From the great grass-barnacle calling, and later the shore-weeds brown.
    If I were as I once was, the strong hoofs crushing the sand and the shells,
    Coming out of the sea as the dawn comes, a chaunt of love on my lips,
    Not coughing, my head on my knees, and praying, and wroth with the bells,
    I would leave no saint’s head on his body from Rachlin to Bera of ships.
    Making way from the kindling surges, I rode on a bridle-path
    Much wondering to see upon all hands, of wattles and woodwork made,
    Your bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the rath,
    And a small and a feeble populace stooping with mattock and spade,
    Or weeding or ploughing with faces a-shining with much-toil wet;
    While in this place and that place, with bodies unglorious, their chieftains stood,
    Awaiting in patience the straw- death, croziered one, caught in your net:
    Went the laughter of scorn from my mouth like the roaring of wind in a wood.
    And before I went by them so huge and so speedy with eyes so bright,
    Came after the hard gaze of youth, or an old man lifted his head:
    And I rode and I rode, and I cried out, ‘The Fenians hunt wolves in the night,
    So sleep thee by daytime.’ A voice cried, ‘The Fenians a long time are dead.’
    A whitebeard stood hushed on the pathway, the flesh of his face as dried grass,
    And in folds round his eyes and his mouth, he sad as a child without milk;
    And the dreams of the islands were gone, and I knew how men sorrow and pass,
    And their hound, and their horse, and their love, and their eyes that glimmer like silk.
    And wrapping my face in my hair, I murmured, ‘In old age they ceased’;
    And my tears were larger than berries, and I murmured, ‘Where white clouds lie spread
    On Crevroe or broad Knockfefin, with many of old they feast
    On the floors of the gods.’ He cried, ‘No, the gods a long time are dead.’
    And lonely and longing for Niamh, I shivered and turned me about,
    The heart in me longing to leap like a grasshopper into her heart;
    I turned and rode to the westward, and followed the sea’s old shout
    Till I saw where Maeve lies sleeping till starlight and midnight part.
    And there at the foot of the mountain, two carried a sack full of sand,
    They bore it with staggering and sweating, but fell with their burden at length.
    Leaning down from the gem-studded saddle, I flung it five yards with my hand,
    With a sob for men waxing so weakly, a sob for the Fenians’ old strength.
    The rest you have heard of, O croziered man; how, when divided the girth,
    I fell on the path, and the horse went away like a summer fly;
    And my years three hundred fell on me, and I rose, and walked on the earth,
    A creeping old man, full of sleep, with the spittle on his beard never dry.
    How the men of the sand-sack showed me a church with its belfry in air;
    Sorry place, where for swing of the war-axe in my dim eyes the crozier gleams;
    What place have Caoilte and Conan, and Bran, Sceolan, Lomair?
    Speak, you too are old with your memories, and old man surrounded with dreams.
S. Patrick. Where the flesh of the footsole clingeth on the burning stones is their place;
    Where the demons whip them with wires on the burning stones of wide Hell,
    Watching the blessèd ones move far off, and the smile on God’s face,
    Between them a gateway of brass, and the howl of the angels who fell.
Oisin. Put the staff in my hands; for I go to the Fenians, O cleric, to chaunt
    The war-songs that roused them of old; they will rise, making clouds with their breath,
    Innumerable, singing, exultant; the clay underneath them shall pant,
    And demons be broken in pieces, and trampled beneath them in death.
    And demons afraid in their darkness; deep horror of eyes and of wings,
    Afraid, their ears on the earth laid, shall listen and rise up and weep;
    Hearing the shaking of shields and the quiver of stretched bowstrings,
    Hearing Hell loud with a murmur, as shouting and mocking we sweep.
    We will tear out the flaming stones, and batter the gateway of brass
    And enter, and none sayeth ‘No’ when there enters the strongly armed guest;
    Make clean as a broom cleans, and march on as oxen move over young grass;
    Then feast, making converse of wars, and of old wounds, and turn to our rest.
S. Patrick. On the flaming stones, without refuge, the limbs of the Fenians are tost;
    None war on the masters of Hell, who could break up the world in their rage;
    But kneel and wear out the flags and pray for your soul that is lost
    Through the demon love of its youth and its godless and passionate age.
Oisin. Ah me! to be shaken with coughing and broken with old age and pain,
    Without laughter, a show unto children, alone with remembrance and fear;
    All emptied of purple hours as a beggar’s cloak in the rain,
    As a hay-cock out on the flood, or a wolf sucked under a weir.
    It were sad to gaze on the blessèd and no man I loved of old there;
    I throw down the chain of small stones! when life in my body has ceased,
    I will go to Caoilte, and Conan, and Bran, Sceolan, Lomair,
    And dwell in the house of the Fenians, be they in flames or at feast.

  By PanEris using Melati.

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