Chapter V: VOICE OF FINTAN again, out of the First Century,

Let my lips finish what my lips began.—
Then to the two beclouded in black boughs
The third across the water cried “Speak once!
Though the earth shake beneath you like a sieve
With wheels of Connachar, answer me this:
Naois, could she understand his hate
Whose arm requiteth—far as runs the wind—
By me, that blow away the gaze and smile
From women’s faces; O could Deirdre have guess’d—
Mourning all night the fading of her kingdoms
Fled like a song—what means, _a banished man_;
That he and I must hound thee to the death;
That thou shalt never see the deep-set eaves,
The lofty thatch familiar with the doves,
On thy sad mother Usnach’s house again;
But drift out like some sea-bird, far, far, hence,
Far from the red isle of the roes and berries,
Far from sun-galleries and pleasant dúns
And swards of lovers,—branded, nationless;
That none of all thy famous friends, with thee
Wrestlers on Eman in the summer evenings,
Shall think thee noble now; and that at last
I must upheave thy heart’s tough plank to crack it—
Knowing all this, would this fool follow thee?”

Then spoke Naois, keeping back his wrath,
“Strange is it one so old should threat with Death!
Are not both thou and I, are not we all,
By Death drawn from the wickets of the womb—
Seal’d with the thumb of Death when we are born?
As for friends lost (though I believe thee not),
A man is nourish’d by his enemies
No less than by his friends. But as for her,
Because no man shall deem me noble still,—
Because I like a sea-gull of the isles
May be driven forth—branded and nationless,—
Because I shall no more, perhaps, behold
The deep-set eaves on that all-sacred house,—
Because the gather’d battle of the powers
Controlling fortune, breaks upon my head,—
Yea! for that very cause, lack’d other cause,
In love the closer,—quenchless,—absolute,
Would Deirdre choose to follow me. Such pains,
Seër, the kingdoms are of souls like hers!”
He spoke; he felt her life-blood at his side
Sprung of the West, the last of human shores,
Throbbing, “Look forth on everlastingness!
Through the coil’d waters and the ebb of light
I’ll be thy sail!”

Over the mist like wool
No sound; the echo-trembling tarn grew mute.
But when through matted forest with uproar
The levy of pursuers, brazen, vast,
Gush’d like a river, and torch’d chariots drew
With thunder-footed horses on, and lash’d
Up to the sedge, and at the Druid’s shape
Their steamy bellies rose over the brink
Pawing the mist, and when a terrible voice
Ask’d of that shape if druid ken saw now
The twain,—advanced out of the shade of leaves
Nor Deirdre nor Naois heard reply;
And like a burning dream the host, dissolving,
Pass’d. On the pale bank not a torch remain’d.
They look’d on one another, left alone.

THE END

OTHER POEMS

ODE ON A SILVER BIRCH
_in St James’ Park_

1

Muse, I will show thee, on a grassy mound
Moving with tufted shadows, albeit bare
Herself, for yet young April primes the air
And bloom snow-laden boughs, the tree I love.
London doth compass it with shores of sound
And thrills the buds when there’s no breath above
To shake its fountain beauty. Thus I came
Along the courtly mere of thicket isles,
And Spring entoil’d me in a hundred wiles,
Bringing the heart content without a name.
Broods, russet-plumed and emerald, steer’d on
With arrowy wake adown the placid tide
And in that gloomy pool there rode enskied,
Aloof, the stately languor of a swan.
But now the lake sets hither with a breeze
And crooks the peel’d bole of its planes.—Ah, there
Thou shall find audience—yon’s my shadowy love!—
O’er head a rose-grey pigeon beat his wings
About his ’lighted mate, and wooed the bough
And passion born of sight of mortal things
In warmth of living, moved and moves me now
As from the careless height that sways above
Floateth his voice, the soul of greening trees.

2

Approaching ’twixt the herald saplings pale
Whose light arrayment is a whirl of green
Of flamelets dropping for a virgin veil,
I come. Though Hades’ crocus-jets are stayed,
Soft! for a golden troop instead upsprung
Gossips apart in yon unfooted glade.
Broke we on earshot of that frolic tongue
Straightway would all be husht, they being afraid
To sing’t to simple ear of mutest maid.

