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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537303" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Wanderings of Oisin: Book III</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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, slow dropping 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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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 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 death making 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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'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.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'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</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'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?'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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 saddle-bow,<br>Fled foam underneath me, and round me, a wandering and milky smoke.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Or weeding or ploughing with faces a-shining with much-toil wet;<br>While in this place and that place, with bodies unglorious, 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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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'.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">S. Patrick. Where the flesh of the footsole clingeth on the burning stones is their place;<br>Where the 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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oisin. Put the staff in my hands; for I go to the Fenians, 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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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>
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High as the Saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the tide;
And those that fled, and that followed, from the foam-pale distance broke;
The immortal desire of Immortals we s..."></div>
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