The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

TO THE MEMORY OF DENIS FLORENCE MAC-CARTHY, TO WHOM ENGLISH AND IRISH READERS OWE, BESIDE MANY A GAELIC LEGEND, THE BEST WORKS OF CALDERON, THIS POEM IS DEDICATED.

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CANTO I. THE STEPMOTHER'S MALEDICTION.

Ere yet great Miledh's sons to Erin came,
Lords of the Gael, Milesian styled more late,
An earlier tribe, Tuatha was their name,
Likewise Dedannan, ruled the Isle of Fate,
A tribe that knew nor clan, nor priest, nor bard,
Wild as the waves, and as the sea-cliffs hard.

Some say that race of old from Greece exiled
Long time had sojourned in the frozen North
Roaming Norwegian wood and Danish wild:
To Erin thence more late they issued forth,
And thither brought two gifts both loved and feared,
The Lia Fail, and Ogham lore revered.

Fiercer they were, not manlier, than the Gael,
Large-handed, swift of foot, dark-haired, dark-eyed,
With sudden gleams athwart their faces pale,
Transits of fancies swift, or angry pride:
Strange lore they boasted, imped by insight keen;
Blackened at times by gusts of causeless spleen.

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These, when the white fleet of the Gael drew nigh
Green Erin's shore, their heritage decreed,
O'er-meshed through rites unholy earth and sky
With sudden gloom. The invaders took no heed
But dashed through dark their galleys on the strand;
Then clapped their hands, and laughing leaped to land.

Around them drew Tuatha's race in guile,
Unarmed, with mocking voice and furtive mien,
And scoffed: ‘Not thus your fathers fought erewhile!
Say, call ye warriors knaves that creep unseen,
While true men sleep, up inlet dim and fiord,
Filching the land they proved not with their sword?’

Then to the Gael their bard, Amergin, spake:
‘Sail forth, my sons, nine waves across the deep,
And when this island-race are armed, come back;
Take then their realm by force; and, taking, keep!’
The Gael sailed forth, nine waves; then turned and gazed—
Night wrapt the isle, and storm by magic raised!

Round Erin's shores like leaves their ships were blown:
Strewn on her reefs lay bard and warrior drowned;
Not less the Gael upreared ere long that throne
Two thousand years through all the West renowned.
O'er Taillten's field God held the scales of Fate:
That last dread battle closed the dire debate.

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There fell those three Tuatha queens who gave
The land their names—they fell by death discrowned:
There many a Gaelic chieftain found his grave:
Thenceforth the races twain adjusted bound
And right, at times by league, at times by war;
Nor any reigned as yet from shore to shore.

Still here and there Tuatha princes ruled
Now in green vale, and now on pale blue coast,
Huge warrior one, and one in magic schooled;
The graver made Druidic lore their boast,
And knew the secret might of star and leaf:
Grey-haired King Bove stood up of these the chief.

Southward by broad Lough Derg his palace stood:
Northward, beside Emania's lonely mere
In Finnahá, embowered 'mid lawn and wood,
King Lir abode, a warrior, not a seer;
Well loved was he, plain man with great, true heart,
Who loathed, despite his race, the sorcerer's art.

Five centuries lived he ere that better light
Gladdened the earth from Bethlehem: ne'ertheless
He judged his land with justice and with might,
Tempering the same at times with gentleness;
And gave the poor their due; and made proclaim,
‘Let no man smite the old; the virgin shame.’

His prime was spent in wars: in middle life
He bade a youthful princess share his throne:
Nor e'er had monarch yet a truer wife
With tenderer palm or voice of sweeter tone,

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The one sole lady of that race was she
Sun-haired, with large eyes azure as the sea.

She moved amid the crafty as a child;
Amid the lawless, chaste as unsunned maid;
Amid the unsparing, as a turtle mild;
Wondering at wrong; too gentle to upbraid:
Yet many a fell resolve, as she rode by,
Died at its birth—the ill-thinker knew not why!

Sadness before her fled: in years long past
As on a cliff the warriors sang their songs
A harper maid with eyes that stared aghast
Had chaunted, ‘Not to us this isle belongs!
The Fates reserve it for a race more true
Ye children of Dedannan's stock, than you!’

And since she scorned her music to abate
Nor ceased to freeze their triumph with her dirge
The princes and the people rose in hate
And hurled her harp and her into the surge:
Yea still halfway 'twixt midnight and the morn
That dirge swelled up, by tempest onward borne!

Remembering oft this spectre of his youth
King Lir would sit, a frown upon his brow:
Then came the queen with words of peace and truth;
‘Mourn they that sinned! A child that hour wert thou!
Thou rul'st this land to-day: in years to be
Who best deserves shall wield her sovereignty.’

Then would the monarch doff his sullen mood
With kingly joy, and, bright as May-day's morn,
Ride forth amid his hounds through wild and wood,
Thrilling far glens with echoes of his horn;

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Or meet the land's invaders face to face
Well pleased, and homeward hew them with disgrace.

Thus happy lived the pair, and happier far
When four fair children graced the royal house,
Fairer than flowers, more bright than moon or star
Shining through vista long of forest boughs.
Finola was the eldest, eight years old:
The yearling, Conn, best loved of all that fold.

These beauteous creatures with their mother shared
Alike her blissful nature and sweet looks,
Like her swan-soft, swan-white, blue-eyed, bright-haired,
With voices musical as birds or brooks:
Beings they seemed reserved for some great fate,
Mysterious, high, elect, and separate.

