<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537130" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Narrative And Dramatic The Wanderings Of Oisin</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">BOOK I</div><div style="margin:10px 0">S. Patrick. You who are bent, and bald, and blind,<br>With a heavy heart and a wandering mind,<br>Have known three centuries, poets sing,<br>Of dalliance with a demon thing.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oisin. Sad to remember, sick with years,<br>The swift innumerable spears,<br>The horsemen with their floating hair,<br>And bowls of barley, honey, and wine,<br>Those merry couples dancing in tune,<br>And the white body that lay by mine;<br>But the tale, though words be lighter than air.<br>Must live to be old like the wandering moon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Caoilte, and Conan, and Finn were there,<br>When we followed a deer with our baying hounds.<br>With Bran, Sceolan, and Lomair,<br>And passing the Firbolgs' burial-motmds,<br>Came to the cairn-heaped grassy hill<br>Where passionate Maeve is stony-still;<br>And found On the dove-grey edge of the sea<br>A pearl-pale, high-born lady, who rode<br>On a horse with bridle of findrinny;<br>And like a sunset were her lips,<br>A stormy sunset on doomed ships;<br>A citron colour gloomed in her hair,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But down to her feet white vesture flowed,<br>And with the glimmering crimson glowed<br>Of many a figured embroidery;<br>And it was bound with a pearl-pale shell<br>That wavered like the summer streams,<br>As her soft bosom rose and fell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">S. Patrick. You are still wrecked among heathen dreams.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oisin. 'Why do you wind no horn?' she said<br>'And every hero droop his head?<br>The hornless deer is not more sad<br>That many a peaceful moment had,<br>More sleek than any granary mouse,<br>In his own leafy forest house<br>Among the waving fields of fern:<br>The hunting of heroes should be glad.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'O pleasant woman,' answered Finn,<br>'We think on Oscar's pencilled urn,<br>And on the heroes lying slain<br>On Gabhra's raven-covered plain;<br>But where are your noble kith and kin,<br>And from what country do you ride?'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'My father and my mother are<br>Aengus and Edain, my own name<br>Niamh, and my country far<br>Beyond the tumbling of this tide.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'What dream came with you that you came<br>Through bitter tide on foam-wet feet?<br>Did your companion wander away<br>From where the birds of Aengus wing?'<br>Thereon did she look haughty and sweet:<br>'I have not yet, war-weary king,<br>Been spoken of with any man;<br>Yet now I choose, for these four feet<br>Ran through the foam and ran to this<br>That I might have your son to kiss.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Were there no better than my son<br>That you through all that foam should run?'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I loved no man, though kings besought,<br>Until the Danaan poets brought<br>Rhyme that rhymed upon Oisin's name,<br>And now I am dizzy with the thought<br>Of all that wisdom and the fame<br>Of battles broken by his hands,<br>Of stories builded by his words<br>That are like coloured Asian birds<br>At evening in their rainless lands.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Patrick, by your brazen bell,<br>There was no limb of mine but fell<br>Into a desperate gulph of love!<br>'You only will I wed,' I cried,<br>'And I will make a thousand songs,<br>And set your name all names above,<br>And captives bound with leathern thongs<br>Shall kneel and praise you, one by one,<br>At evening in my western dun.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'O Oisin, mount by me and ride<br>To shores by the wash of the tremulous tide,<br>Where men have heaped no burial-mounds,<br>And the days pass by like a wayward tune,<br>Where broken faith has never been known<br>And the blushes of first love never have flown;<br>And there I will give you a hundred hounds;<br>No mightier creatures bay at the moon;<br>And a hundred robes of murmuring silk,<br>And a hundred calves and a hundred sheep<br>Whose long wool whiter than sea-froth flows,<br>And a hundred spears and a hundred bows,<br>And oil and wine and honey and milk,<br>And always never-anxious sleep;<br>While a hundred youths, mighty of limb,<br>But knowing nor tumult nor hate nor strife,<br>And a hundred ladies, merry as birds,<br>Who when they dance to a fitful measure<br>Have a speed like the speed of the salmon herds,<br>Shall follow your horn and obey your whim,<br>And you shall know the Danaan leisure;<br>And Niamh be with you for a wife.'<br>Then she sighed gently, 'It grows late.<br>Music and love and sleep await,<br>Where I would be when the white moon climbs,<br>The red sun falls and the world grows dim.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And then I mounted and she bound me<br>With her triumphing arms around me,<br>And whispering to herself enwound me;<br>He shook himself and neighed three times:<br>Caoilte, Conan, and Finn came near,<br>And wept, and raised their lamenting hands,<br>And bid me stay, with many a tear;<br>But we rode out from the human lands.<br>In what far kingdom do you go'<br>Ah Fenians, with the shield and bow?<br>Or are you phantoms white as snow,<br>Whose lips had life's most prosperous glow?<br>O you, with whom in sloping vallcys,<br>Or down the dewy forest alleys,<br>I chased at morn the flying deer,<br>With whom I hurled the hurrying spear,<br>And heard the foemen's bucklers rattle,<br>And broke the heaving ranks of battle!<br>And Bran, Sceolan, and Lomair,<br>Where are you with your long rough hair?<br>You go not where the red deer feeds,<br>Nor tear the foemen from their steeds.