon’s height;
He burned the bacach’s little house
On last Saint Brigid’s Night.
 
 
He sups off silver dishes,
And drinks in a golden horn,
But he will wake a wiser man
Upon the Judgment Morn!
 
 
I am the gilly of Christ,
The mate of Mary’s Son;
I run the roads at seeding time,
And when the harvest’s done.
 
 
The seed I sow is lucky,
The corn I reap is red,
And whoso sings the Gilly’s Rann
Will never cry for bread.
 

GO, PLOUGHMAN, PLOUGH

 
Go, ploughman, plough
The mearing lands,
The meadow lands,
The mountain lands:
All life is bare
Beneath your share,
All love is in your lusty hands.
 
 
Up, horses, now!
And straight and true
Let every broken furrow run:
The strength you sweat
Shall blossom yet
In golden glory to the sun.
 

GO, REAPER

 
Go, reaper,
Speed and reap,
Go take the harvest
Of the plough:
The wheat is standing
Broad and deep,
The barley glumes
Are golden now.
 
 
Labour is hard,
But it endures
Like love:
The land is yours:
Go reap the life
It gives you now,
O sunbrowned master
Of the plough!
 

THE GOOD PEOPLE

 
The millway path looks like a wraith,
The lock is black as ink,
And silently in stream and sky
The stars begin to blink.
 
 
I see them pass along the grass
With slow and solemn tread:
Aoibheall, their queen, is in between —
A corpse is at their head!
 
 
They wander on with faces wan,
And dirges sad as wind.
I know not, but it may be that
The dead’s of human kind.
 

THE STORM IS STILL, THE RAIN HATH CEASED

 
The storm is still, the rain hath ceased
To vex the beauty of the east:
A linnet singeth in the wood
His hermit song of gratitude.
 
 
So shall I sing when life is done
To greet the glory of the sun;
And cloud and star and stream and sea
Shall dance for very ecstasy!
 

SCARE-THE-CROWS

 
Twopence a day for scaring crows —
Tho’ the rain beats and the wind blows!
 
 
The scholars think I’ve little wit,
But, God! I’ve got my share of it.
 
 
Why does the gorbing land-shark
Leave ploughed rigs for the green park?
 
 
Where little’s to find, and nothing’s to eat
But rabbits’ droppings and pheasants’ meat.
 
 
He knows better than come my way
Between the mouth and the tail of day.
 
 
For one lick of my hurding wattle
Would lay him out like a showman’s bottle!
 
 
And the thoughts that rise in my crazed head
When the cloud is low and the wind’s dead.
 
 
Where you see only clay and stones
I see swords and blanching bones..
 
 
But I’ll leave you now – it’s gone six,
And the smoke is curling over the ricks.
 
 
And it’s hardly like that the land-shark
Will trouble the furrows after dark.
 

A CRADLE-SONG

 
Sleep, white love, sleep,
A cedarn cradle holds thee,
And twilight, like a silver-woven coverlid,
Enfolds thee.
Moon and star keep charmèd watch
Upon thy lying;
Water plovers thro’ the dusk
Are tremulously crying.
Sleep, white love mine,
Till day doth shine.
 
 
Sleep, white love, sleep,
The daylight wanes, and deeper
Gathers the blue darkness
O’er the cradle of the sleeper.
Cliodhna’s curachs, carmine-oared,
On Loch-da-linn are gleaming;
Blind bats flutter thro’ the night,
And carrion birds are screaming.
Sleep, white love mine,
Till day doth shine.
 
 
Sleep, white love, sleep,
The holy mothers, Anne and Mary,
Sit high in heaven, dreaming
On the seven ends of Eire.
Brigid sits beside them,
Spinning lamb-white wool on whorls,
Singing fragrant songs of love
To little naked boys and girls.
Sleep, white love mine,
Till day doth shine.
 

TWINE THE MAZES THRO’ AND THRO’

 
Twine the mazes thro’ and thro’
Over beach and margent pale;
Not a bawn appears in view,
Not a sail!
 
 
Round about!
In and out!
Thro’ the stones and sandy bars
To the music of the stars!
The asteroidal fire that dances
Nightly in the northern blue,
The brightest of the boreal lances,
Dances not so light as you,
Cliodhna!
Dances not so light as you.
 