At times they gambolled in the sunny sheen;
At times, Fiacre and Aodh at her side,
Finola paced the high-arched alleys green
At once their youthful playmate and their guide:
A mother-hearted child she walked, and pressed
That infant, daily heavier, to her breast.

Great power of Love that, wide as heaven, dost brood
O'er all the earth, and doest all things well!
Light of the wise, and safeguard of the good!
Nowhere, methinks, thou better lov'st to dwell
Than in the hearts of innocents that still,
By dangerous love untempted, work Love's will!

Thou shalt be with them when the sleet-wind blows
Not less than in the violet-braided bower:

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Through thee 'mid desert sands shall bud the rose,
The wild wave anthems sing! In trial's hour
A germ of thine shall breed that quenchless Faith
Amaranth of life, and asphodel of death.

Ah lot of man! Ah world whose life is change!
Ah sheer descent from topmost height of good
To deepest gulf of anguish sudden and strange!
A nation round their monarch's gateway stood:
All day there stood they, whispering in great dread:
The herald came at last—‘Our Queen is dead!’

In silence still they stood an hour and more,
Till through the West had sunk the great red sun,
And from the castle wall and turrets hoar
The latest crimson utterly had gone:
At last the truth had reached them; then on high
An orphaned People hurled its funeral cry.

They hurled it forth again and yet again,
The dreadful wont of that barbaric time
Cry after cry that reached the far-off main
And, echoing, seemed from cloud to cloud to climb;
Then lifted hands like creatures broken-hearted,
Or sentenced men; and homeward, mute, departed.

Fast-speeding Time, albeit the wounded wing
He may not bind, brings us at least the crutch:
Winter was over, and the on-flying Spring
Grazed the sad monarch's brow with heavenly touch
And raised the head, now whitening, from the ground
And stanched, not healed, the heart's eternal wound.

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King Bove, the Pontiff king of that dark race,
To Lir sent missives, ‘Quit thee like a man!
The Gaels, our scourge, and Erin's sore disgrace,
Advance, each day, their armies, clan by clan;
Against them march thy host with mine, and take
To wife my daughter, for thy children's sake.’

Lir sadly mused; but answered: ‘Let it be!’
And drave with fifty chariots in array
To where the land's chief river like a sea
There named Lough Derg, spreads out in gulf and bay
And many a woody mountain sees its face
Imaged in that clear flood with softened grace.

There with King Bove the widowed man abode
Two days amid great feastings. On the third
The king led forth his daughter—o'er her glowed
A dim veil jewel-tissued—with this word:
‘Behold thy wife! The world proclaims her fair:
I know her strong to love, and strong to dare.’

And Lir made answer: ‘Fair she is as when
A mist-veiled yew, red-berried, stands in state:
Can love, you say! Love she my babes! and then
With her my love shall bide; if not—my hate.’
And she, a crimson on her dusky brow,
Replied, ‘If so it be, then be it so!’

King Lir, a fortnight more in revels spent,
Made journey to his castle in the North
With her, his youthful consort, well content:
Arrived, in rapture of their loving mirth
Forth rushed into his arms his children four
Bright as those wavelets on their blue lake's shore;

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On whom the new queen cast a glance oblique
One moment's space; then, flinging wide her arms,
With instinct changed and impulse lightning-like
Clasped them in turn and wondered at their charms
And cried, ‘If e'er a stepmother could love
I of that tribe renowned will tenderest prove.’

And so by her great loving of those four
Still from her husband won she praises sweet
And plaudits from his people more and more;
Her own she called them: nor was this deceit:
She loved them with a fitful love—a will
To make them or to mar, for good or ill.

She wooed them still with shows, with flowers, with fruit;
Daily for them new sports she sought and found:
Yet, if their father praised them she was mute
And, when he placed them on his knee, she frowned,
Murmuring, ‘How blue their eyes! their cheek how pale!
Their voices too are voices of the Gael!’

Meantime, as month by month in grace they grew,
Their father loved them better than before;
And so, one eve, their slender cots he drew
Each from its place remote, and lightly bore,
And laid them ranged before his royal bed;
And o'er the four a veil gold-woven spread;

Their mother's bridal-veil: and still as dawn
Was in its glittering tissue caged and caught
He left his couch, and, that light veil withdrawn,
Before his children stood in silent thought;

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And, if they slept, he kissed them in their sleep,
Then watched them with clasped hands in musings deep.

And, if they slept not, from their balmy nest
With under-sliding arms he raised them high,
And clasped them each, successive, to his breast,
Or on them flashed the first light from the sky:
Then laid him by his mute, sleep-feigning bride,
And slept once more: and oft in sleep he sighed.

Which things abhorring, she her face averse
Turned all day steadfast from the astonished throng:
And next, as one that broods upon a curse,
She sat in her sick-chamber three weeks long,
And never raised her eyes, nor made complaint,
Dark as a fiend and silent as a saint.

Lastly to Lir she spake: ‘Daily I sink
Downward to death. I wither in my prime:
Home to my father I would speed, and drink
Once more the breezes of my native clime:
All night in sleep along Lough Derg I strayed,
And wings of strength about my shoulders played.

‘These four—thy children—with me I will take
To please my father's eye; he loves them well:
Thou too, whene'er thy leisure serves, shalt make
Thither thy journey.’ All the powers of Hell
Thrilled at that speech in penal vaults below;
But Lir, no fraud suspecting, answered, ‘Go!’