3

But thou, still silver Spirit, unappall’d
Standest alone, and with thy senses dim
Feeling the first warmth fledge the unleaféd limb
Hearest not tread of mine, O Sun-enthrall’d!
What buried God conceived thee, and forestall’d
In the dull depth thy white and glistering graces—
That fume of netted drops and subtle laces
And listening statue-air, by men miscall’d?
Shower o’er the blue, and sister of blown surf!
Dream-daughter of the silences of turf!
Couldst thou but waken and recall the Mind
Lifts thee to image, then could I reveal
Wherefore thou seem’st remember’d and I feel
In thee mine own dream risen and divined!

4

Surely the hymn that charm’d thee from the grass
Fashion’d me also, and the selfsame lyre
Sounded accords that out of darkness pass
And in thy beauty and my song conspire?
The drum of streets, the fever of our homes,
Clangours and murk metallurgy of gnomes,
All are by thee unheard, who dost ignore
The wisdom of the wise, in dead pasts now
Dungeon’d as never to ascend; but thou
Whose being is for the light, and hath no care
To know itself nor root from whence it sprang,
Wouldst only murmur, in the heavenly air,
“_The sun, the sun!_” if but thy spirit sang!

5

O might I show thee by the lute’s devising
Man, from thy soft turf, flown with light, arising!
Him, too, doth hope, the boon without a pang,
Summon with thrilling finger forth to hang—
To cast a heaving soul to the wave of wind,
Sun-passion’d and earth-lodged. Ah, Tree serene
Dilating in the glow of the unseen,
We and our roofs and towers magnifical—
Our Fame’s heroic head against the sky—
Our loves—and all
That, with our briefness perfect, rise and die,—
Like thee must find
Beauty in a besieging of the dark;
Our glories on expectancy embark,
And the height of our ecstasy—
The touch of infinity—
Is blind.

A CHARGE

If thou hast squander’d years to grave a gem
Commission’d by thy absent Lord, and while
’Tis incomplete,
Others would bribe thy needy skill to them—
Dismiss them to the street!

Shouldst thou at last discover Beauty’s grove,
At last be panting on the fragrant verge,
But in the track,
Drunk with divine possession, thou meet Love—
Turn, at her bidding, back.

When round thy ship in tempest Hell appears,
And every spectre mutters up more dire
To snatch control
And loose to madness thy deep-kennell’d Fears—
Then, to the helm, O Soul!

Last; if upon the cold green-mantling sea
Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar,
Both castaway
And one must perish—let it not be he
Whom thou art sworn to obey!

SONG FOR THE FUNERAL OF A BOY

1

On stems from silver woods
Carry him, young companions, to the glen
Where white Olympus broods;
Flushes of rustlers shall precede you then
By bush and glade
Low-thrilling and afraid;
And as along its curve of shore ye pass
The dark tarn ruddied with the pine shall glass,
Moving to hymns out of its lonely ken,
The boy’s light bier, with beaded rushes laid.

2

In beeches shall the fawn
An hoof suspend, to learn from that clear sound
His eager mate withdrawn
For ever unto free and sylvan ground.
Up in her hold
The wide-wing’d Azure cold
Mantling in gyre on gyre shall mark him come
By root-paven paths borne, and great bee’s hum
Swing through your brief procession, winding round
The endless alleys up that Mountain old.

3

In some low space of green
Where fleecy mists, bright runnels newly rain’d,
And springing wands are seen
But nothing yet to gnarlëd eld attain’d
Let his head nigh
The chrisom violet lie;
And put at hand the sling to him most dear,
The sheaf of arrows light, the dauntless spear,
The lute untroubled on the heart unstain’d;
Then, taking hands around him, sing good-bye.