THE FIGHTING-MAN

 
A fighting-man he was,
Guts and soul;
His blood as hot and red
As that on Cain’s hand-towel.
 
 
A copper-skinned six-footer,
Hewn out of the rock.
Who would stand up against
His hammer-knock?
 
 
Not a sinner —
No, and not one dared!
Giants showed clean heels
When his arm was bared.
 
 
I’ve seen him swing an anvil
Fifty feet,
Break a bough in two,
And tear a twisted sheet.
 
 
And the music of his roar —
Like oaks in thunder cleaving;
Lips foaming red froth,
And flanks heaving.
 
 
God! a goodly man,
A Gael, the last
Of those that stood with Dan
On Mullach-Maist!
 

MY MOTHER HAS A WEE RED SHOE

 
My mother has a wee red shoe —
She bought it off a bacach-man;
And all the neighbours say it’s true
He stole it off a Leath-brogan.
Bacach-man, bacach-man,
Where did you get it?
Faith now, says he,
In my leather wallet!
 
 
My father has an arrow-head —
He begged it off poor Peig na Blath;
And Mor, the talking-woman, said
She found it in a fairy rath.
Peig na Blath, Peig na Blath,
Where did you get it?
Faith now, says she,
In my wincey jacket!
 
 
My brother has a copper pot —
He tryst’ it wi’ a shuiler-man;
And gossip says it’s like as not
He truff’d it from a Clobhair-ceann.
Shuiler-man, shuiler-man,
Where did you get it?
Faith now, says he,
In my breeches’ pocket!
 

BY A WONDROUS MYSTERY

 
By a wondrous mystery
Christ of Mary’s fair body
Upon a middle winter’s morn,
Between the tides of night and day,
In Ara’s holy isle was born.
Mary went upon her knee
Travailing in ecstasy,
And Brigid, mistress of the birth,
Full reverently and tenderly
Laid the child upon the earth.
Then the dark-eyed rose did blow,
And rivers leaped from out the snow.
Earth grew lyrical: the grass,
As the light winds chanced to pass —
Than magian music more profound —
Murmured in a maze of sound.
White incense rose upon the hills
As from a thousand thuribles,
And in the east a seven-rayed star
Proclaimed the news to near and far.
The shepherd danced, the gilly ran,
The boatman left his curachan;
The king came riding on the wind
To offer gifts of coin and kind;
The druid dropped his ogham wand,
And said, “Another day’s at hand,
A newer dawn is in the sky:
I put my withered sapling by.
The druid Christ has taken breath
To sing the runes of life and death.”
 

I GATHER THREE EARS OF CORN

 
I gather three ears of corn,
And the Black Earl from over the sea
Sails across in his silver ships,
And takes two out of the three.
 
 
I might build a house on the hill
And a barn of the speckly stone,
And tell my little stocking of gold,
If the Earl would let me alone.
 
 
But he has no thought for me —
Only the thought of his share,
And the softness of the linsey shifts
His lazy daughters wear.
 
 
There is a God in heaven,
And angels, score on score,
Who will not see my hearthstone cold
Because I’m crazed and poor.
 
 
My childer have my blood,
And when they get their beards
They will not be content to run
As gillies to their herds!
 
 
The day will come, maybe,
When we can have our own,
And the Black Earl will come to us
Begging the bacach’s bone!
 

THE TINKERS

 
“One ciarog knows another ciarog,
And why shouldn’t I know you, you rogue?”
“They say a stroller will never pair
Except with one of his kind and care.”
So talked two tinkers prone in the shough —
And then, as the fun got a trifle rough,
They flitted: he with his corn-straw bass,
She with her load of tin and brass:
As mad a match as you would see
In a twelvemonth’s ride thro’ Christendie.
He roared – they both were drunk as hell:
She danced, and danced it mighty well!
I could have eyed them longer, but
They staggered for the Quarry Cut:
That half-perch seemed to trouble them more
Than all the leagues they’d tramped before.
Some’ll drink at the fair the morrow,
And some’ll sup with the spoon of sorrow;
But whether they’ll get as far as Droichid
The night – well, who knows that but God?
 

AS I CAME OVER THE GREY, GREY HILLS

 
As I came over the grey, grey hills
And over the grey, grey water,
I saw the gilly leading on,
And the white Christ following after.
 
 
Where and where does the gilly lead?
And where is the white Christ faring?
They’ve travelled the four grey sounds of Orc,
And the four grey seas of Eirinn.
 