Therefore next morn when earliest sunrise smote
Green mead to golden near the full-fed stream,
They caught four steeds that grazed thereby remote
And yoked abreast beside the chariot beam;

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And when the sun was sinking toward the West
By Darvra's lake drew rein, and made their rest.

There the bad queen, descending, round her cast
A baleful look of mingled hate and woe,
And with those babes into a thicket passed,
And drew a dagger from her breast; and lo!
She struck them not, but only wailed and wailed—
So strongly in her womanhood prevailed.

The mood was changed. She smiled that smile which none
How wise soe'er, beholding, could resist
And drew those children to her, one by one;
Then wailed once more, and last their foreheads kissed
And cried with finger pointing to the lake,
‘Hence! and in that clear bath your pastime take!’

She spoke, and from their silken garb forth-sliding
Ere long those babes were sporting in the bay;
And, as it chanced, the eddy past them gliding
Wafted a swan's plume: 'twas less white than they:
Frowning, the queen beheld them, and on high
Waved thrice her Druid wand athwart the sky:

Then, standing on the marge wan-cheeked, wideeyed,
As near they drew, awe-struck and wondering,
Therewith she smote their golden heads, and cried,
‘Fly hence, ye pale-faced children of the king!
Cleave the blue mere, or on through ether sail;
No more his loved ones but a dolorous tale!’

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Straightway to snow-white swans those children turned:
And, sideway as they swerved, the creatures four
Fixed on her looks with human grief that yearned;
Then slowly drifted backward from the shore;
While loud with voice unchanged, Finola cried,
‘Bad deed is thine, false queen and bitter bride!

‘Bad deed afflicting babes that harmed thee not;
Bad deed, and to thyself an evil dower:
Disastrous more than ours shall be thy lot!
Thou too shalt feel the weight of Druid power:
From age to age thy penance ne'er shall cease:
Our doom, though long it lasts, shall end in peace.’

Then rang a wild shriek from that dreadful shape:
‘Long, long, ay long shall last those years of woe!
Here on this lake from misty cape to cape
Three centuries ye shall wander to and fro;
Three centuries more shall stem with heavier toil
Far Alba's waves, the black sea-strait of Moyle.

‘Lastly three centuries where the Eagle-Crest
O'er-looks the western deep and Inisglaire
Upon the mountain waves that know not rest
Shall be your rolling palace, foul or fair,
Till comes the Tailkenn, sent to sound the knell
Of darkness, and you hear his Christian bell.’

Lo, as a band of lilies white and tall
Beneath a breeze of morning bend their head

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High held in virgin state majestical
So meekly cowered those swans in holy dread
Hearing that promised Tailkenn's blissful name:
For they long since had heard in dream the same.

Then fell a dew of meekness on the proud
Noting their humble heart; and dropped her front;
And sorrow closed around her like a cloud;
And thus with other voice than was her wont
To those soft victims of her wrath she cried:
‘Woe, woe! Yet Fate must rule, whate'er betide!

‘The deed is done; but thus much I concede:
In you the human heart shall never fail
Changed though you be and masked in feathery weed:
Your voice shall sweet remain as voice of Gael;
And all who hear your songs shall sink in trance
And sleeping dream some great deliverance.’

She spake, and smote her hands; and at her word
O'er-awed and mute men caught the royal steeds
Grazing in peace beside the hornèd herd
Amid the meadow flowers and yellow weeds:
And breathed her spirit into those steeds and drave
And reached Lough Derg what time above its wave

The sun was rising; and at set of sun
Entered once more her father's palace gate:
Seated thereby his nobles, every one,
Arose and welcomed her with loving state:
She answered naught, but sternly past them strode
And found her girlhood's bower, and there abode.

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But when of Lir King Bove had made demand,
She answered thus: ‘Enough! My Lord is naught;
Nor will he trust his children to thy hand
Lest thou shouldst slay them.’ Long in silent thought
The old man stood, then murmured in low tone
‘I loved those children better than mine own!’

That night in dream King Lir had anguish sore,
And southward ere the dawn rode far away
With many a chief to see his babes once more
Beside Lough Derg; and lo, at close of day
Nighing to Darvra's lake, the westering sun
In splendour on the advancing horsemen shone.

Straightway from that broad water's central stream
Was heard a clang of pinions and swift feet—
Unchanged at heart those babes had caught that gleam,
Instant from far had rushed, their sire to greet
Spangling the flood with silver spray; and ere
That sire had reached the margin they were there.

Then, each and all, clamorous they made lament
Recounting all their wrong and all the woe
And Lir, their tale complete, his garments rent,
Till then transfixed like marble shape; and lo!
Three times, heart-grieved, his warriors raised their cry
Piercing the centre of the low-hung sky.

But Lir knelt down upon the shining sand
And cried, ‘Though great the might of Druid charms,

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Return and feel once more your native land,
And find once more and fill your father's arms!’
And they made answer: ‘Till the Tailkenn come
We tread not land! The waters are our home.’

But when Finola saw her father's grief
She added thus; ‘Albeit our days are sad
The twilight brings our pain in part relief:
And songs are ours by night that make us glad:
Yea, each that hears our music though he grieve
Rejoices more. Abide, for it is eve.’