4

Praise limbs that robb’d the cloud
Of vengeful eagles, and for this rough nest,
This egg, embraced the loud
And everlasting sea-crag’s salty breast!
Praise to the face
That smiled on nothing base!
Hymn ye the laughter of his happy soul—
His secret kindness to your secret dole;
The heavenly-minded brook shall mourn him best
When ye have kiss’d his cheek, quitting the place.

5

This ditty from the brake,
This rainbow from the waters, fades; and Night
That little pyre shall take
In flame and cloud;—but O! when the bloom of light
With breathless glow
Along the tops of snow
Tells out to all the valleys Night is done,—
Think of the boy, ye young companions bright,
Not without joy; for he hath loved and gone
As dews that on the uplands shine and go!

COME, LET US MAKE LOVE DEATHLESS

Come, let us make love deathless, thou and I,
Seeing that our footing on the Earth is brief—
Seeing that her multitudes sweep out to die
Mocking at all that passes their belief.
For standard of our love not theirs we take:
If we go hence to-day
Fill the high cup that is so soon to break
With richer wine than they!

Ay, since beyond these walls no heavens there be
Joy to revive or wasted youth repair,
I’ll not bedim the lovely flame in thee
Nor sully the sad splendour that we wear.
Great be the love, if with the lover dies
Our greatness past recall,
And nobler for the fading of those eyes
The world seen once for all.

CLAVIERS AT NIGHT

_I watch’d a white-hair’d Figure like a breeze
Pass, with a smile, down the bare galleries
And heard his ancient fingers, as he went,
Muse on the heart of each blind instrument._

SPINET

Shoaling through twilight to my silver tinglings
The great-ruff’d ladies beset with pearl
Come out with the gallants in gems of Cadiz
In lofty capriols with loud spur-jinglings
In Roman galliard and in blithe coranto
Learnt in far Otranto
Brought home in the galleys of the Earl—
Storm-riding galleys of the haughty Earl—
To English vallies.
They come
With reverences stately at meeting
In mockeries sedately retreating
And stomachers and buckles and rings
Shake a maze of jewels to the measured strings,
Of trembling jewels.

Ay, moonlight’s fair in yew-clipt alleys,
And young Love fledges
His shafts ’twixt cypress hedges.
Follow the rout, and watch in gentle wind
The springing moonbeam of the fountain sway’d
Like to a mountain maid
Who turns with poisëd jar
From bubbling hollow cool.

“Behold, how’t tosses rain of Pleiads hither
Into main blackness of the pool—
Rings ever shimmering out and sheen reborn;
So, thou and I, lady, must die
To wake, as echoes wake, of yonder horn
With voiceless over the hills of morn.
Ah, satin-quilted kirtle,
Ah, pearled bosom,
Let slip one flake of blossom,
Deign but a sprig of myrtle,
To the poor Fool, panting on his bended knee!”
But silent grow the long swards cedar-shaded
Where the young loves were sitting;
And lo, in the silver-candled hall
The bat is flitting, flitting.
The tapestries are dusk upon the wall
And the ladies bright, brocaded,
All, with their blushes, faded.

HARPSICHORD

Now ye, the delicate patterers of the hush,
Wings, hither!
Scarce-rustlers of the sere involvéd leaf
Who mourn for summers past with elfin grief,
Ye who can hear along the inmost lawn
Ebbings and flowings shrill
When subtle ballads net the rime-cold daffodil
And drift over the blue turf so nigh dumb
They startle not from’s gloom e’en the airy fawn.
Old Antony on his Nile-barge at dawn
Caught your deck-walkings countless overhead
And eased with ye a heart eclipsed and dead.
Come swift, come soon
Drift, like a veil over the moon,
And rising round this crumbling Keep
Shed ye, upon the sleepless, sleep.