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">S. Patrick. Boast not, nor mourn with drooping head<br>Companions long accurst and dead,<br>And hounds for centuries dust and air.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oisin. We galloped over the glossy sea:<br>I know not if days passed or hours,<br>And Niamh sang continually<br>Danaan songs, and their dewy showers<br>Of pensive laughter, unhuman sound,<br>Lulled weariness, and softly round<br>My human sorrow her white arms wound.<br>We galloped; now a hornless deer<br>Passed by us, chased by a phantom hound<br>All pearly white, save one red ear;<br>And now a lady rode like the wind<br>With an apple of gold in her tossing hand;<br>And a beautiful young man followed behind<br>With quenchless gaze and fluttering hair.<br>'Were these two born in the Danaan land,<br>Or have they breathed the mortal air?'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Vex them no longer,' Niamh said,<br>And sighing bowed her gentle head,<br>And sighing laid the pearly tip<br>Of one long finger on my lip.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But now the moon like a white rose shone<br>In the pale west, and the sun'S rim sank,<br>And clouds atrayed their rank on rank<br>About his fading crimson ball:<br>The floor of Almhuin's hosting hall<br>Was not more level than the sea,<br>As, full of loving fantasy,<br>And with low murmurs, we rode on,<br>Where many a trumpet-twisted shell<br>That in immortal silence sleeps<br>Dreaming of her own melting hues,<br>Her golds, her ambers, and her blues,<br>Pierced with soft light the shallowing deeps.<br>But now a wandering land breeze came<br>And a far sound of feathery quires;<br>It seemed to blow from the dying flame,<br>They seemed to sing in the smouldering fires.<br>The horse towards the music raced,<br>Neighing along the lifeless waste;<br>Like sooty fingers, many a tree<br>Rose ever out of the warm sea;<br>And they were trembling ceaselessly,<br>As though they all were beating time,<br>Upon the centre of the sun,<br>To that low laughing woodland rhyme.<br>And, now our wandering hours were done,<br>We cantered to the shore, and knew<br>The reason of the trembling trees:<br>Round every branch the song-birds flew,<br>Or clung thereon like swarming bees;<br>While round the shore a million stood<br>Like drops of frozen rainbow light,<br>And pondered in a soft vain mood<br>Upon their shadows in the tide,<br>And told the purple deeps their pride,<br>And murmured snatches of delight;<br>And on the shores were many boats<br>With bending sterns and bending bows,<br>And carven figures on their prows<br>Of bitterns, and fish-eating stoats,<br>And swans with their exultant throats:<br>And where the wood and waters meet<br>We tied the horse in a leafy clump,<br>And Niamh blew three merry notes<br>Out of a little silver trump;<br>And then an answering whispering flew<br>Over the bare and woody land,<br>A whisper of impetuous feet,<br>And ever nearer, nearer grew;<br>And from the woods rushed out a band<br>Of men and ladies, hand in hand,<br>And singing, singing all together;<br>Their brows were white as fragrant milk,<br>Their cloaks made out of yellow silk,<br>And trimmed with many a crimson feather;<br>And when they saw the cloak I wore<br>Was dim with mire of a mortal shore,<br>They fingered it and gazed on me<br>And laughed like murmurs of the sea;<br>But Niamh with a swift distress<br>Bid them away and hold their peace;<br>And when they heard her voice they ran<br>And knelt there, every girl and man,<br>And kissed, as they would never cease,<br>Her pearl-pale hand and the hem of her dress.<br>She bade them bring us to the hall<br>Where Aengus dreams, from sun to sun,<br>A Druid dream of the end of days<br>When the stars are to wane and the world be done.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They led us by long and shadowy ways<br>Where drops of dew in myriads fall,<br>And tangled creepers every hour<br>Blossom in some new crimson flower,<br>And once a sudden laughter sprang<br>From all their lips, and once they sang<br>Together, while the dark woods rang,<br>And made in all their distant parts,<br>With boom of bees in honey-marts,<br>A rumour of delighted hearts.<br>And once a lady by my side<br>Gave me a harp, and bid me sing,<br>And touch the laughing silver string;<br>But when I sang of human joy<br>A sorrow wrapped each merry face,<br>And, patrick! by your beard, they wept,<br>Until one came, a tearful boy;<br>'A sadder creature never stept<br>Than this strange human bard,' he cried;<br>And caught the silver harp away,<br>And, weeping over the white strings, hurled<br>It down in a leaf-hid, hollow place<br>That kept dim waters from the sky;<br>And each one said, with a long, long sigh,<br>'O saddest harp in all the world,<br>Sleep there till the moon and the stars die!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And now, still sad, we came to where<br>A beautiful young man dreamed within<br>A house of wattles, clay, and skin;<br>One hand upheld his beardless chin,<br>And one a sceptre flashing out<br>Wild flames of red and gold and blue,<br>Like to a merry wandering rout<br>Of dancers leaping in the air;<br>And men and ladies knelt them there<br>And showed their eyes with teardrops dim,<br>And with low murmurs prayed to him,<br>And kissed the sceptre with red lips,<br>And touched it with their finger-tips.<br>He held that flashing sceptre up.<br>'Joy drowns the twilight in the dew,<br>And fills with stars night's purple cup,<br>And wakes the sluggard seeds of corn,<br>And stirs the young kid's budding horn,<br>And makes the infant ferns unwrap,<br>And for the peewit paints his cap,<br>And rolls along the unwieldy sun,<br>And makes the little planets run:<br>And if joy were not on the earth,<br>There were an end of change and birth,<br>And Earth and Heaven and Hell would die,<br>And in some gloomy barrow lie<br>Folded like a frozen fly;<br>Then mock at Death and Time with glances<br>And wavering arms and wandering dances.