 
The moon it set and the wind’s away,
And the song in the grass is dying,
And a silver cloud on the silent sea
Like a shrouding sheet is lying.
 
 
But Christ and the gilly will follow on
Till the ring in the east is showing,
And the awny corn is red on the hills,
And the golden light is glowing!
 

A NORTHERN LOVE-SONG

 
Brigidin Ban of the lint-white locks,
What was it gave you that flaxen hair,
Long as the summer heath in the rocks?
What was it gave you those eyes of fire,
Lip so waxen and cheek so wan?
Tell me, tell me, Brigidin Ban,
Little white bride of my heart’s desire.
 
 
Was it the Good People stole you away,
Little white changeling, Brigidin Ban?
Carried you off in the ring of the dawn,
Laid like a queen on her purple car,
Carried you back ’twixt the night and the day;
Gave you that fortune of flaxen hair,
Gave you those eyes of wandering fire,
Lit at the wheel of the southern star;
Gave you that look so far away,
Lip so waxen and cheek so wan?
Tell me, tell me, Brigidin Ban,
Little white bride of my heart’s desire.
 

TO THE GOLDEN EAGLE

 
Wanderer of the mountain,
Winger of the blue,
From this stormy rock
I send my love to you.
 
 
Take me for your lover,
Dark and fierce and true —
Wanderer of the mountain,
Winger of the blue!
 

A PROPHECY

 
“The loins of the Galldacht
Shall wither like grass” —
Strange words I heard said
At the Fair of Dun-eas.
 
 
“A bard shall be born
Of the seed of the folk,
To break with his singing
The bond and the yoke.
 
 
“A sword, white as ashes,
Shall fall from the sky,
To rise, red as blood,
On the charge and the cry.
 
 
“Stark pipers shall blow,
Stout drummers shall beat,
And the shout of the north
Shall be heard in the street.
 
 
“The strong shall go down,
And the weak shall prevail,
And a glory shall sit
On the sign of the Gaodhal.
 
 
“Then Emer shall come
In good time by her own,
And a man of the people
Shall speak from the throne.”
 
 
Strange words I heard said
At the Fair of Dun-eas —
“The Gaodhaldacht shall live,
The Galldacht shall pass!”
 

I MET A WALKING-MAN

 
I met a walking-man;
His head was old and grey.
I gave him what I had
To crutch him on his way.
The man was Mary’s Son, I’ll swear;
A glory trembled in his hair!
 
 
And since that blessed day
I’ve never known the pinch:
I plough a broad townland,
And dig a river-inch;
And on my hearth the fire is bright
For all that walk by day or night.
 

THE NINEPENNY FIDIL

 
My father and mother were Irish,
And I am Irish, too;
I bought a wee fidil for ninepence,
And it is Irish, too.
I’m up in the morning early
To meet the dawn of day,
And to the lintwhite’s piping
The many’s the tune I play.
 
 
One pleasant eve in June time
I met a lochrie-man:
His face and hands were weazen,
His height was not a span.
He boor’d me for my fidil —
“You know,” says he, “like you,
My father and mother were Irish,
And I am Irish, too!”
 
 
He took my wee red fidil,
And such a tune he turned —
The Glaise in it whispered,
The Lionan in it m’urned.
Says he, “My lad, you’re lucky —
I wish t’ I was like you:
You’re lucky in your birth-star,
And in your fidil, too!”
 
 
He gave me back my fidil,
My fidil-stick, also,
And stepping like a mayboy,
He jumped the Leargaidh Knowe.
I never saw him after,
Nor met his gentle kind;
But, whiles, I think I hear him
A-wheening in the wind!
 
 
My father and mother were Irish,
And I am Irish, too:
I bought a wee fidil for ninepence,
And it is Irish, too.
I’m up in the morning early
To meet the dawn of day,
And to the lintwhite’s piping
The many’s the tune I play.
 

GRASSLANDS ARE FAIR

 
Grasslands are fair,
Ploughlands are rare.
Grasslands are lonely,
Ploughlands are comely.
Grasslands breed cattle,
Ploughlands feed people.
Grasslands are not wrought,
Ploughlands swell with thought.
 

WINTER SONG

 
’Twould skin a fairy
It is so airy,
And the snow it nips so cold:
Shepherd and squire
Sit by the fire,
The sheep are in the fold.
 
