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 marred 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 Aed touch the 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, nerveless, blind,
    Wrapped in the things of the unhuman mind,
    In some dim memory or ancient mood,
    Still earless, nerveless, 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

  By PanEris using Melati.

Previous page Back Home Email this Search Discuss Bookmark Next chapter/page
Copyright: All texts on Bibliomania are © Bibliomania.com Ltd, and may not be reproduced in any form without our written permission. See our FAQ for more details.