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Men's hearts of old were drops of flame<br>That from the saffron morning came,<br>Or drops of silver joy that fell<br>Out of the moon's pale twisted shell;<br>But now hearts cry that hearts are slaves,<br>And toss and turn in narrow caves;<br>But here there is nor law nor rule,<br>Nor have hands held a weary tool;<br>And here there is nor Change nor Death,<br>But only kind and merry breath,<br>For joy is God and God is joy.'<br>With one long glance for girl and boy<br>And the pale blossom of the moon,<br>He fell into a Druid swoon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And in a wild and sudden dance<br>We mocked at Time and Fate and Chance<br>And swept out of the wattled hall<br>And came to where the dewdrops fall<br>Among the foamdrops of the sea,<br>And there we hushed the revelry;<br>And, gathering on our brows a frown,<br>Bent all our swaying bodies down,<br>And to the waves that glimmer by<br>That sloping green De Danaan sod<br>Sang, 'God is joy and joy is God,<br>And things that have grown sad are wicked,<br>And things that fear the dawn of the morrow<br>Or the grey wandering osprey Sorrow.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We danced to where in the winding thicket<br>The damask roses, bloom on bloom,<br>Like crimson meteors hang in the gloom.<br>And bending over them softly said,<br>Bending over them in the dance,<br>With a swift and friendly glance<br>From dewy eyes: 'Upon the dead<br>Fall the leaves of other roses,<br>On the dead dim earth encloses:<br>But never, never on our graves,<br>Heaped beside the glimmering waves,<br>Shall fall the leaves of damask roses.<br>For neither Death nor Change comes near us,<br>And all listless hours fear us,<br>And we fear no dawning morrow,<br>Nor the grey wandering osprey Sorrow.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The dance wound through the windless woods;<br>The ever-summered solitudes;<br>Until the tossing arms grew still<br>Upon the woody central hill;<br>And, gathered in a panting band,<br>We flung on high each waving hand,<br>And sang unto the starry broods.<br>In our raised eyes there flashed a glow<br>Of milky brightness to and fro<br>As thus our song arose: 'You stars,<br>Across your wandering ruby cars<br>Shake the loose reins: you slaves of God.<br>He rules you with an iron rod,<br>He holds you with an iron bond,<br>Each one woven to the other,<br>Each one woven to his brother<br>Like bubbles in a frozen pond;<br>But we in a lonely land abide<br>Unchainable as the dim tide,<br>With hearts that know nor law nor rule,<br>And hands that hold no wearisome tool,<br>Folded in love that fears no morrow,<br>Nor the grey wandering osprey Sorrow.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Patrick! for a hundred years<br>I chased upon that woody shore<br>The deer, the badger, and the boar.<br>O patrick! for a hundred years<br>At evening on the glimmering sands,<br>Beside the piled-up hunting spears,<br>These now outworn and withered hands<br>Wrestled among the island bands.<br>O patrick! for a hundred years<br>We went a-fishing in long boats<br>With bending sterns and bending bows,<br>And carven figures on their prows<br>Of bitterns and fish-eating stoats.<br>O patrick! for a hundred years<br>The gentle Niamh was my wife;<br>But now two things devour my life;<br>The things that most of all I hate:<br>Fasting and prayers.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">S. Patrick. Tell On.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oisin. Yes, yes,<br>For these were ancient Oisin's fate<br>Loosed long ago from Heaven's gate,<br>For his last days to lie in wait.<br>When one day by the tide I stood,<br>I found in that forgetfulness<br>Of dreamy foam a staff of wood<br>From some dead warrior's broken lance:<br>I tutned it in my hands; the stains<br>Of war were on it, and I wept,<br>Remembering how the Fenians stept<br>Along the blood-bedabbled plains,<br>Equal to good or grievous chance:<br>Thereon young Niamh softly came<br>And caught my hands, but spake no word<br>Save only many times my name,<br>In murmurs, like a frighted bird.<br>We passed by woods, and lawns of clover,<br>And found the horse and bridled him,<br>For we knew well the old was over.<br>I heard one say, 'His eyes grow dim<br>With all the ancient sorrow of men';<br>And wrapped in dreams rode out again<br>With hoofs of the pale findrinny<br>Over the glimmering purple sea.<br>Under the golden evening light,<br>The Immortals moved among thc fountains<br>By rivers and the woods' old night;<br>Some danced like shadows on the mountains<br>Some wandered ever hand in hand;<br>Or sat in dreams on the pale strand,<br>Each forehead like an obscure star<br>Bent down above each hooked knee,<br>And sang, and with a dreamy gaze<br>Watched where the sun in a saffron blaze<br>Was slumbering half in the sea-ways;<br>And, as they sang, the painted birds</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Kept time with their bright wings and feet;<br>Like drops of honey came their words,<br>But fainter than a young lamb's bleat.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'An old man stirs the fire to a blaze,<br>In the house of a child, of a friend, of a brother.<br>He has over-lingered his welcome; the days,<br>Grown desolate, whisper and sigh to each other;<br>He hears the storm in the chimney above,<br>And bends to the fire and shakes with the cold,<br>While his heart still dreams of battle and love,<br>And the cry of the hounds on the hills of old.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But We are apart in the grassy places,<br>Where care cannot trouble the least of our days,<br>Or the softness of youth be gone from our faces,<br>Or love's first tenderness die in our gaze.<br>The hare grows old as she plays in the sun<br>And gazes around her with eyes of brightness;<br>Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done<br>She limps along in an aged whiteness;<br>A storm of birds in the Asian trees<br>Like tulips in the air a-winging,<br>And the gentle waves of the summer seas,<br>That raise their heads and wander singing,<br>Must murmur at last, ''Unjust, unjust';<br>And ''My speed is a weariness,' falters the mouse,<br>And the kingfisher turns to a ball of dust,<br>And the roof falls in of his tunnelled house.