CLAVICHORD

Wherefore, poor Fool, dost lie—
Love, cap and bells put by—
On thy pallet-bed so stark?
“I am girt, soul and limb,
Gainst horror dim.
Ear tense to hark
Mine eyeballs strain and swim
Drowning in foamy dark.
Comes no shock
Nor earthly feet
But the heart’s blood, ebb’d with the chill tower-clock
To a single beat,
Clots to a fear
That God may appear—
None other eye being near—
And bare of his mantle of law
Stand, a giant Spirit beautiful
Sombre, pale, in avenging mail,
Wings folded, on this planet’s skull;
And before Him dropping like fine rain,
A veil o’ the cloud o’ the dust of kings
Noiseless descending the old Abyss ...
Ah then, after this
How gentle through the dark paths of the brain
Comes the faint noise of outer things;
The whirr and shower of wings—
Satin shufflings of ivy leaves
Ranging like bees the leaden pane—
Jolting of carters, cries of falconers—
The blessed courtyard stirs
That do in mercy say
Thou hast another day.”

THE MAN DIGGING

The isle was barren. Far as hawk may scan
In moors it roll’d up to a headland bare
Save for one narrow patch, by ceaseless care
Sumptuous with corn. Against the sky a Man
Digging the waste I saw,—bow’d veteran
A stubborn spade he drave in stubborn ground
And root and rock flung sheer without a sound
Over the bleak edge.... Then anew began.

“You, who have lodged in the teeth of the abyss
Your cabin low, and triumph rich as this
Wrung from the ocean-bitter mountain side,
What help’d you most to bring such treasure out?”
He stood, and after scrutiny replied,
“The thing on which I lean, the Spade of Doubt.”

SCHIEHALLION

Far the grey loch runs
Up to Schiehallion.
Lap, lap the water flows
Where my wee boatie rows;
Greenly a star shows
Over Schiehallion.

She that I wander’d wi’
Over Schiehallion,—
How far ayont your ken,
Crags of the merry glen,
Stray’d she, that wander’d then
Down fra Schiehallion!

Sail of the wild swan
Turn to Schiehallion!
Here where the rushes rise
Low the black hunter lies;
Beat thou the pure skies
Back to Schiehallion!

THE SHELL

I am a Shell out of the Asian sea,
But my sad Pearl is gone,
Risen to be Goddess—Venus green is she
And I cast up alone.

Yet some night shall her brilliance stoop and take
Unto her ear this shell,
And hear the whisper of her own heart-break ...
All that I serve to tell.

THE ROCK OF CLOUD

We heard a chanting in the fog
On the frore face of the sea,
And stay’d the galley like a log
To sound that mystery.

And men throng’d up into the bow
And hail’d the curling rack,
“_What demon or what spirit thou?_”
And the lone voice came back,

Came as of one so evil-starr’d
That he hath done with grief,
In monotone as keen and hard
As the bell swung from a reef:

“Human I am—would I were foam—
Row hither; ye may hear
Yet shall not save nor bring me home
Seek ye a thousand year.”

“_Keep a stout hope._” “I keep no hope.”
“_Man alive_” “Spare your toil—”
“_We are upon thee!_” “Nay, no rope
Over the gap shall coil.”

“_Who art thou?_” “I was Pilot once
On many a ship of mark:
Went aboard—spoke to none—but steer’d;
And dropt off in the dark.

“But one night—Christ!—we struck—we sank.
I reach’d this rock of wings
Whereby from every boulder’s flank
The brown sea-ribbon swings.

“Here, where the sole eye of the Sun
Did scorch my body bare,
A great Sea-Spirit rose, and shone
In the water thrill’d with hair....

“She lay back on the green abyss
Beautiful; her spread arms
Soothed to a poise—a sob—of bliss
Huge thunders and alarms.

“Her breasts as pearl were dull and pure,
Her body’s chasted light
Swam like a cloud; her eyes unsure
From the great depths were bright.

“There was no thing of bitterness
In aught that she could say;
She call’d my soul, as down a coast
The Moon calls bay beyond bay
And they rise—back o’ the uttermost—
Away, and yet away:—

“‘I chose thee from the sinking crews—
I bore thee up alive—
Now durst thou follow me and choose
Under the world to dive?

“‘Come! we will catch when stars are out
The black wave’s spitting crest
And still, when the Bull of Dawn shall spout,
Be washing on abreast;

“‘Or thee a flame under the seas
Paven with suns I’ll hide,
Deathless and boundless and at ease
In any shape to glide.