So Lir, and his, couched on the wave-lipped sod
All night; and ever as those songs up swelled
A mist of sleep upon them fell from God
And healing Spirits converse with them held:
And Lir was glad all night: but with the morn
Anguish returned; and thus he cried, forlorn:

‘Farewell! The morn is come; and I depart:
Farewell! Not wholly evil are things ill!
Farewell, Finola! Yea, but in my heart
With thee I bide: there liv'st thou changeless still:
O Aodh! O Fiacre! the night is gone:—
Farewell to both! Farewell, my little Conn.’

Southward with speed the childless rode once more
And saw at last beyond the forests tall
The great lake and the palace on its shore;
And, entering, onward passed from hall to hall
To where King Bove majestic sat and crowned
High on a terrace with his seers around,

A stately terrace clustered round with towers,
And jubilant with music's merry din,

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Beaten by resonant waves, and bright with flowers:
There—but apart—she stood that wrought the sin,
Like one that broods on one black thought alone
Seen o'er a world of happy hopes o'erthrown.

The throng made way: onward the wronged one strode
To Bove, sole-throned and lifting in his hand
For royal sceptre that Druidic rod
Which gave him o'er the Spirit-world command;
Then, pointing to that traitress, false as fair,
The childless spake: ‘There stands the murderess!—there!’

Straight on the King Druidic insight fell;
And, mirrored in his mind as cloud in lake,
His daughter's crime distinct and visible,
Before him stood. He turned to her and spake:
‘Thou hear'st the charge: how makest thou reply?’
And she: ‘The deed is mine! I wrought it! I!’

Then spake King Bove with countenance like night:
‘Of all dread shapes that traverse earth or sea,
Or pierce the soil, or urge through heaven their flight,
Say, which abhorrest thou most?’ And answered she:
‘The shape of Spirits Accursed that ride the storm:’
And he: ‘Be thine henceforth that demon form!’

He spake, and lifted high his Druid Wand:—
T'ward him perforce she drew: she bowed her head:
Down on that head he dropp'd it; and beyond
The glooming lake, with bat-like wings outspread

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O'er earth's black verge the shrieking Fury passed;
Thenceforth to circle earth while earth shall last.

As when, on autumn eve from hill or cape
That slants into grey wastes of western sea,
The sun long set, some shepherd stares agape
At cloud that seems through endless space to flee
On raven pinions down the moaning wind,
Thus on that Fury stared they, well-nigh blind.

Then spake the Pontiff-king with head that shook,
‘I loved thy babes: now therefore let us go
Northward, and on their blameless beauty look,
Though changed, and hear their songs: for this I know
By Druid art, they sing the whole night long
And heaven and earth are solaced by their song.’

Northward ere dawn they rode with a great host;
And loosed their steeds by Darvra's mirror clear
What time purpureal evening like a ghost
Stepped from the blue glen on the glimmering mere:
And camped where stood the ruminating herds
With heads forth leaning t'ward those human birds.

And, ever o'er the wave those swans would come
To hear man's voice, and tell their tale to each,
Swift as the wind and whiter than the foam;
Yet never mounted they the bowery beach,
And still swerved backward from the beckoning hand
Revering thus their stepmother's command.

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And ever, when the sacred night descended
While with those ripples on the sandy bars
The sighing woods and winds low murmurs blended
Their music fell upon them from the stars,
And they gave utterance to that gift divine
In silver song or anthem crystalline.

Who heard that strain no more his woes lamented:
The exiled chief forgat his place of pride:
The prince ill-crowned his ruthless deed repented:
The childless mother and the widowed bride
Amid their locks tear-wet and loosely straying
Felt once again remembered touches playing.

The words of that high music no one knew;
Yet all men felt there lived a meaning there
Immortal, marvellous, searching, strengthening, true,
The pledge of some great future strange and fair
When sin shall lose her might, and cleansing woe
Shall on the Just some starry crown bestow.

Lulled by that strain the prophet king let drop
In death his Druid-Staff by Darvra's side:
And there in later years with happy hope
King Lir, that mystic requiem listening, died:
And there those blissful sufferers bore their wrong
All day in weeping, and all night in song.

Not once 'tis whispered in that mystic story
They raised their voice God's justice to arraign:
All patient suffering is expiatory:
Their doom was linked with hope of Erin's gain;
And, like the Holy Elders famed of old,
Those babes on that high Promise kept their hold.

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And they saw great towers built, and saw them fall;
And saw the little seedling tempest-sown;
And generations under torch and pall
Brone forth to narrow graves ere long grass-grown;
And all these things to them were as a dream,
Or shade that sleeps on some fast hurrying stream.

More numerous daily flocked to that still shore
Peace-loving spirits: yea, the Gaelic clans
And tribes Dedannan, foemen there no more,
From the same fountains brimmed their flowing cans,
And washed their kirtles in the same pure rills,
And brought their corn-sheaves to the self-same mills.

Thus, though elsewhere the sons of Erin strove
From Aileach's coast and Uladh's marble cliffs
To where by Lee, and Beara's inmost cove,
The fishers spread their nets and launched their skiffs
Round Darvra's shores remained inviolate peace;
There too the flocks and fields had best increase.

In that long strife the Gael the victory won:
Tuatha's race Dedannan disappeared;
Yet still the conqueror whispered, sire to son,
‘Their progeny survives, half scorned, half feared,
The Fairy Host; and mansions bright they hold
On moonlight hills and under waters cold.