<br>But the love-dew dims our eyes till the day<br>When God shall come from the Sea with a sigh<br>And bid the stars drop down from the sky,<br>And the moon like a pale rose wither away.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>BOOK II</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>NOW, man of croziers, shadows called our names<br>And then away, away, like whirling flames;<br>And now fled by, mist-covered, without sound,<br>The youth and lady and the deer and hound;<br>'Gaze no more on the phantoms,' Niamh said,<br>And kissed my eyes, and, swaying her bright head<br>And her bright body, sang of faery and man<br>Before God was or my old line began;<br>Wars shadowy, vast, exultant; faeries of old<br>Who wedded men with rings of Druid gold;<br>And how those lovers never turn their eyes<br>Upon the life that fades and flickers and dies,<br>Yet love and kiss on dim shores far away<br>Rolled round with music of the sighing spray:<br>Yet sang no more as when, like a brown bee<br>That has drunk full, she crossed the misty sea<br>With me in her white arms a hundred years<br>Before this day; for now the fall of tears<br>Troubled her song.<br>I do not know if days<br>Or hours passed by, yet hold the morning rays<br>Shone many times among the glimmering flowers<br>Woven into her hair, before dark towers<br>Rose in the darkness, and the white surf gleamed<br>About them; and the horse of Faery screamed<br>And shivered, knowing the Isle of Many Fears,<br>Nor ceased until white Niamh stroked his ears<br>And named him by sweet names.<br>A foaming tide<br>Whitened afar with surge, fan-formed and wide,<br>Burst from a great door matred by many a blow<br>From mace and sword and pole-axe, long ago<br>When gods and giants warred. We rode between<br>The seaweed-covered pillars; and the green<br>And surging phosphorus alone gave light<br>On our dark pathway, till a countless flight<br>Of moonlit steps glimmered; and left and right<br>Dark statues glimmered over the pale tide<br>Upon dark thrones. Between the lids of one<br>The imaged meteors had flashed and run<br>And had disported in the stilly jet,<br>And the fixed stars had dawned and shone and set,<br>Since God made Time and Death and Sleep: the other<br>Stretched his long arm to where, a misty smother,<br>The stream churned, churned, and churned -- his lips apart,<br>As though he told his never-slumbering heart<br>Of every foamdrop on its misty way.<br>Tying the horse to his vast foot that lay<br>Half in the unvesselled sea, we climbed the stair<br>And climbed so long, I thought the last steps were<br>Hung from the morning star; when these mild words<br>Fanned the delighted air like wings of birds:<br>'My brothers spring out of their beds at morn,<br>A-murmur like young partridge: with loud horn<br>They chase the noontide deer;<br>And when the dew-drowned stars hang in the air<br>Look to long fishing-lines, or point and pare<br>An ashen hunting spear.<br>O sigh, O fluttering sigh, be kind to me;<br>Flutter along the froth lips of the sea,<br>And shores the froth lips wet:<br>And stay a little while, and bid them weep:<br>Ah, touch their blue-veined eyelids if they sleep,<br>And shake their coverlet.<br>When you have told how I weep endlessly,<br>Flutter along the froth lips of the sea<br>And home to me again,<br>And in the shadow of my hair lie hid,<br>And tell me that you found a man unbid,<br>The saddest of all men.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A lady with soft eyes like funeral tapers,<br>And face that seemed wrought out of moonlit vapours,<br>And a sad mouth, that fear made tremulous<br>As any ruddy moth, looked down on us;<br>And she with a wave-rusted chain was tied<br>To two old eagles, full of ancient pride,<br>That with dim eyeballs stood on either side.<br>Few feathers were on their dishevelled wings,<br>For their dim minds were with the ancient things.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I bring deliverance,' pearl-pale Niamh said.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Neither the living, nor the unlabouring dead,<br>Nor the high gods who never lived, may fight<br>My enemy and hope; demons for fright<br>Jabber and scream about him in the night;<br>For he is strong and crafty as the seas<br>That sprang under the Seven Hazel Trees,<br>And I must needs endure and hate and weep,<br>Until the gods and demons drop asleep,<br>Hearing Acdh touch thc mournful strings of gold.'<br>'Is he So dreadful?'<br>'Be not over-bold,<br>But fly while still you may.'<br>And thereon I:<br>'This demon shall be battered till he die,<br>And his loose bulk be thrown in the loud tide.'<br>'Flee from him,' pearl-pale Niamh weeping cried,<br>'For all men flee the demons'; but moved not<br>My angry king-remembering soul one jot.<br>There was no mightier soul of Heber's line;<br>Now it is old and mouse-like. For a sign<br>I burst the chain: still earless, neNeless, blind,<br>Wrapped in the things of the unhuman mind,<br>In some dim memory or ancient mood,<br>Still earless, netveless, blind, the eagles stood.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And then we climbed the stair to a high door;<br>A hundred horsemen on the basalt floor<br>Beneath had paced content: we held our way<br>And stood within: clothed in a misty ray<br>I saw a foam-white seagull drift and float<br>Under the roof, and with a straining throat<br>Shouted, and hailed him: he hung there a star,<br>For no man's cry shall ever mount so far;<br>Not even your God could have thrown down that hall;<br>Stabling His unloosed lightnings in their stall,<br>He had sat down and sighed with cumbered heart,<br>As though His hour were come.<br>We sought the patt<br>That was most distant from the door; green slime<br>Made the way slippery, and time on time<br>Showed prints of sea-born scales. while down through it<br>The captive's journeys to and fro were writ<br>Like a small river, and where feet touched came<br>A momentary gleam of phosphorus flame.