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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476335" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Ballad Of Downal Baun</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">The moon-cradle's rocking and rocking,<br>Where a cloud and a cloud goes by:<br>Silently rocking and rocking,<br>The moon-cradle out in the sky.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The hound's in his loop by the fire,<br>The bond-woman spins at the door;<br>One rides on a horse through the court-yard:<br>The sword-sheath drops on the floor.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I<br>MY grandfather, Downal Baun,<br>Had the dream that comes three times:<br>He dreamt it first when, a servant-boy,<br>He lay by the nets and the lines,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the house of Fargal More,<br>And by Fargal's ash-strewn fire,<br>When Downal had herded the kine in the waste,<br>And had foddered them all in the byre;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And he dreamt the dream when he lay<br>Under sails that were spread to the main,<br>When he took his rest amid dusky seas,<br>On the deck of a ship of Spain;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the dream came to him beneath<br>The roof he had raised in his pride,<br>When beside him there lay and dreamt of her kin,<br>His strange and far-brought bride.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He had dreamt three times of the treasure<br>That fills a broken tale<br>The hoard of the folk who had raised the mounds,<br>Who had brewed the Heather Ale;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And he knew by the thrice-come dream<br>He could win that hoard by right,<br>If he drew it out of the lake by a rush<br>Upon Saint Brighid's Night,<br>By rushes strung to the yoke of an ox<br>That had never a hair of white!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II<br>So Downal, the silent man,<br>Went to many a far-off fair,<br>And he bought him an ox no man could say<br>Was white by a single hair;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And he came to the edge of the lake<br>Where no curlew cried overhead:<br>Silent and bare from the shaking reeds<br>The lake-waters spread;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And he found it afloat on the current,<br>The yoke that was hard for the brunt;<br>And he took the yoke and he bound it,<br>Upon the ox its front;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was strung with a tie of rushes:<br>He saw the burthened net:<br>By the push of the ox, by the pull on the rush<br>Towards the shore the hoard was set'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Gold cups for Downal Baun,<br>Sword hilts that Kings' hands wore!<br>O the rush-string drew the treasure<br>Till the ripples touched the shore!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Red rings for Downal's bride,<br>With silver for her rein!<br>But weight was laid on each mesh of the net,<br>And the lake held its own again!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I will break their strength,' he cried,<br>'Though they put forth all of their might,<br>For to me was given the yoke and the dream,<br>And the ox with no hair of white.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He whispered, 'Labour, O Creature.'<br>The wide-horned head was set;<br>The runnels came from eyes, nose and mouth;<br>The thick hide was all sweat.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Forgive me the goad, O Creature!'<br>It hunched from foreleg to flank,<br>Heaved; then the yoke on its forehead<br>Split, and the treasure sank,<br>And Downal was left with the broken yoke,<br>And the silent ox on the bank.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He turned the ox to the sedges;<br>He took it and held the yoke up,<br>Then he flung it far back in the waters<br>Of the dark mountain-cup;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And he shouted, 'Doomsters, I know<br>Till five score years from this night,<br>The treasure is lost, and I trow<br>My ox has the hair of white.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He stood by the ox its front,<br>And brute and man were still,<br>Till Downal saw lights burn on the lake,<br>And fires within the hill.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III<br>He turned: a horse was beside him;<br>It was white as his ox was black;<br>Who rode it was a woman:<br>She paced with him down the track;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And along a road not straitened<br>By ridge or tower or wood,<br>And past where the Stones of Morna<br>Like headless giants stood;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And then on the Night of Saint Brighid,<br>The prayer of her vigil he said,<br>When he looked on the white-horsed woman,<br>And saw the sign on her head.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'The silks that I wear to my elbows,<br>The golden clasps at my side,<br>The silver upon my girdle<br>I will give them for your bride.'<br>'Such gear, O Horned Woman,<br>Makes due a pledge, I deem.'<br>'Nay. I will gift you freely,<br>And you shall tell your dream.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'They say that whoever tells not<br>His dream till he hears the birds<br>That man will know the prophecies<br>In long-remembered words.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Nay. Tell your dream. Then this hazel<br>Distaff your wife will gain.'<br>'The thing that comes in silence,' he said,<br>'In silence must remain.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'O dream-taught man,' said the woman<br>She stood where the willows grew,<br>A woman from the country<br>Where the cocks never crew!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'O dream-taught man,' said the woman<br>She stayed by a running stream<br>'As wise, as wise as the man,' she said,<br>'Who never told his dream.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, swift as the flight of the sea-pie,<br>White woman, white horse, went away,<br>And Downal passed his haggard,<br>And faced the spear of the day;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And brought his ox to the byre,<br>And gave it a measure of straw<br>'A white hair you have,' said Downal,<br>'But my plough you are fit to draw,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'And for no dream you'll be burthened,<br>And for none you will bear the yoke.'<br>Then he lifted the latch of his house-door,<br>And his bride at his coming awoke,<br>And he drank the milk that she gave him,<br>And the bread she made he broke.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The ox was his help thereafter<br>When he ploughed the upland and lea,<br>And the growth on the Ridge of the Black Ox<br>Had a place in men's memory.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And my grandfather, Downal Baun,<br>Henceforth grew in gains where he stood<br>Strong salmon of Lough Oughter,<br>Grey hawk of the shady wood!<br>The moon-cradle's rocking and rocking,<br>Where a cloud and a cloud goes by:<br>Silently rocking and rocking,<br>The moon-cradle out in the sky.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">To morrow well gather the rushes,<br>And plait them beside our fire,<br>And make Saint Brighid's crosses<br>To hang in the room and the byre.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Padraic+Colum">Padraic Colum</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476335" data-title="The Ballad Of Downal Baun de Padraic Colum" data-description="The moon-cradle's rocking and rocking,
Where a cloud and a cloud goes by:
Silently rocking and rocking,
The moon-cradle out in the sky.

The hound's in his loop by the fire,
The bond-woman spins at the door;
One rides on a horse through the court-..."></div>
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