‘To snare the Gael perpetual spells they weave:
O'er the wet waste they bid the meteor glide:
They raise illusive cliffs at morn and eve
On wintry coasts: sea-mantled rocks they hide:

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And shipwrecked sailors eye them o'er the waves,
Dark shapes pygmean couchant in sea-caves.

‘Some say that, 'tween the mountains’ sunless walls
They throng beneath their stony firmament,
An iron-handed race. At intervals
Through chasm stream-cloven, and through rocky rent
The shepherd hears their multitudinous hum
As of far hosts approaching swift yet dumb.

‘In those dread vaults, Magian and Alchemist
Supreme in every craft of brain and hand,
The mountains' mineral veins they beat and twist;
And on red anvils forge them spear and brand
For some predestined battle. Yea, men say
The island shall be theirs that last great day!’

CANTO II. THE PENANCE OF THE INNOCENTS.

What time, forth sliding from the Eternal Gates,
The centuries three on earth had lived and died,
Thus spake Finola to her snowy mates,
‘No more in this soft haven may we bide:
The second Woe succeeds: that heavier toil
On Alba's waves, the black sea-strait of Moyle.’

Then wept to her in turn the younger Three:
‘Alas the sharp rocks and the salt sea-foam!
Thou therefore make the lay ere yet we flee
From this our exile's cradle sweet as home!’

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And thus Finola sang while, far and near,
The men of Erin wept that strain to hear:

‘Farewell, Lough Darvra, with thine isles of bloom!
Farewell, familiar tribes that grace our shore!
The penance deepens on us and the doom:
Farewell! The voice of man we list no more
Till he, the Tailkenn, comes to sound the knell
Of darkness, and rings out his gladsome bell.’

Thus singing, 'mid their dirge the sentenced soared
Heaven-high; then hanging mute on plumes outspread,
With downcast eye long time that lake explored;
And lastly with a great cry northward sped:
Then was it Erin's sons, listening that cry,
Decreed: ‘The man who slays a swan shall die.’

Three days against the northern blast on-flying
To Fate obedient and the Will Divine,
They reached, what time the crimson eve was lying
On Alba's isles and ocean's utmost line,
That huge sea-strait whose racing eddies boil
'Twixt Erin and that cloud-girt headland Moyle.

There anguish fell on them: they heard the booming
Of league-long breakers white, and gazed on waves
Wreck-strewn, themselves entombed and all-entombing,
Rolling to labyrinths dim of red-roofed caves;
And streaming waters broad as with one will
In cataracts from grey shelves descending still.

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There, day by day, the sun more early set;
And through the hollows of the high-ridged sea
Which foamed around their rocky cabinet
The whirlwinds lashed them more remorselessly:
And winter followed soon: and ofttimes storms
Shrouded for weeks the mountains' frowning forms.

In time all ocean omens they had learned;
And once, as o'er the darkening deep they roved,
Finola, who the advancing woe discerned,
Addressed them: ‘Little brothers well beloved,
Though many a storm hath tried us, yet the worst
Comes up this night: now therefore, ere it burst

‘Devise we swiftly if, through God's high Will,
Billow or blast divides us each from each,
Some refuge-house wherein, when winds are still,
To meet once more—low rock or sandy beach:’
And answer thus they made: ‘One spot alone
This night can yield us refuge, Carickrone.’

They spake, and sudden thunder shook the world
And blackness wrapped the seas and lightnings rent;
And each from each abroad those swans were hurled
By solid water-scud. Outworn and spent
At last, that direful tempest over-blown,
Finola scaled their trysting-rock—alone.

But when she found no gentle brother near,
And heard the great storm roaring far away,
Anguish of anguish pierced her heart, and fear,
And thus she made her moan and sang her lay:
‘Death-cold they lie along the far sea-tide:
Would that as cold I drifted at their side!’

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Thus as she sang, behold, the sun uprose,
And smote a swan that on a wave's smooth crest
Exhausted lay, like one by pitiless foes
Trampled, and looking but to death for rest:
At last he clomb that rock, though weak and worn,
With bleeding feet and pinions tempest-torn.

Aodh was he! He couched him by her side;
Straight her right wing Finola o'er him spread:
Ere long nearing the rock Fiacre she spied,
Wounded yet more; yet soon he hid his head
'Neath her left wing, her nestling's wonted place,
And slept content in that beloved embrace.

But still Finola mused with many a tear,
‘Alas for us, of little Conn bereft!’
Then Conn came floating by, full blithe of cheer,
For he, secure within a craggy cleft,
Had slept all night; and now once more his nest
He made of right beneath his sister's breast.

And as they slept she sang: ‘Among the flowers
Of old we played where princes quaffed their wine;
But now for flowery fields sea-floods are ours;
And now our wine-cup is the bitter brine;
Yet, brothers, fear no ill; for God will send
At last His Tailkenn, and our woes find end.’

Then God, Who of least things has tenderest thought,
Looked down on them benignly from on high
And bade that bitter brine to enter not
Their scars, unhealed as yet, lest they should die;
And nearer sent their choicest food full oft,
And clothed their wings with plumage fine and soft.

381

And ever as the spring advanced, the sea
Put on its kindlier aspect. Cliffs deep-scarred
To milder airs gave welcome festively
Upon their iron breasts and foreheads hard,
And, while about their feet the ripples played,
Cast o'er the glaring deep a friendlier shade.