<br>Under the deepest shadows of the hall<br>That woman found a ring hung on the wall,<br>And in the ring a torch, and with its flare<br>Making a world about her in the air,<br>Passed under the dim doorway, out of sight,<br>And came again, holding a second light<br>Burning between her fingers, and in mine<br>Laid it and sighed: I held a sword whose shine<br>No centuries could dim, and a word ran<br>Thereon in Ogham letters, 'Manannan';<br>That sea-god's name, who in a deep content<br>Sprang dripping, and, with captive demons sent<br>Out of the sevenfold seas, built the dark hall<br>Rooted in foam and clouds, and cried to all<br>The mightier masters of a mightier race;<br>And at his cry there came no milk-pale face<br>Under a crown of thorns and dark with blood,<br>But only exultant faces.<br>Niamh stood<br>With bowed head, trembling when the white blade shone,<br>But she whose hours of tenderness were gone<br>Had neither hope nor fear. I bade them hide<br>Under the shadowS till the tumults died<br>Of the loud-crashing and earth-shaking fight,<br>Lest they should look upon some dreadful sight;<br>And thrust the torch between the slimy flags.<br>A dome made out of endless carven jags,<br>Where shadowy face flowed into shadowy face,<br>Looked down on me; and in the self-same place<br>I waited hour by hour, and the high dome,<br>Windowless, pillarless, multitudinous home<br>Of faces, waited; and the leisured gaze<br>Was loaded with the memory of days<br>Buried and mighty. When through the great door<br>The dawn came in, and glimmered on the floor<br>With a pale light, I journeyed round the hall<br>And found a door deep sunken in the wall,<br>The least of doors; beyond on a dim plain<br>A little mnnel made a bubbling strain,<br>And on the runnel's stony and bare edge<br>A dusky demon dry as a withered sedge<br>Swayed, crooning to himself an unknown tongue:<br>In a sad revelry he sang and swung<br>Bacchant and mournful, passing to and fro<br>His hand along the runnel's side, as though<br>The flowers still grew there: far on the sea's waste<br>Shaking and waving, vapour vapour chased,<br>While high frail cloudlets, fed with a green light,<br>Like drifts of leaves, immovable and bright,<br>Hung in the passionate dawn. He slowly turned:<br>A demon's leisure: eyes, first white, now burned<br>Like wings of kingfishers; and he arose<br>Barking. We trampled up and down with blows<br>Of sword and brazen battle-axe, while day<br>Gave to high noon and noon to night gave way;<br>And when he knew the sword of Manannan<br>Amid the shades of night, he changed and ran<br>Through many shapes; I lunged at the smooth throat<br>Of a great eel; it changed, and I but smote<br>A fir-tree roaring in its leafless top;<br>And thereupon I drew the livid chop<br>Of a drowned dripping body to my breast;<br>Horror from horror grew; but when the west<br>Had surged up in a plumy fire, I drave<br>Through heart and spine; and cast him in the wave<br>Lest Niamh shudder.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Full of hope and dread<br>Those two came carrying wine and meat and bread,<br>And healed my wounds with unguents out of flowers<br>That feed white moths by some De Danaan shrine;<br>Then in that hall, lit by the dim sea-shine,<br>We lay on skins of otters, and drank wine,<br>Brewed by the sea-gods, from huge cups that lay<br>Upon the lips of sea-gods in their day;<br>And then on heaped-up skins of otters slept.<br>And when the sun once more in saffron stept,<br>Rolling his flagrant wheel out of the deep,<br>We sang the loves and angers without sleep,<br>And all the exultant labours of the strong.<br>But now the lying clerics murder song<br>With barren words and flatteries of the weak.<br>In what land do the powerless turn the beak<br>Of ravening Sorrow, or the hand of Wrath?<br>For all your croziers, they have left the path<br>And wander in the storms and clinging snows,<br>Hopeless for ever: ancient Oisin knows,<br>For he is weak and poor and blind, and lies<br>On the anvil of the world.<br>S. Patrick. Be still: the skies<br>Are choked with thunder, lightning, and fierce wind,<br>For God has heard, and speaks His angry mind;<br>Go cast your body on the stones and pray,<br>For He has wrought midnight and dawn and day.<br>Oisin. Saint, do you weep? I hear amid the thunder<br>The Fenian horses; atmour torn asunder;<br>Laughter and cries. The armies clash and shock,<br>And now the daylight-darkening ravens flock.<br>Cease, cease, O mournful, laughing Fenian horn!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We feasted for three days. On the fourth morn<br>I found, dropping sea-foam on the wide stair,<br>And hung with slime, and whispering in his hair,<br>That demon dull and unsubduable;<br>And once more to a day-long battle fell,<br>And at the sundown threw him in the surge,<br>To lie until the fourth morn saw emerge<br>His new-healed shape; and for a hundred years<br>So watred, so feasted, with nor dreams nor fears,<br>Nor languor nor fatigue: an endless feast,<br>An endless war.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The hundred years had ceased;<br>I stood upon the stair: the surges bore<br>A beech-bough to me, and my heart grew sore,<br>Remembering how I had stood by white-haired Finn<br>Under a beech at Almhuin and heard the thin<br>Outcry of bats.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And then young Niamh came<br>Holding that horse, and sadly called my name;<br>I mounted, and we passed over the lone<br>And drifting greyness, while this monotone,<br>Surly and distant, mixed inseparably<br>Into the clangour of the wind and sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I hear my soul drop<br>And Mananna's dark tower, stone after stone.<br>Gather sea-slime and fall the seaward way,<br>And the moon goad the waters night and day,<br>That all be overthrown.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'But till the moon has taken all, I wage<br>War on the mightiest men under the skies,<br>And they have fallen or fled, age after age.