Classic Poem

At early day
Out in the windy sunlight on a hill
Beneath the forests of Beann Gulbain they
Stood and Fionn spoke gloomily: " Your will
And changeling years have taken her. The wild
Delicate girlhood and the lissom air
Of her are gone with the dead poppies. Her child
Is yours and all her ways. Only her hair
Burns arrogant across the black ravine
Of ruinous years," he stopped. Through a grey mist
Of dream he saw the girlish Grainne lean
Utterly from the past and then he felt
Her fingers quietly as dewfall prest
His brow and hoarsened he cried out: " You changed
White Grainne who was mine when ye fled west
The angered stars," then on the hillside ranged
And as a gale shoulders a mountain fir
Until it cries out and the dim roots stir
Deep in the clay and rock, so Fionn leant
Fiercely upon his boar spear till it bent
Earthward. Thereat Diarmuid turned and said,
With bickered eyes: " Bitter is that reproof
O Fionn, who know that it was Grainne led
Me under bonds of magic from your roof
To the bare hills without and we at night
Like waters wandering under the sky
Darkly." Rapidly came the other's reply
Like the raillery of summer rain: " Ah! Yes,
Was not that magic sweet in your despite
Being but the bondage of her loveliness
And your desire? Verily was't not sweet
To follow night as mountain streams the sea
And at dusk-faded lakes to cool her feet
Wearily burning and with wettish leaves
Or mosses staunch them while on stooping knee
You laughed up to her? Surely a warrior's toil!
And the grim bond of your enchantment grieves
You yet to fury? Does the mad blood boil
In the black cauldron of your heart and steam
Across your narrowed nostrils? How sweet to mock
Me — Fionn — when you were wakened from some dream
Feeling the drowsy arms of Grainne bind
You in white flame: " O Fionn! — an old grey rock
Beneath the sky, the cold arms of the wind
Flung amorous around him! " " The other spoke:
" I loved her, Fionn. Laughing and light was she
But silent in our love and like a bow —
Fiercely tense. Yet in a winter two
Learn to sleep sound together. I'll not wrong
A lover, no, not one; though on her lips
Thinking, I have turned bitterly to long
For the loud swords and the stern comrades. You
Are wise in war. Are you not wise in love
And wiving? Leave anger to the years.
Remember, Fionn, how once you lay entranced
Upon the lonely crannog of the lake
Of Inish Tuile and the bluebells danced
And the winds whistled ye, unheard. I came
And slew three wizards at the sandy spit;
We feasted and mead splashed the torches' flame
From gold-red goblets, sudden, we saw them flit,
Three bearded shadows; then granite crags rang out
Dwindled with screams of night. Remember I
Drank with my thirsting sword in many a rout
And battle of yours." But Fionn laughed bitterly
And stared in darkness at the waiting ground,
Unseeing, for his mind groped to his dead love
And towards the past his heart, a hungered hound,
Strained at the leash. " Let be, for I am old,"
He cried, " foolish and old. What have the old to do
With dreams the heated sinews of youth, no spears
Or staghunts weary, beget. His words can woo
No woman to him whose body is bent and cold,"
Proudly he towered through the mountain air,
" Old . . . Old . . . this whitlow, this thing for women's tears
A moment's blood-drop; no more! Who'll snarl, rage,
Whelping his wounds? I am of that old breed
That's gone, begotten from the fire that's hid
In the loins of the cold rocks. Like a boy
Stubbornly courage'd this grew — this that's my own —
This Fianna sprung fiercely from my joy
Of generation, my hot impatient seed,
My manhood. Ye that are my blood and bone
Ambitioned, fighters, hunters of my years,
I see ye going, O Fenians, and I see
The fierce, the indomitable sun-welded spears
Snapt like saplings and the winter sky
Watching the desolate ruins on Almhuin hill
And the sterile plain. Loud the rut of stags
By stony Echtge, no hound on Leiter Lone,
Through the trees of Liathdroma still
The cuckoo voices float along the glen
But from the clouds the mountain cliffs will cry
For all their eagles of the bronze-flamed wings!
Aye, a brood of eagles, for we were men
That greatly lived and knew what 'twas to love
And what to hate!" Huge by his spear he stood
Rugged against the sky, upon his brow
The solemn sunlight. Remembering, he shrank
Into grey cunning: " Foolish it were indeed
To wrangle on the aged ledge of life
Where I've scarce foothold. Diarmuid, let us go,
For staying, you wrestle with a worse than I
— Death, and know the evilness decreed
Upon the mountain of Beann Gulbain." He turned
From the hill, " O limp away," the younger cried,
" For I have come to hunt." " Would you be urned
Within a cairn of hillstones," Fionn replied
" Until a spider spins your dust? You know
That once we struggled down a windy shore
And through the storming welter and the foam
Heard a sea-voice withhold you from the boar
That whets the forest boulders of Gulban."
" It lied!"
" Diarmuid, no sword can fight the druid craft
And it is truth"
" And fate" the other laughed.
Hurrying from the dark-lit pines beneath
The Fenians scattered on the sunbrowned heath,
Bronze-girt Oscar, Caoilte and Oisin
Hailing Fionn and Diarmuid on the green
Hilltop. The poet musically lipped:
" As I came hither O Fionn I heard the sounds
Of otters swimming lakeward and glad calls
From height to height and sweetly belling hounds
Till louder than the roaring of the falls
At Assaroe the anger of your words
Foamed against the wind. O be not rash
Of tongue lest quicker than the silver flash
Of salmon leaping there, unscabbarded swords
Lighten between ye!"
But Fionn did not hear.
He stood knee-deep in ferns; boar-like, his eyes
Glinting. He saw above the forest's verge
The black blunt precipice of Gulban rear
Skyward, the clouded mountain tops and three
Eagles in the high blue air like flies
Flickering around a solitary peak.
Below; the windy hillocks dropped to the sea —
A blue-green-shadowed plain, and salt-white surge
Pawed round black capes. Then he heard Oisin speak
To the Fianna, " Watch ye like a cloud
Of seamews hovering with drooped pink claws
Over the green-hollowed waves for prey?
Begone!" Caoilte laughing and Diarmuid say
Slowly mouthed " O maker of the loud
War words that drive the foe like rooks and daws
From creaking elms, of songs that pluck out wrath
Even as a harper a rusted string, not you
But him whose taunts to me are as the froth
On a boar's hot fangs, I spurn, I spurn." A raven flew
Like a black thought into the forest trees
Above and from the sun-green bracken Fionn stared
At its slow flight till like the sea-born breeze
Soughing through the pines below he heard
The voice of Diarmuid " and if I no more
Come from the forest's jaws when yonder sun is red
O make for me a song, Oisin, lest men
That loved me once, wrong me when I am dead;
Friend, friend, a song of laughter and of tears,
Of the glad sunlight and the glittering spears
Of springtime rain, my fights and wanderings
Conquest and love and sleep.
Tell that the clay of age could never creep
Coldly around my heart nor did I sit
Mumbling at a turf fire half blind with rheum
And maybe groping feebly in the gloom
Finger the leather breasts of a dumb hag
That once, O Gods, was the white Grainne. Tell
That as the lightning dancing on the crag
I snatched the joy of very life from doom.
Farewell!"