And when at last the full midsummer panted
Upon the austere main, and high-peaked isles,
And hills that, like some elfin land enchanted,
Now charmed, now mocked the eye with phantom smiles,
More far round Alba's shores the swans made way
To Islay's beach and cloud-loved Colonsay.

The growths beside their native lake oft noted
In that sublimer clime no more they missed;
Jewels, not flowers they found where'er they floated
Emerald and sapphire, opal, amethyst,
Far-kenned through watery depths or magic air,
Or trails of broken rainbows, here and there.

Round Erin's northern coasts they drifted on
From Rathlin isle to Fanad's beetling crest,
And where, in frowning sunset steeped, forth shone
The ‘Bloody Foreland’ gazing t'ward the west;
Yet still with duteous hearts to Moyle returned—
To love their place of penance they had learned.

One time it chanced that, onward as they drifted
Where Banna's onward torrent cuts the sea,
A princely company with banners lifted
Rode past on snow-white steeds and sang for glee:
At once they knew those horsemen, form and face,
Their native stock, Tuatha's ancient race!

382

T'ward them they sped: their sorrows they recounted:
The warriors could not aid them, and rode by:
Then higher than of old their anguish mounted;
And farther rang through heaven their piteous cry;
And when it ceased, this lay Finola sang
While all the echoing rocks and caverns rang:

‘Whilom in purple clad we sat elate:
The warriors watched us at their nut-brown mead:
But now we roam the waters desolate
Or breast the languid beds of waving weed:
Our food was then fine bread; our drink was wine;
This day on sea-plants sour we peak and pine.

‘Whilom, our four small cots of pearl and gold
Lay, side by side, before our father's bed
And silken foldings kept us from the cold:
But now on restless waves our couch is spread;
And now our bed-clothes are the white sea-foam:
And now by night the sea-rock is our home.’

Not less from them such sorrows swiftly passed
Since evermore one thought their bosoms filled—
Their father's home. That haunt, in memory glassed,
Childhood perpetual o'er their lives distilled:
And, coast what shore they might, green vale and plain
Bred whiter flocks, men said, more golden grain.

The years ran on: the centuries three went by:
Finola sang: ‘The second Woe is ended!’
Obedient then, once more they soared on high;
Next morn on Erin's western coast descended,

383

While sunrise flashed from misty isles far seen,
Now gold, now flecked with streaks of luminous green.

And there for many a winter they abode,
Harbouring in precincts of the setting sun;
And mourned by day, yet sang at night their ode
As though in praise of some great victory won,
Some conqueror more than man; some heavenly crown
Slowly o'er all creation settling down.

There once—what time a great sun in decline
Had changed to red the grey back of a wave
That showered a pasture fair with diamond brine,
Then sank, anon uprising from its grave
Went shouldering onward, higher and more high,
And hid far lands, and half eclipsed the sky—

There once a shepherd, Aibhric, high of race,
Marked them far off, and marking them so loved
That to the ocean's verge he rushed apace
With hands outspread. Shoreward the creatures moved:
And when he heard them speak with human tongue
That love he felt grew tenderer and more strong.

Day after day they told that youth their tale:
Wide-eyed he stood, and inly drank their words;
And later, harping still in wood and vale,
He fitted oft their sorrow to his chords;
And thus to him in part men owe the lore
Of all those patient sufferers bare of yore.

384

For bard he was; and still the bard-like nature
Hath reverence, as for virtue, so for woe,
And ever finds in trials of the creature
The great Creator's purpose here below
To lift by lowering, and through anguish strange
To fit for thrones exempt from chance or change.

There first the Four had met that sympathy
Dearest to humblest heart. That treasure found
So much the more ere long calamity
Tasked them, thus strengthened; tasked and closed them round;
And higher yet fierce winds and watery shocks
Dashed them thenceforth upon more pitiless rocks.

At last from heaven's dark vault a night there fell
The direst they had known. The high-heaped seas
Vanquished by frost, beneath her iron spell
Abased their haughty crests by slow degrees:
The swans were frozen upon that ice-plain frore;
Yet still Finola sang, as oft before,

‘Beneath my right wing, Aodh, make thy rest!
Beneath my left, Fiacre! My little Conn,
Find thou a warmer shelter 'neath my breast,
As thou art wont: thou art my little son!
Thou God that all things mad'st, and lovest all,
Subdue things great! Protect the weak, the small!’

385

But evermore the younger three made moan;
And still their moans more loud and louder grew;
And still Finola o'er that sea of stone
For their sake fragments of wild wailings threw;
And ever as she sang the on-driving snow
Choked the sweet strain; yet still she warbled low:

Then, louder when she heard those others grieve
And found that song might now no more avail
She said: ‘Believe, O brothers young, believe
In that great God whose help can never fail!
Have faith in God since God can ne'er deceive!’
And lo, those weepers answered, ‘We believe!’

So thus those babes, in God's predestined hour,
Through help of Him, the Lord of Life and Death
Inly fulfilled with light and prophet power
Believed, and perfect made their Act of Faith;
And thenceforth all things, both in shade and shine,
To them came softly and with touch benign.

First, from the southern stars there came a breeze
On-wafting happy mist of moonlit rain;
And when the sun ascended o'er the seas
The ice was vanquished; and the watery plain
And every cloud with rapture thrilled and stirred:
And lo, at noon the cuckoo's voice was heard.