<br>Light is man's love, and lighter is man's rage;<br>His purpose drifts and dies.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And then lost Niamh murmured, 'Love, we go<br>To the Island of Forgetfulness, for lo!<br>The Islands of Dancing and of Victories<br>Are empty of all power.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'And which of these<br>Is the Island of Content?'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'None know,' she said;<br>And on my bosom laid her weeping head.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">BOOK III</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>FLED foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke,<br>High as the Saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the tide;<br>And those that fled, and that followed, from the foam-pale distance broke;<br>The immortal desire of Immortals we saw in their faces, and sighed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I mused on the chase with the Fenians, and Bran, Sceolan, Lomair,<br>And never a song sang Niamh, and over my finger-tips<br>Came now the sliding of tears and sweeping of mist-cold hair,<br>And now the warmth of sighs, and after the quiver of lips.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Were we days long or hours long in riding, when, rolled in a grisly peace,<br>An isle lay level before us, with dripping hazel and oak?<br>And we stood on a sea's edge we saw not; for whiter than new-washed fleece<br>Fled foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And we rode on the plains of the sea's edge; the sea's edge barren and grey,<br>Grey sand on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,<br>Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away,<br>Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But the trees grew taller and closer, immense in their wrinkling bark;<br>Dropping; a murmurous dropping; old silence and that one sound;<br>For no live creatures lived there, no weasels moved in the dark:<br>Long sighs arose in our spirits, beneath us bubbled the ground.<br>And the ears of the horse went sinking away in the hollow night,<br>For, as drift from a sailor slow drowning the gleams of the world and the sun,<br>Ceased on our hands and our faces, on hazel and oak leaf, the light,<br>And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the world was one.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Till the horse gave a whinny; for, cumbrous with stems of the hazel and oak,<br>A valley flowed down from his hoofs, and there in the long grass lay,<br>Under the starlight and shadow, a monstrous slumbering folk,<br>Their naked and gleaming bodies poured out and heaped in the way.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And by them were arrow and war-axe, arrow and shield and blade;<br>And dew-blanched horns, in whose hollow a child of three years old<br>Could sleep on a couch of rushes, and all inwrought and inlaid,<br>And more comely than man can make them with bronze and silver and gold.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And each of the huge white creatures was huger than fourscore men;<br>The tops of their ears were feathered, their hands were the claws of birds,<br>And, shaking the plumes of the grasses and the leaves of the mural glen,<br>The breathing came from those bodies, long warless, grown whiter than curds.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The wood was so Spacious above them, that He who has stars for His flocks<br>Could fondle the leaves with His fingers, nor go from His dew-cumbered skies;<br>So long were they sleeping, the owls had builded their nests in their locks,<br>Filling the fibrous dimness with long generations of eyes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And over the limbs and the valley the slow owls wandered and came,<br>Now in a place of star-fire, and now in a shadow-place wide;<br>And the chief of the huge white creatures, his knees in the soft star-flame,<br>Lay loose in a place of shadow: we drew the reins by his side.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Golden the nails of his bird-clawS, flung loosely along the dim ground;<br>In one was a branch soft-shining with bells more many than sighs<br>In midst of an old man's bosom; owls ruffling and pacing around<br>Sidled their bodies against him, filling the shade with their eyes.<br>And my gaze was thronged with the sleepers; no, not since the world began,<br>In realms where the handsome were many, nor in glamours by demons flung,<br>Have faces alive with such beauty been known to the salt eye of man,<br>Yet weary with passions that faded when the sevenfold seas were young.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And I gazed on the bell-branch, sleep's forebear, far sung by the Sennachies.<br>I saw how those slumbererS, grown weary, there camping in grasses deep,<br>Of wars with the wide world and pacing the shores of the wandering seas,<br>Laid hands on the bell-branch and swayed it, and fed of unhuman sleep.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Snatching the horn of Niamh, I blew a long lingering note.<br>Came sound from those monstrous sleepers, a sound like the stirring of flies.<br>He, shaking the fold of his lips, and heaving the pillar of his throat,<br>Watched me with mournful wonder out of the wells of his eyes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I cried, 'Come out of the shadow, king of the nails of gold!<br>And tell of your goodly household and the goodly works of your hands,<br>That we may muse in the starlight and talk of the battles of old;<br>Your questioner, Oisin, is worthy, he comes from the Fenian lands.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Half open his eyes were, and held me, dull with the smoke of their dreams;<br>His lips moved slowly in answer, no answer out of them came;<br>Then he swayed in his fingers the bell-branch, slowdropping a sound in faint streams<br>Softer than snow-flakes in April and piercing the marrow like flame.