“‘All waters that on Earth have well’d
At last to me repair,—
All mountains starr’d with cities melt
Into my dreamy air.

“‘Set on thy peak under the brink
I’ll shew thee Storms above,
The stuff of kingdoms:—they shall sink
While thou dost teach me love;
On beaches white as the young Moons
I’ll sit, and fathom love.’”...

· · · · ·

“_And what saidst thou?_” “From over sea
I felt a sighing burn
That made this jagg’d rock seem to me
More delicate than fern;

“And faint as moth-wings I could hear
Tops of the pine-tree sway
And the last words spoken in mine ear
Before the break of day.

“And I cried out agonied at heart
For her that sleeps at home,
‘Brightness, I will not know thine art,
Nor to thy country come!’

“Straightway she sank—smiling so pale—
But from the seethe up-broke—
Never thrash’d off by gust or gale—
White, everlasting smoke.

“It feels all over me with stealth
Of languor that appals;
It laps my fierce heart in a wealth
Of soft and rolling walls;

“This mist no life may pass, save these
Wave-wing’d, with shrieking voice;
Stars I discern not, nor the seas—”
“_O, dost not rue thy choice?_”

“Rue it? Now get back to the Deep,
For I doubt if men ye be:
No;—I must keep a steady helm
By the star I cannot see.”

Passion o’ man! we sprang to oars,
And sought on, weeping loud,
All night in earshot of the shores
But never through the cloud.

SHE COMES NOT WHEN NOON IS ON THE ROSES

She comes not when Noon is on the roses—
Too bright is Day.
She comes not to the Soul till it reposes
From work and play.

But when Night is on the hills, and the great Voices
Roll in from Sea,
By starlight and by candlelight and dreamlight
She comes to me.

THE NIGHT

I put aside the branches
That clothe the Door in gloom;
A glow-worm lit the pathway
And a lamp out of her room
Shook down a stifled greeting:
How could it greet aright
The thirst of years like deserts
That led up to this night?

But she, like sighing forests,
Stole on me—full of rest,
Her hair was like the sea’s wave,
Whiteness was in her breast,—
(_So does one come, at night, upon a wall of roses._)

As in a stone of crystal
The cloudy web and flaw

Turns, at a flash, to rainbows,
Wing’d I became—I saw
I sang;—but human singing
Ceased, in a burning awe.

Slow, amid leaves, in silence—
Rapt as the holy pray—
Flame into flame we trembled
And the world sank away.

MAURYA’S SONG

Rushes that grow by the black water
When will I see you more?
When will the sorrowful heart forget you,
Land of the green, green shore?
When will the field and the small cabin
See us more
In the old country?

What is to me all the gold yonder?
She that bore me is gone.
Knees that dandled and hands that blessed me
Colder than any stone;
Stranger to me than the face of strangers
Are my own
In the old country.

Vein o’ my heart, from the lone mountain
The smoke of the turf will die
And the stream that sang to the young childer
Run down alone from the sky:
On the door-stone, grass,—and the cloud lying
Where they lie
In the old country.

Tired with the day’s monotony of dreaméd joys
I turn to a requickening voice,
A voice whose low tone devastates with nightly thrill
The cities I have wrought at will:
Stone forts depart, and armies heroic flee away
Like the wild snow of spray.
Deep down the green Broceliande’s branch’d corridors
That voice of April pours;
Light as a bird’s light shadow fled across my pages
A touch disturbs the ages,
And the crags and spears of Troy and the courts of Charlemain,
Odin, and the splendid strain
Of Cuchullain’s self, that with his heart’s high brother strove,—
Fade, at the low voice I love.

YOU WERE STAY’D

You were stay’d in heart on heaven,
I by none but you forgiven,—
You unto your Light are taken,
I of all, in you, forsaken.

Where the night is never broken
Where for long no speech hath spoken,
There the ears no longer hearken,
There the eyeballs wane and darken.