And since with that rough ice their feet were sore
God for their sake a wind from Eden sent
That gently raised them from the ocean's floor
And in its bosom as an ambient tent
Held them, suspense: and with a dew of balm
God, while they slept, made air and ocean calm.

386

Likewise a beam auroral forth He sped
That flushed that tent aerial like a rose
Each morn, and roseate odours o'er it shed
The long day through. And still at evening's close
They dreamed of those rich bowers and alleys green
Wherein with Lir their childish sports had been.

And thrice they dreamed that in the morning grey
They gathered there red roses drenched with dew:
But lo! a serpent 'neath the roses lay:
Then came the Tailkenn, and that serpent slew;
And round the Tailkenn's tonsured head was light
That made the morning more than noonday bright.

Thus wrapt, thus kindled, in sublimer mood
Heaven-high they soared and flung abroad their strain
O'er-sailing huge Croagh-Patrick swathed in wood
Or Acaill,

Now Achill Head.

warder of the western main,
Or Arran Isle, that time heroic haunt,
Since Enda's day Religion's saintlier vaunt.

And many a time they floated farther south
Where milder airs endear sea-margins bleak
To that dim Head far seen o'er Shenan's mouth
Or Smerwick's ill-famed cliff and winding creek,
Or where on Brandon sleeps Milesius' son
With all his shipwrecked warriors round him—Donn.

The centuries passed: her loud, exultant lay
Finola sang, their time of penance done,
And ended: ‘Lo, to us it seems a day;
Not less the dread Nine Hundred Years are run:

387

Now, brothers, homeward be our flight!’. And they
Chanted triumphant: ‘Home, to Finnahá!’

Up from the sea they rose in widening gyre,
And hung suspended 'mid the ethereal blue,
And saw, far flashing in the sunset's fire
A wood-girt lake whose splendour well they knew;
And flew all night; and reached at dawn its shore—
Ah, then rang out that wail ne'er heard before!

There where the towers of Lir of old had stood
Lay now the stony heap and rain-washed rath;
And through the ruin-mantling alder-wood
The forest beast had stamped in mire his path;
And desolate were their mother's happy bowers
So fair of old with fountains and with flowers!

More closely drew the orphans each to each:—
'Twas then Finola raised her dirge on high
As nearer yet they drifted to the beach
In hope one fragment of past days to spy;
‘Upon our father's house hath fallen a change;
And as a dead man's face this place is strange!

‘No more the hound and horse; no more the horn!
No more the warriors winding down the glen!
Behold, the place of pleasaunce is forlorn
And emptied of fair women and brave men;
The wine-cup now is dry; the music fled:
Now know we that our father, Lir, is dead!’

She sang, and ceased, though long the feathered throat
Panted with passion of the unuttered song:

388

At last she spake with voice that seemed remote
Like echoed voice of one the tombs among:
‘Depart we hence! Better the exile's pain!’
And they: ‘Return we to rough waves again!’

Yet still along that silver mere they lingered
Oaring their weeping way by lawn and cape
Till evening, purple-stoled and dewy-fingered,
O'er heaven's sweet face had woven its veil of crape;
And tenderer came from darkening wood and wild
The voice far off of woman or of child.

And when, far travelling through the fields of ether,
The stars successive filled their thrones with light
Still to that heaven the glimmering lake beneath her
Gave meet response, with music answering light;
For still, wherever sailed that mystic four
With minstrelsy divine the lake ran o'er.

But when the rising sun made visible
The night-mist hovering long o'er banks of reed
They cast their broad wings on a gathering swell
Of wind that, late from eastern sea-caves freed
Waved all the island's oakwoods t'ward the West;
And seaward swooped at eve and there found rest.

And since they knew their penance now was over,
Penance that tasks great hearts to purify,
Happier were they than e'er was mortal lover,
Happy as Spirits cleansed that, near the sky,
Feel, 'mid that realm, ‘The Higher Purgatory,’
Warm on their lids the unseen yet nearing glory.

389

Thenceforth they roamed no more, at Inisglaire
Their change awaiting. In its blissful prime
That island was, men say, as Eden fair
The swan-soft nurseling of a changeful clime
With amaranth-lighted glades, and tremulous sheen
Of trees full-flowered on earth no longer seen.

Not then the waves with that still site contended;
On its warm sand-hills pansies always bloomed;
And ever with the inspiring sea-wind blended
Came breath of gardens violet-perfumed;
And daisies whitened lawn and dell, and spread
At sunset o'er green hills their under-red,

Faint as that blush which lights some matron's cheek
Tenderly pleased by gentle praise deserved—
That island's winding coast from creek to creek
Like curves of shells with dream-like beauty swerved:
And midmost spread a lake, from mortal eyes
Vanished this day like man's lost paradise.

Around that lake with oldest oakwoods shaded
Were all things that to eye are witching most
Green slopes dew-drenched, and grey rocks ivybraided;
Yet speechless was the region as a ghost;
No whisper shook those woods; no tendril stirred;
Nor e'er within the cave was ripple heard.

A home for Spirits not home for man it seemed;
Or Limbo meet for body-waiting Souls—
Of such in Pagan times the poets dreamed:
That stillness which invests the unmoving poles

390

Above it brooded. In its circuit wide
A second Darvra lived—but glorified.

Upon its breast perpetual light there lay
Undazzling beam and uncreated light;
For lake and wood the sunshine drank all day
And breathed it softly forth to cheer the night,
A silver twilight pure from cloud or taint
Like aureole round the forehead of a saint.