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Wrapt in the wave of that music, with weariness more than of earth,<br>The moil of my centuries filled me; and gone like a sea-covered stone<br>Were the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the memories of the whole of my mirth,<br>And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the roots of the grasses, the sorrels, I laid my body as low;<br>And the pearl-pale Niamh lay by me, her brow on the midst of my breast;<br>And the horse was gone in the distance, and years after years 'gan flow;<br>Square leaves of the ivy moved over us, binding us down to our rest.<br>And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot<br>How the fetlocks drip blocd in the battle, when the fallen on fallen lie rolled;<br>How the falconer follows the falcon in the weeds of the heron's plot,<br>And the name of the demon whose hammer made<br>Conchubar's sword-blade of old.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot<br>That the spear-shaft is made out of ashwood, the shield out of osier and hide;<br>How the hammers spring on the anvil, on the spearhead's burning spot;<br>How the slow, blue-eyed oxen of Finn low sadly at evening tide.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But in dreams, mild man of the croziers, driving the dust with their throngs,<br>Moved round me, of seamen or landsmen, all who are winter tales;<br>Came by me the kings of the Red Branch, with roaring of laughter and songs,<br>Or moved as they moved once, love-making or piercing the tempest with sails.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Came Blanid, Mac Nessa, tall Fergus who feastward of old time slunk,<br>Cook Barach, the traitor; and warward, the spittle on his beard never dry,<br>Dark Balor, as old as a forest, car-borne, his mighty head sunk<br>Helpless, men lifting the lids of his weary and deathmaking eye.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And by me, in soft red raiment, the Fenians moved in loud streams,<br>And Grania, walking and smiling, sewed with her needle of bone.<br>So lived I and lived not, so wrought I and wrought not, with creatures of dreams,<br>In a long iron sleep, as a fish in the water goes dumb as a stone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">At times our slumber was lightened. When the sun was on silver or gold;<br>When brushed with the wings of the owls, in the dimness they love going by;<br>When a glow-worm was green on a grass-leaf, lured from his lair in the mould;<br>Half wakening, we lifted our eyelids, and gazed on the grass with a sigh.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So watched I when, man of the croziers, at the heel of a century fell,<br>Weak, in the midst of the meadow, from his miles in the midst of the air,<br>A starling like them that forgathered 'neath a moon waking white as a shell<br>When the Fenians made foray at morning with Bran, Sceolan, Lomair.<br>I awoke: the strange horse without summons out of the distance ran,<br>Thrusting his nose to my shoulder; he knew in his bosom deep<br>That once more moved in my bosom the ancient sadness of man,<br>And that I would leave the Immortals, their dimness, their dews dropping sleep.<br>O, had you seen beautiful Niamh grow white as the waters are white,<br>Lord of the croziers, you even had lifted your hands and wept:<br>But, the bird in my fingers, I mounted, remembering alone that delight<br>Of twilight and slumber were gone, and that hoofs impatiently stept.<br>I died, 'O Niamh! O white one! if only a twelve-houred day,<br>I must gaze on the beard of Finn, and move where the old men and young<br>In the Fenians' dwellings of wattle lean on the chessboards and play,<br>Ah, sweet to me now were even bald Conan's slanderous tongue!<br>'Like me were some galley forsaken far off in Meridian isle,<br>Remembering its long-oared companions, sails turning to threadbare rags;<br>No more to crawl on the seas with long oars mile after mile,<br>But to be amid shooting of flies and flowering of rushes and flags.'<br>Their motionless eyeballs of spirits grown mild with mysterious thought,<br>Watched her those seamless faces from the valley's glimmering girth;<br>As she murmured, 'O wandering Oisin, the strength of the bell-branch is naught,<br>For there moves alive in your fingers the fluttering sadness of earth.<br>'Then go through the lands in the saddle and see what the mortals do,<br>And softly come to your Niamh over the tops of the tide;<br>But weep for your Niamh, O Oisin, weep; for if only your shoe<br>Brush lightly as haymouse earth's pebbles, you will come no more to my side.<br>'O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?'<br>I saw from a distant saddle; from the earth she made her moan:<br>'I would die like a small withered leaf in the autumn, for breast unto breast<br>We shall mingle no more, nor our gazes empty their sweetness lone<br>'In the isles of the farthest seas where only the spirits come.<br>Were the winds less soft than the breath of a pigeon who sleeps on her nest,<br>Nor lost in the star-fires and odours the sound of the sea's vague drum?<br>O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?'<br>The wailing grew distant; I rode by the woods of the wrinkling bark,<br>Where ever is murmurous dropping, old silence and that one sound;<br>For no live creatures live there, no weasels move in the dark:<br>In a reverie forgetful of all things, over the bubbling' ground.<br>And I rode by the plains of the sea's edge, where all is barren and grey,<br>Grey sand on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,<br>Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away',<br>Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.<br>And the winds made the sands on the sea's edge turning and turning go,<br>As my mind made the names of the Fenians. Far from the hazel and oak,<br>I rode away on the surges, where, high aS the saddlebow,<br>Fled foam underneath me, and round me, a wandering and milky smoke.<br>Long fled the foam-flakes around me, the winds fled out of the vast,<br>Snatching the bird in secret; nor knew I, embosomed apart,<br>When they froze the cloth on my body like armour riveted fast,<br>For Remembrance, lifting her leanness, keened in the gates of my heart.