The Wanderings of Oisin: Book 2

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.