There dwelt those Swans; there louder anthems chanted;
There first they sang by day—rapt song and hymn
Till all those birds the western coasts that haunted
Came flying far o'er ocean's purple rim,
Scorning thenceforth wild cliff and beds of foam;
And made, then first, that sacred isle their home.

So passed three years. When dawned the third May morn
The Four, while slowly rose the kindling mist
Showing the first white on the earliest thorn,
Heard music o'er the waters. List, O list!
'Twas sweet as theirs—more sweet—yet terrible
At first; and sudden trembling on them fell.

A second time it sounded. Terror died
And rapture came instead and mystic mirth
They knew not whence: and thus Finola cried:
‘Brothers! the Tailkenn treads our Erin's earth!’
And as the lifted mist gave view more large
They saw a blue bay with a fair green marge.

On that green marge there rose an Altar-stone:
Before it, robed in white, with tonsured head,

391

Stood up the kingly Tailkenn all alone:
Not far behind, in reverence, not in dread,
With low-bent brows a princely senate knelt
Girding that altar as with golden belt.

Marvelling, as on they sailed that Rite they saw:
But, when a third time pealed that Tailkenn's bell,
They too their halleluias, though with awe,
Blended with his. The Ill Spirits heard their knell,
And shrieking fled to penal dungeons drear;
And straight, since now those blissful Four drew near,

Saint Patrick stretched above the wave his hand,
And thus he spake—and wind and wave were stilled—
‘Children of Lir, re-tread your native land,
For now your long sea-penance is fulfilled.’
Then lo! Finola raised the funeral cry—
‘We tread our native land that we may die.’

And thus she made the lay, and thus she sang:
‘Baptize us, priest, while living yet we be!’
And louder soon her dirge-like anthem rang:
‘Lo, thus the Children's burial I decree:
Make fair our grave where land and ocean meet;
And t'ward thy holy Altar place our feet.

‘Upon my left, Fiacre; upon my right
Let Aodh sleep; for such their place of rest
Secured to each by usage day and night:
And lay my little Conn upon my breast:
Then on a low sand pillow raise my head,
That I may see his face though I be dead.’

392

She spake; and on the sands they stept—the Four—
Then lo, from heaven there came a miracle:
Soon as they left the wave and trod the shore
The weight of bygone centuries on them fell:
To human forms they changed, yet human none;—
Dread, shapeless weights of wrinkles and of bone.

A moment prone the wildered creatures lay,
Then slowly up that breadth of tawny sand,
Like wounded beast that can but crawl, made way
With knee convulsed and closed and clutching hand,
Nine-centuried forms, still breathing mortal breath,
Though shrouded in the cerements pale of death.

That concourse on them gazed with many a tear;
Yet no man uttered speech or motion made,
Till now the Four had reached that altar-bier
Their ghastly pilgrimage's goal, and laid
Before its base their bodies, one by one,
And faces glistening in the rising sun.

There lying, loud they raised the self-same cry
As Patrick o'er them signed the conquering Sign,
‘Baptize us, holy Tailkenn, for we die!’
The saint baptized them in the name Divine,
And, swift as thought, their happy spirits at last
To God's high feast and singing angels passed.

Now hear the latest wonder. While, low-bowed,
That concourse gazed upon the reverend dead
Behold, like changeful shapes in evening cloud
Vanished those time-worn bodies; and, instead,
Inwoven lay four children, white and young
With silver-lidded eyes and lashes long.

393

Finola lay, once more an eight years' child:
Upon her right hand Aodh took his rest,
Upon her left Fiacre;—in death they smiled:
Her little Conn was cradled on her breast:
And all their saintly raiment shone as bright
As sea-foam sparkling on a moonlit night;

Or as their snowy night-clothes shone of old
When now the night was past, and Lir, their sire
Upraised them from the warm cot's silken fold
And bade them watch the sun's ascending fire,
And watched himself its beam, now here now there,
Flashed from white foot, blue eyes, or golden hair.

The men who saw that death-bed did not weep
But gazed till sunset upon each fair face;
And then with funeral psalm and anthems deep
Interred them at that sacred altar's base,
And graved their names in Ogham characters
On one white tomb, and, close beneath them, Lir's.

Those Babes were Erin's Holy Innocents,
And first-fruits of the land to Christ their Lord,
Though born within the unbelievers' tents:
Figured in them the Gael his God adored,
That later-coming, holier Gael, who won
Through Faith the birthright, though the younger son.

Bamba, Fodhla, and Eire.

The current running between Cantire, in Scotland, and the northern coast of Ireland.

Achill Island, on the coast of Connaught.

The ‘Tonsured One,’ i.e. St. Patrick.

‘The term Mael, Mull (or Moyle, as Moore calls it), does not properly apply to the current itself, but to the Mael, or bald headland by which it runs.’—Professor Eugene O'Curry.

‘They met a young man of good family whose name was Aibhric, and his attention was often attracted to the birds, and their singing was sweet to him, so that he came to love them greatly, and that they loved him; and it was this young man that afterwards arranged in order and narrated all their adventures.’— The Fate of the Children of Lir, prose version, by Professor O'Curry.

University of Virginia Library

THE CHILDREN OF LIR.

AN ANCIENT IRISH ROMANCE.

CANTO I. THE STEPMOTHER'S MALEDICTION.

CANTO II. THE PENANCE OF THE INNOCENTS.