<br>Till, fattening the winds of the morning, an odour of new-mown hay<br>Came, and my forehead fell low, and my tears like berries fell down;<br>Later a sound came, half lost in the sound of a shore far away,<br>From the great grass-barnacle calling, and later the shore-weeds brown.<br>If I were as I once was, the strong hoofs crushing the sand and the shells,<br>Coming out of the sea as the dawn comes, a chaunt of love on my lips,<br>Not coughing, my head on my knees, and praying, and wroth with the bells,<br>I would leave no saint's head on his body from Rachlin to Bera of ships.<br>Making way from the kindling surges, I rode on a bridle-path<br>Much wondering to see upon all hands, of wattles and woodwork made,<br>Your bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the mth,<br>And a small and a feeble populace stooping with mattock and spade,<br>Or weeding or ploughing with faces a-shining with much-toil wet;<br>While in this place and that place, with bodies un, glorious, their chieftains stood,<br>Awaiting in patience the straw-death, croziered one, caught in your net:<br>Went the laughter of scorn from my mouth like the roaring of wind in a wood.<br>And before I went by them so huge and so speedy with eyes so bright,<br>Came after the hard gaze of youth, or an old man lifted his head:<br>And I rode and I rode, and I cried out, 'The Fenians hunt wolves in the night,<br>So sleep thee by daytime.' A voice cried, 'The Fenians a long time are dead.'<br>A whitebeard stood hushed on the pathway, the flesh of his face as dried grass,<br>And in folds round his eyes and his mouth, he sad as a child without milk-<br>And the dreams of the islands were gone, and I knew how men sorrow and pass,<br>And their hound, and their horse, and their love, and their eyes that glimmer like silk.<br>And wrapping my face in my hair, I murmured, 'In old age they ceased';<br>And my tears were larger than berries, and I murmured, 'Where white clouds lie spread<br>On Crevroe or broad Knockfefin, with many of old they feast<br>On the floors of the gods.' He cried, 'No, the gods a long time are dead.'<br>And lonely and longing for Niamh, I shivered and turned me about,<br>The heart in me longing to leap like a grasshopper into her heart;<br>I turned and rode to the westward, and followed the sea's old shout<br>Till I saw where Maeve lies sleeping till starlight and midnight part.<br>And there at the foot of the mountain, two carried a sack full of sand,<br>They bore it with staggering and sweating, but fell with their burden at length.<br>Leaning down from the gem-studded saddle, I flung it five yards with my hand,<br>With a sob for men waxing so weakly, a sob for the Fenians' old strength.<br>The rest you have heard of, O croziered man; how, when divided the girth,<br>I fell on the path, and the horse went away like a summer fly;<br>And my years three hundred fell on me, and I rose, and walked on the earth,<br>A creeping old man, full of sleep, with the spittle on his beard never dry'.<br>How the men of the sand-sack showed me a church with its belfry in air;<br>Sorry place, where for swing of the war-axe in my dim eyes the crozier gleams;<br>What place have Caoilte and Conan, and Bran, Sceolan, Lomair?<br>Speak, you too are old with your memories, an old man surrounded with dreams.<br>S. Patrick. Where the flesh of the footsole clingeth on the burning stones is their place;<br>Where he demons whip them with wires on the burning stones of wide Hell,<br>Watching the blessed ones move far off, and the smile on God's face,<br>Between them a gateway of brass, and the howl of the angels who fell.<br>Oisin. Put the staff in my hands; for I go to the Fenians, <br>O cleric, to chaunt<br>The war-songs that roused them of old; they will rise, making clouds with their Breath,<br>Innumerable, singing, exultant; the clay underneath them shall pant,<br>And demons be broken in pieces, and trampled beneath them in death.<br>And demons afraid in their darkness; deep horror of eyes and of wings,<br>Afraid, their ears on the earth laid, shall listen and rise up and weep;<br>Hearing the shaking of shields and the quiver of stretched bowstrings,<br>Hearing Hell loud with a murmur, as shouting and mocking we sweep.<br>We will tear out the flaming stones, and batter the gateway of brass<br>And enter, and none sayeth 'No' when there enters the strongly armed guest;<br>Make clean as a broom cleans, and march on as oxen move over young grass;<br>Then feast, making converse of wars, and of old wounds, and turn to our rest.<br>S. Patrick. On the flaming stones, without refuge, the limbs of the Fenians are tost;<br>None war on the masters of Hell, who could break up the world in their rage;<br>But kneel and wear out the flags and pray for your soul that is lost<br>Through the demon love of its youth and its godless and passionate age.<br>Oisin. Ah me! to be Shaken with coughing and broken with old age and pain,<br>Without laughter, a show unto children, alone with remembrance and fear;<br>All emptied of purple hours as a beggar's cloak in the rain,<br>As a hay-cock out on the flood, or a wolf sucked under a weir.<br>It were sad to gaze on the blessed and no man I loved of old there;<br>I throw down the chain of small stones! when life in my body has ceased,<br>I will go to Caoilte, and Conan, and Bran, Sceolan, Lomair,<br>And dwell in the house of the Fenians, be they in flames or at feast.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Butler+Yeats">William Butler Yeats</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <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=537130" data-title="Narrative And Dramatic The Wanderings Of Oisin de William Butler Yeats" data-description="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, Th..."></div> </div> </div>

solid border dashed border dotted border double border groove border ridge border inset border outset border no border blue green red purple cyan gold silver black