NOW, man of croziers, shadows called our names
 And then away, away, like whirling flames;
 And now fled by, mist-covered, without sound,
 The youth and lady and the deer and hound;
 "Gaze no more on the phantoms,' Niamh said,
 And kissed my eyes, and, swaying her bright head
 And her bright body, sang of faery and man
 Before God was or my old line began;
 Wars shadowy, vast, exultant; faeries of old
 Who wedded men with rings of Druid gold;
 And how those lovers never turn their eyes
 Upon the life that fades and flickers and dies,
 Yet love and kiss on dim shores far away
 Rolled round with music of the sighing spray:
 Yet sang no more as when, like a brown bee
 That has drunk full, she crossed the misty sea
 With me in her white arms a hundred years
 Before this day; for now the fall of tears
 Troubled her song.
                    I do not know if days
 Or hours passed by, yet hold the morning rays
 Shone many times among the glimmering flowers
 Woven into her hair, before dark towers
 Rose in the darkness, and the white surf gleamed
 About them; and the horse of Faery screamed
 And shivered, knowing the Isle of Many Fears,
 Nor ceased until white Niamh stroked his ears
 And named him by sweet names.
                               A foaming tide
 Whitened afar with surge, fan-formed and wide,
 Burst from a great door matred by many a blow
 From mace and sword and pole-axe, long ago
 When gods and giants warred.  We rode between
 The seaweed-covered pillars; and the green
 And surging phosphorus alone gave light
 On our dark pathway, till a countless flight
 Of moonlit steps glimmered; and left and right
 Dark statues glimmered over the pale tide
 Upon dark thrones.  Between the lids of one
 The imaged meteors had flashed and run
 And had disported in the stilly jet,
 And the fixed stars had dawned and shone and set,
 Since God made Time and Death and Sleep:  the other
 Stretched his long arm to where, a misty smother,
 The stream churned, churned, and churned - his lips apart,
 As though he told his never-slumbering heart
 Of every foamdrop on its misty way.
 Tying the horse to his vast foot that lay
 Half in the unvesselled sea, we climbed the stair
 And climbed so long, I thought the last steps were
 Hung from the morning star; when these mild words
 Fanned the delighted air like wings of birds:
 "My brothers spring out of their beds at morn,
 A-murmur like young partridge:  with loud horn
 They chase the noontide deer;
 And when the dew-drowned stars hang in the air
 Look to long fishing-lines, or point and pare
 An ashen hunting spear.
 O sigh, O fluttering sigh, be kind to me;
 Flutter along the froth lips of the sea,
 And shores the froth lips wet:
 And stay a little while, and bid them weep:
 Ah, touch their blue-veined eyelids if they sleep,
 And shake their coverlet.
 When you have told how I weep endlessly,
 Flutter along the froth lips of the sea
 And home to me again,
 And in the shadow of my hair lie hid,
 And tell me that you found a man unbid,
 The saddest of all men.'

 A lady with soft eyes like funeral tapers,
 And face that seemed wrought out of moonlit vapours,
 And a sad mouth, that fear made tremulous
 As any ruddy moth, looked down on us;
 And she with a wave-rusted chain was tied
 To two old eagles, full of ancient pride,
 That with dim eyeballs stood on either side.
 Few feathers were on their dishevelled wings,
 For their dim minds were with the ancient things.

 "I bring deliverance,' pearl-pale Niamh said.

 "Neither the living, nor the unlabouring dead,
 Nor the high gods who never lived, may fight
 My enemy and hope; demons for fright
 Jabber and scream about him in the night;
 For he is strong and crafty as the seas
 That sprang under the Seven Hazel Trees,
 And I must needs endure and hate and weep,
 Until the gods and demons drop asleep,
 Hearing Acdh touch thc mournful strings of gold.'
 "Is he So dreadful?'
                      "Be not over-bold,
 But fly while still you may.'
                               And thereon I:
 "This demon shall be battered till he die,
 And his loose bulk be thrown in the loud tide.'
 "Flee from him,' pearl-pale Niamh weeping cried,
 "For all men flee the demons'; but moved not
 My angry king-remembering soul one jot.
 There was no mightier soul of Heber's line;
 Now it is old and mouse-like.  For a sign
 I burst the chain:  still earless, neNeless, blind,
 Wrapped in the things of the unhuman mind,
 In some dim memory or ancient mood,
 Still earless, netveless, blind, the eagles stood.

