Classic Poem

Spies came with tidings to the seven doorways
Of Emain Macha.
" Too far at daybreak
Beyond the narrows of water, we saw
Cuchullin."
" Too far, too far, at night-rise
Beneath that anvil-horn, the sidelong moon,
We saw Cuchullin, crazed by unreal combat
Dust-going along the sea-roads, jetty locks
Mocking at flight. But in the glens we heard
Armies of Erc — and Maeve stirred in the West."

The hall was silent as Conal Cearnach struck
The bench-row.
" Concobar, you have called vainly on druids
For earth or sky-sign, weakened by an old curse
As women in the child-bed
But who'll obey
When the Hound bays?"
He laughed, left, and his horse-man
Outside set up a clatter.
Across the plain
They cantered, bronze bit by bit.
" Spur faster, faster ,
Lest we be late, riding against the morrow."
" Men, who will master fate?"
Ye ride, ye ride
To your disaster.
Turning, they saw the mocks and
The murk of timbering flame, heard a long cry
From Emain Macha as though the Firbolgs sacked
The inner fort. Then Conal rallied his riders,
Horns at his helmet bullocking against
The lie.
" Men, night has cast up a handful of nothings,
Flame, sound or some suck out of her reedy pools
To terrify late-goers. Let those, who will,
Fix girth and follow me,"
and rode with horns
Under the drip of woods.
Shadows
That brooded there looked around the tree-trunks, sank
Into marl-pits.
Soon, as they went in gloom, they grew
Aware of many passing by their pommels
With icy breath and knew that the host of the dead
Were catching at their coldly-sweating horns;
And a fellow, crazing with the silence, cried:
" Look at that dim-and-grey-cloud-wandering-wolf:
The moon!" — And disappearing under the drip
Of woods.
The pines were flitting by wild bushes
And past the furlong of paleness, shadowy flats,
They galloped into the Gap o' the North,
Hearing a clangour that rebounded from anvils
Within Slieve Gullion and the mile-long echoes
Hammered again from the mountain-gates, sea-bolted
Invers and estuaries of Muirthemne
And on their riding breath went murmur:
" Cauldrons
Of strength overbrim. There, Cualann, the smith, forges
Terrible weapons for the heroes. Houndless,
He broods and reforges, rivets in flame, in down-roar,
Remembering how, long ago, the king
Had supped there late at night below the soot-curtain.
A cry spattered outside. There, in the hush,
Young Setanta stood before the farrow
Calling in pride: " I am your Hound now."
And swinging his hurley stick, skipped out again
To see the threshing moon gleam on the Border below
And measure his land, then coming down through ferns, he
Caught up the angles of a harp, tinkling
Till dawn, forehead against the pegs."
They rode
Scarce hearing hoof-beat on stone until their horses
Stopped, turned and, pawing softness, came to bogland,
Along a causeway raised — men tell — by giants
Unnumbered centuries ago, splashing
The paven moonlight from the fetlocks which
The granite waked out of its aged slumber,
Complaining far behind them. Coot dived, heron
Got up, reed-legged. Then all became aware
Of the Three that galloped in red mantles before them.
Deep drove the spurs and in a sudden flaring
Of marish light, Conal remembered how the doomed
King Conaire, slow, burdened with care of homeward
Tribute, saw long ago the Three who galloped:
Red motes, that throbbed to westward — and turning, knew by
The visionary smoke and flame on the eastern
Sky-rim, his reign was over. Then Conal, spurring on,
Called out:
" Answer me, if you are men. What news
Has brought you here?"
But, laughing from the manes,
One of the Three sang out an ancient riddle:
" Ride, mortals, ride to the southeast, find
No shelter at the Brugh. Fire-wisps of madness
Have scattered the guests, there, downward the pots.
Ride
For there is no gain."
" And who are you that come
And go at night?"
" No man can tell. We ride for the
Sake of a story."
" And is the Hound still
In the West?"
The mockers had gone.
So Conal jingled
To himself.