Yet at hours my soul—so bounded—
By that gloom like blood surrounded—
Sees in ancient daylight burning—
Hears departed feet returning.

THE BLOOM

Who are these ancients, gnarl’d and moss’d and weigh’d
This way and that, under the sluggard blue
And shine of morning—these whose arms are laid
Low to the grasses and the sheets of dew—
These bowers ruggëd within and thickly knit
But feather’d over with a roseate white
So frail that the breeze’s touch dismantles it
And brings from cradled nurseries in flight—
Snow-soft—the petals down
In shadows green to drown?

We are the matrons. Bent are we and riven
Under such years of ripeness manifold
That unto us a special grace is given,—
To wear a virgin’s beauty being old.
Noiseless we wear it; round us in the croft
These whisperers are leaves of other trees,
Babblers that have not learn’d by fruitage oft
To shade the heart with wide serenities
On tendons knit to bear
Sweetness in stormy air.

IN THE ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE, VERONA

Two architects of Italy—austere
Men who could fashion nothing small—refused
To die with life, and for their purpose used
This dim and topless Amphitheatre.

Some Cæsar trench’d the orb of its ellipse
And call’d on distant provinces to swell
Resonant arches whence his World could scan,
Tier above tier, the fighters and the ships.

But Dante—having raised, as dreamer can,
Higher tenfold these walls immutable—
Sole in the night arena, grew aware
He was himself the thing spectacular
Seized by the ever-thirsting gaze of Hell,—
Here, on the empty sand, a banish’d man.

A WINTER SONG

_To Alice Meynell_

Lady, through grasses stiff with rime
And wraith-hung trees I wander
Where the red sun at pitch of prime
Half of his might must squander;
Narrow the track
As I look back
On traces green behind me,—
I go alone
To think upon
A face, where none
Shall find me.

Birds peal; but each grim grove its shroud
Retains, as to betoken
Though the young lawn should wave off cloud
These would have Night unbroken,—
Desire no plash
Of the Lake awash—
No gold but gold that’s glinted
In still device
From the breast of ice
Whose summer cries
Have stinted.

But in a great and glittering space
The black Elm doth restore me
To you. Empower’d with patient grace
Musing she stands before me,—
Her webs divine
Ghosted with fine
Remembrance few can capture;
Her very shade
On greenness laid
Is white,—is made
Of rapture!

THE NUTTER

1

I am the Autumn. Rising from the throne
I watch the pageant of my courtiers pass;
Chestnuts’ canary-feather’d beauty strown—
The lime’s gold tribute at his foot amass—
Then fragile jewels from the larches blown
Enrich with disarray the trembling grass,
Until the beggar’d elms, too proud to bend,
Emblaze a hundred winds with my rash kingdom’s end.

2

But look! within the beech’s burning house
Some Nutter, deaf to shouts of fellow-thieves,
Hath flung him with his crook to dream and drowse
Flush-cheek’d, alone, upon the mounded leaves.
The curious squirrel headlong from his eaves
Creeps down to mark: then drops with sudden souse;
The still-come culvers burst away—and flits
The beechmast-feasting multitude of shadowy tits.

3

Where are thy friends? Gone on to sack the glades,
My rooms of tatter’d state, not to return.
No moth-bright brambles and no rainy braids
Of ivy, mid the sheen and smoke of fern,
Could trammel-up the tempest of their raids.
Up, boy! pursue them down the misty burn!
But on his bosom tann’d, in slumber fast,
Patter’d the mimic shower of ever-dropping mast.

4

What, lad? The last of my poor banquet lose
To thy wild kin of air? For them the dell
O’er-briar’d hath lean rose-berries and yews
And scarlet fruits of ash, that ere they swell
The missel-thrushes, fluttering, poise to choose,—
Privet is theirs and briony as well,
And redwings wait for the frost-mellow’d sloe,
Their orchard is the spinney-side—Awake, and go!