 
You have your wish —
A reeking dish,
And rubble walls about;
So pity the poor
That have no door
To keep the winter out!
 

I FOLLOW A STAR

 
I follow a star
Burning deep in the blue,
A sign on the hills
Lit for me and for you!
 
 
Moon-red is the star,
Halo-ringed like a rood,
Christ’s heart in its heart set,
Streaming with blood.
 
 
Follow the gilly
Beyond to the west:
He leads where the Christ lies
On Mary’s white breast.
 
 
King, priest and prophet —
A child, and no more —
Adonai the Maker!
Come, let us adore.
 

THE SILENCE OF UNLABOURED FIELDS

 
The silence of unlaboured fields
Lies like a judgment on the air:
A human voice is never heard:
The sighing grass is everywhere —
The sighing grass, the shadowed sky,
The cattle crying wearily!
 
 
Where are the lowland people gone?
Where are the sun-dark faces now?
The love that kept the quiet hearth,
The strength that held the speeding plough?
Grasslands and lowing herds are good,
But better human flesh and blood!
 

THE BEGGAR’S WAKE

 
I watched at a beggar’s wake
In the hills of Bearna-barr,
And the old men were telling stories
Of Troy and the Trojan war.
 
 
And a flickering fire of bog-deal
Burned on the open hearth,
And the night-wind roared in the chimney,
And darkness was over the earth.
 
 
And Tearlach Ban MacGiolla,
The piper of Gort, was there,
And he sat and he dreamed apart
In the arms of a sugan chair.
 
 
And sudden he woke from his dream
Like a dream-frightened child,
And his lips were pale and trembling,
And his eyes were wild.
 
 
And he stood straight up, and he cried,
With a wave of his withered hand,
“The days of the grasping stranger
Shall be few in the land!
 
 
“The scrip of his doom is written,
The thread of his shroud is spun;
The net of his strength is broken,
The tide of his life is run..”
 
 
Then he sank to his seat like a stone,
And the watchers stared aghast,
And they crossed themselves for fear
As the coffin cart went past.
 

…

 
“At the battle of Gleann-muic-duibh
The fate the poets foretold
Shall fall on the neck of the stranger,
And redden the plashy mould.
 
 
“The bagmen carry the story
The circuit of Ireland round,
And they sing it at fair and hurling
From Edair to Acaill Sound.
 
 
“And the folk repeat it over
About the winter fires,
Till the heart of each one listening
Is burning with fierce desires.
 
 
“In the Glen of the Bristleless Boar
They say the battle shall be,
Where Breiffne’s iron mountains
Look on the Western sea.
 
 
“In the Glen of the Pig of Diarmad,
On Gulban’s hither side,
The battle shall be broken
About the Samhain tide.
 
 
“Forth from the ancient hills,
With war-cries strident and loud,
The people shall march at daybreak,
Massed in a clamorous crowd.
 
 
“War-pipes shall scream and cry,
And battle-banners shall wave,
And every stone on Gulban
Shall mark a hero’s grave.
 
 
“The horses shall wade to their houghs
In rivers of smoking blood,
Charging thro’ heaps of corpses
Scattered in whinny and wood.
 
 
“The girths shall rot from their bellies
After the battle is done,
For lack of a hand to undo them
And hide them out of the sun.
 
 
“It shall not be the battle
Between the folk and the Sidhe
At the rape of a bride from her bed
Or a babe from its mother’s knee.
 
 
“It shall not be the battle
Between the white hosts flying
And the shrieking devils of hell
For a priest at the point of dying.
 
 
“It shall not be the battle
Between the sun and the leaves,
Between the winter and summer,
Between the storm and the sheaves.
 
 
“But a battle to doom and death
Between the Gael and the Gall,
Between the sword of light
And the shield of darkness and thrall.
 
 
“And the Gael shall have the mastery
After a month of days,
And the lakes of the west shall cry,
And the hills of the north shall blaze.
 
 
“And the neck of the fair-haired Gall
Shall be as a stool for the feet
Of Ciaran, chief of the Gael,
Sitting in Emer’s seat!” —
 

…

 
At this MacGiolla fainted,
Tearing his yellow hair,
And the young men cursed the stranger,
And the old men mouthed a prayer.
 
 
For they knew the day would come,
As sure as the piper said,
When many loves would be parted,
And many graves would be red.
 