" By God, this is a crazy riddle
For lazy housewives when they griddle bread,
Squat, piddle, go to bed."
Westward
They cantered through cold drops to softness of drizzle,
Not fortunate as the poets, the wand-men, who come in
Their speckled mantles by the meadow-paths to
A feast. They stumbled into a slough near Cromlechs
That leaned against the centuries.
A voice
Struck down from the heights, halting them.
" As I drove
My cattle home, I saw the Three Reds ride
Towards battle."
A hugeing, hairy monster pranked
Himself from a dyke with bits of rags, foul goatskin
Across his paps and waggish seed-bag. Conal
Half shouted, backing into a roundabout of jangles,
His frightened mount,
" Drive, drive your shadowy herds
To crop among the vapours.
Ulstermen look
For better faring —
Herdsman, shy stranger of
The Upper Glens!"
The riders gripped at the saddle
For all the dusk was a-click with phantoming horses
As, wrapping himself in a swirl of vapour, the Herdsman
Bewhistled his care through thunder.
Lengthening
Under the fernshaw, the granite, all climbed from turn
To turn. Soon, Conal, reining on a brink,
Could see his fifty men below, rounding
The corner of the fernshaw. Shadowed firs
Were gaffing the salmon-moon in a rocky pool.
He heard the wheezing drop of needles, breezes
That swam through hazel softnesses, the swish
Of mountain ash; then trumpeting his troop
Together on that ridge, where a last larch
Strained at its windy tether, like a bitted stallion,
Led down the slidderers: from shade to moss,
Haunch after haunch, they went.
Spoor of the wind
Scuttered across the waters; the odd gusts
Ran, galloped by their left until they spied
Lifting, cloudless beyond the ridges, blanched
As snow and gullied by the moon, eleven peaks
Above a forest top.
They crossed a plain,
Prospecting for a camp.
Voices trebled
Along the slopes.
We dance, we dance, from rock to grass
And hold our hands together as we pass
The mountain heather, the dew, the grass.
Lifting
His voice Conal called up to them:
" Lonely dancers
Who dance forever from mountain-rock to grass,
When stores of waterish blackberries are rotting
Softly below, remember this little band
Riding, riding, beyond marsh-flower and reed,
Crying of curlews; men that may return
No more."
Legendary figures, they withied
And wove their night-camp.
When the herdless dawn
Came through the pure cold gap of the east,
They stretched from the possing woods to watch
Below the shelves of stone and the reed-beds, light
Fording a mile of water.
Soon
They crossed between the mace-tops; as Athairne
And his people, Lochlann plunder on mules, wading
Like gull-men across the shallows of Moynalta
Behind a line of hurdles.
At noon, mounts
Were watered. The men, tearing at stale rations, heard
A woman keening by the ford:
He is dead .
My Hound is dead!
She looked at them
So sightlessly, her face was nothing
In the noon.
" It is the Washer of the Ford!"
The out-post cried.
" Ride fast. Ride fast."
" No, no,
It is only the wraith of a woman bowed by grief
For an unrocked cradle."
They went from the ford,
Foreboding in their minds.
Late that evening,
They came, weariful, headlong, to a land
Of stone.
Beyond, the clouds were islands,
Rainbowing in a glen.
Among the far-off hills,
As from a dazzling vat, whiteness was drifting
Upwards. Over a ridge, the gleam of broken
Water came.
Ravens, far dots in the sky,
Sighted these human dots upon a hill-top
Preening their spears.
There Conal and his men
Had halted in the last light; miles away
Across the plain, they could see a rout of riders,
Retreat of cars, along a level strand
And foam-line.
Sky-belittled on a knoll,
Self-bound by gad against a pillar-stone
Cuchullin drooped. There he had fought despite
His mortal wounds.
A vapour had come about
The brink, hiding the clearness of the ocean,
The pillar-stone.
Storm slowly climbed
With gallic steps, the last desolate ridge
As a new legend darkened, lightened, that land.