 And then we climbed the stair to a high door;
 A hundred horsemen on the basalt floor
 Beneath had paced content:  we held our way
 And stood within:  clothed in a misty ray
 I saw a foam-white seagull drift and float
 Under the roof, and with a straining throat
 Shouted, and hailed him:  he hung there a star,
 For no man's cry shall ever mount so far;
 Not even your God could have thrown down that hall;
 Stabling His unloosed lightnings in their stall,
 He had sat down and sighed with cumbered heart,
 As though His hour were come.
                               We sought the part
 That was most distant from the door; green slime
 Made the way slippery, and time on time
 Showed prints of sea-born scales, while down through it
 The captive's journeys to and fro were writ
 Like a small river, and where feet touched came
 A momentary gleam of phosphorus flame.
 Under the deepest shadows of the hall
 That woman found a ring hung on the wall,
 And in the ring a torch, and with its flare
 Making a world about her in the air,
 Passed under the dim doorway, out of sight,
 And came again, holding a second light
 Burning between her fingers, and in mine
 Laid it and sighed:  I held a sword whose shine
 No centuries could dim, and a word ran
 Thereon in Ogham letters, "Manannan';
 That sea-god's name, who in a deep content
 Sprang dripping, and, with captive demons sent
 Out of the sevenfold seas, built the dark hall
 Rooted in foam and clouds, and cried to all
 The mightier masters of a mightier race;
 And at his cry there came no milk-pale face
 Under a crown of thorns and dark with blood,
 But only exultant faces.
                          Niamh stood
 With bowed head, trembling when the white blade shone,
 But she whose hours of tenderness were gone
 Had neither hope nor fear.  I bade them hide
 Under the shadowS till the tumults died
 Of the loud-crashing and earth-shaking fight,
 Lest they should look upon some dreadful sight;
 And thrust the torch between the slimy flags.
 A dome made out of endless carven jags,
 Where shadowy face flowed into shadowy face,
 Looked down on me; and in the self-same place
 I waited hour by hour, and the high dome,
 Windowless, pillarless, multitudinous home
 Of faces, waited; and the leisured gaze
 Was loaded with the memory of days
 Buried and mighty.  When through the great door
 The dawn came in, and glimmered on the floor
 With a pale light, I journeyed round the hall
 And found a door deep sunken in the wall,
 The least of doors; beyond on a dim plain
 A little mnnel made a bubbling strain,
 And on the runnel's stony and bare edge
 A dusky demon dry as a withered sedge
 Swayed, crooning to himself an unknown tongue:
 In a sad revelry he sang and swung
 Bacchant and mournful, passing to and fro
 His hand along the runnel's side, as though
 The flowers still grew there:  far on the sea's waste
 Shaking and waving, vapour vapour chased,
 While high frail cloudlets, fed with a green light,
 Like drifts of leaves, immovable and bright,
 Hung in the passionate dawn.  He slowly turned:
 A demon's leisure:  eyes, first white, now burned
 Like wings of kingfishers; and he arose
 Barking.  We trampled up and down with blows
 Of sword and brazen battle-axe, while day
 Gave to high noon and noon to night gave way;
 And when he knew the sword of Manannan
 Amid the shades of night, he changed and ran
 Through many shapes; I lunged at the smooth throat
 Of a great eel; it changed, and I but smote
 A fir-tree roaring in its leafless top;
 And thereupon I drew the livid chop
 Of a drowned dripping body to my breast;
 Horror from horror grew; but when the west
 Had surged up in a plumy fire, I drave
 Through heart and spine; and cast him in the wave
 Lest Niamh shudder.

                     Full of hope and dread
 Those two came carrying wine and meat and bread,
 And healed my wounds with unguents out of flowers
 That feed white moths by some De Danaan shrine;
 Then in that hall, lit by the dim sea-shine,
 We lay on skins of otters, and drank wine,
 Brewed by the sea-gods, from huge cups that lay
 Upon the lips of sea-gods in their day;
 And then on heaped-up skins of otters slept.
 And when the sun once more in saffron stept,
 Rolling his flagrant wheel out of the deep,
 We sang the loves and angers without sleep,
 And all the exultant labours of the strong.
 But now the lying clerics murder song
 With barren words and flatteries of the weak.
 In what land do the powerless turn the beak
 Of ravening Sorrow, or the hand of Wrath?
 For all your croziers, they have left the path
 And wander in the storms and clinging snows,
 Hopeless for ever:  ancient Oisin knows,
 For he is weak and poor and blind, and lies
 On the anvil of the world.

 S.  Patrick.        Be still:  the skies
 Are choked with thunder, lightning, and fierce wind,
 For God has heard, and speaks His angry mind;
 Go cast your body on the stones and pray,
 For He has wrought midnight and dawn and day.

 Oisin. Saint, do you weep? I hear amid the thunder
 The Fenian horses; atmour torn asunder;
 Laughter and cries.  The armies clash and shock,
 And now the daylight-darkening ravens flock.
 Cease, cease, O mournful, laughing Fenian horn!

 We feasted for three days.  On the fourth morn
 I found, dropping sea-foam on the wide stair,
 And hung with slime, and whispering in his hair,
 That demon dull and unsubduable;
 And once more to a day-long battle fell,
 And at the sundown threw him in the surge,
 To lie until the fourth morn saw emerge
 His new-healed shape; and for a hundred years
 So watred, so feasted, with nor dreams nor fears,
 Nor languor nor fatigue:  an endless feast,
 An endless war.

                 The hundred years had ceased;
 I stood upon the stair:  the surges bore
 A beech-bough to me, and my heart grew sore,
 Remembering how I had stood by white-haired Finn
 Under a beech at Almhuin and heard the thin
 Outcry of bats.

                 And then young Niamh came
 Holding that horse, and sadly called my name;
 I mounted, and we passed over the lone
 And drifting greyness, while this monotone,
 Surly and distant, mixed inseparably
 Into the clangour of the wind and sea.

 "I hear my soul drop down into decay,
 And Mananna's dark tower, stone after stone.
 Gather sea-slime and fall the seaward way,
 And the moon goad the waters night and day,
 That all be overthrown.

 "But till the moon has taken all, I wage
 War on the mightiest men under the skies,
 And they have fallen or fled, age after age.
 Light is man's love, and lighter is man's rage;
 His purpose drifts and dies.'

 And then lost Niamh murmured, "Love, we go
 To the Island of Forgetfulness, for lo!
 The Islands of Dancing and of Victories
 Are empty of all power.'

 "And which of these
 Is the Island of Content?'

"None know,' she said;
 And on my bosom laid her weeping head.

The Wanderings of Oisin, Part III