5

Leaf-driven, my young October in a while
Awoke bemazed—on ragged knee arose
Snatch’d at his crook, and hid a shaméd smile
Vaulting the ruddy brambles. As he goes
Far off I hear his voice; so freshet flows
Warbling to wander many a forest mile—
So Dryad may her rooty pool forsake
Afraid, or antler’d shadow melt into the brake.

6

And I go too,—ah! not with mortal things
Naked of riches here to flutter down—
But soar and tremble in a million wings
Above the fen, the coastland, and the town
Forth by the dark sea’s sunken islands boune
Sweeping to choir Apollo where he sings
Unslain! The midsea lamp, that hears the sky
Roaring all night with passage, knows that it is I.

SHAKESPEARE

If many a daring spirit must discover
The chartless world, why should they glory lack?
Because athwart the skyline they sank over
Few, few, the shipmen be that have come back.

Yet one, wreck’d oft, hath by a giddy cord
The rugged head of Destiny regain’d—
One from the maelstrom’s lap hath swum aboard—
One from the polar sleep himself unchain’d.

But he, acquainted well with every tone
Of madness whining in his shroudage slender,
From storm and mutiny emerged alone
Self-righted from the dreadful self-surrender:

Rich from the isles where sojourn long is death
Won back to cool Thames and Elizabeth,
Sea-weary, yes, but human still, and whole,—
A circumnavigator of the soul.

NOTES

_Deirdre Wed._ This episode of thirty hours, delivered by the Three Voices, does not occur in any of the versions of the famous “Tragical tale of the Sons of Usnach.” But the manner of Deirdre’s wooing of Naois is based on an incident in a Gaelic version of that tale, in which, on a day (not her marriage day) Deirdre and her women companions “were out on the hillock behind the house enjoying the scene and drinking in the sun’s heat. What did they see coming but three men a-journeying. Deirdre was looking at the men that were coming, and wondering at them. When the men neared them, Deirdre remembered the language of the huntsmen and she said to herself that these were the three sons of Usnach, and that this was Naois, he having what was above the bend of his two shoulders above the men of Erin all.” The three brothers went past without taking any notice of them, and without even glancing at the young girls on the hillock. “What happened but that love for Naois struck the heart of Deirdre, so that she could not but follow after him. She trussed her raiment and went after the three men that went past the base of the knoll, leaving her women attendants there. Aillean and Ardan had heard of the women that Connachar, King of Ulster, had with him, and they thought that if Naois their brother saw her he would have her himself, more especially as she was not married to the king.” They perceived the woman coming and called on one another to hasten their steps as they had a long distance to travel and the dusk of night was coming on. They did so. She cried three times “Naois, son of Usnach, wilt thou leave me?” “What cry is that which it is not well for me to answer, and not easy for me to refuse?” Twice the brothers put him off with excuses. “But the third time Naois and Deirdre met, and Deirdre kissed Naois three times and a kiss to each of his brothers.” All other incidents in the episodic poem _Deirdre Wed_ are new.

_Fintan_; _Urmael_; _Cir_. These were old bards. I have myself found and explored a tomb like that of Cir, caverned through a hill-ridge, not far from Eman and Armagh, just as it is described in the poem. But the curious may rediscover it for themselves.

_Connachar._ This king, or terrestrial divinity, is generally known as Conchobar, or Conor, King of Ulster (Uladh) and Arch-King of Ireland. He is chronicled as reigning about the time of the Incarnation of Christ.

_Eman_, or Emain Macha, was the chief palace of Connachar. It is still seen and named in the “Navan Ring”—enormous earthworks on a hill about two miles west of Armagh. The people from the town and country side still go up to dance there on holidays. Traces of the Lake of Pearls—where jewels were cast in on a sudden flight, lie in a marsh under Eman. The _Callan_, or “loud-sounding” river, runs not very far off.

_Dun Aengus._ A prehistoric stone fortress—singularly vast—on the edge of the cliffs of Arran Môr, an island in the Atlantic, west of Galway. The walls are very massive, and lie half-circle-wise, as if half had broken off and fallen into the sea.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page Changed from Changed to

71 With volcelest over the hills of With voiceless over the hills of
morn morn

● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.