 
And the wake broke up in tumult,
And the women were left alone,
Keening over the beggar
That died at Gobnat’s Stone.
 

THE BESOM-MAN

 
Did you see Paidin,
Paidin, the besom-man,
Last night as you came by
Over the mountain?
 
 
A barth of new heather
He bore on his shoulder,
And a bundle of whitlow-grass
Under his oxter.
 
 
I spied him as he passed
Beyond the carn head,
But no eye saw him
At the hill foot after.
 
 
What has come over him?
The women are saying.
What can have crossed
Paidin, the besom-man?
 
 
The bogholes he knew
As the curlews know them,
And the rabbits’ pads,
And the derelict quarries.
 
 
He was humming a tune —
The “Enchanted Valley” —
As he passed me westward
Beyond the carn.
 
 
I stood and I listened,
For his singing was strange:
It rang in my ears
The long night after.
 
 
What has come over
Paidin, the besom-man?
What can have crossed him?
The women keep saying.
 
 
They talk of the fairies —
And, God forgive me,
Paidin knew them
Like his prayers!
 
 
Will you fetch word
Up to the cross-roads
If you see track of him,
Living or dead?
 
 
The boys are loafing
Without game or caper;
And the dark piper
Is gone home with the birds.
 

EVERY SHUILER IS CHRIST

 
Every shuiler is Christ,
Then be not hard or cold:
The bit that goes for Christ
Will come a hundred-fold.
 
 
The ear upon your corn
Will burst before its time;
Your roots will yield a crop
Without manure or lime.
 
 
And every sup you give
To crutch him on his way
Will fill your churn with milk,
And choke your barn with hay.
 
 
Then when the shuiler begs,
Be neither hard nor cold;
The share that goes for Christ
Will come a hundred-fold.
 

I WISH AND I WISH

 
I wish and I wish
And I wish I were
A golden bee
In the blue of the air,
Winging my way
At the mouth of day
To the honey marges
Of Loch-ciuin-ban;
Or a little green drake,
Or a silver swan,
Floating upon
The stream of Aili,
And I to be swimming
Gaily, gaily!
 

I AM THE MAN-CHILD

 
I am the man-child. From a virgin womb,
Begot among the hills of virgin loins,
The generation of a hundred kings,
I come. I am the man-child glorious,
The love-son of the second birth foretold
By western bards, the fruit of form and strength
By nature’s prophylactic forethought joined
In marriage with their kind, the crown, the peak,
The summit of the scheme of things, the pride
And glory of the hand of God.
 
 
Behold!
Where in the spaces of the morning world
The sunrise shines my harbinger, the hills
Leap up, the young winds sing, the rivers dance,
The leaving forests laugh, the eagles scream;
For I am one with them, a mate, a brother,
Bound by nature to the human soul
That thro’ the accidents of nature runs.
And wherefore do they leap and laugh and sing,
And dance like vestals on a holyday?
Because their hearts are glad, and mænad-like,
They fain would share the frenzied cup they drink
With me, the man-child glorious.
 
 
I am he,
Even he, the master-mould, the paragon!
Behold me in my nonage, child and man:
The ripest grape on beauty’s procreant vine,
The reddest apple of ingathering:
Perfect in form, of peerless strength, and free
As Caoilte when he roamed the primal hills
(Those “wildernesses rich with liberty”),
A hero that the shocks of chance might strike,
But never tame, a giant druid-ringed,
A god-like savage of the golden days
Ere service shackled action: free itself
As Oisin when he strayed in Doire-cairn,
His hand upon the mountain top, his feet
Fixt in the flowing sea, his holy head
Crowned by a flight of birds, acclaiming him
The singer of the dawn.
 

FRAGMENT

 
I stand upon the summit now:
The falcon, flying from the heath,
Trails darkly o’er the mountain brow
And drops into the gloom beneath.
Night falls, and with it comes the wind
That blew on Fionn time out of mind,
When weary of love-feasts and wars
He left his comrades all behind
To dream upon the quiet stars.
Here on the lonely mountain height
Is ecstasy and living light —
The living inner light that burns
With magic caught from those white urns
That wander thro’ the trackless blue
Forever, touching those they know
With beauty, and the things that come
Of beauty. Earth lies at my feet,
A dumb, vast shadow, vast as dumb.