The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

The people sat amid the dust and wept:
‘In darker days than these God burst the chain,’
Thus sang the harper as the chords he swept,
‘Hear of the Girl Deliverer and the Dane.’

PART I.

Twin ivy wreaths her forehead wound,
A green wreath and a yellow:
Her hair a gleaming dusk in ground
With ends of sunshine mellow.

Fair rose her head the tall neck o'er;
That neck in snows was bedded:
Some crown, they swore, unseen she bore—
That queenly head it steadied.

Her sable vest in front was laced
With laces red as coral;
Her golden zone in gems was traced
With leafy type and moral.

As treading hearts her small feet went
In love-suspended fleetness:
And hearts thus trodden forth had sent
An organ-sob of sweetness.

Upon the dais when she stept
Meath's peopled hall rang loudly;
Their hundred harps the minstrels swept:
Her sire looked round him proudly.

The Dane beside him, darkening, sate,
At once his guest and victor;
Green Erin's scourge—the true King's fate—
The sceptred serf's protector.

‘Sir King! our worship grows but small!
Here Gaels alone find honour:
A white girl cannot cross your hall
But all men gaze upon her!

‘My speech is short: yon stands my fort!
Ere three nights thither send her
With twenty maidens of her court,
Your fairest, to attend her.’

PART II.

The Dane strides o'er his stony floor
A strong, fierce man, yet hoary:
The low sun fires the purple moor
With mingled gloom and glory.

The tyrant stops; he stares thereon:
Sun-touched, his armour flashes:
His rough grey hair a glow hath won
Like embers seen through ashes.

His mail'd hand grasps his tangled beard:
He laughs that red sun watching,
Till the roofs laugh back like a forest weird
The laughter of Wood-gods catching.

‘My Sea-Kings! mark yon furnace-sheen!
The Fire-god is not thrifty!
No flame like that these eyes have seen
For winters five-and-fifty.

‘My sire lay dead: the ship sailed North,
The pyre and the corse on bearing:
Six miles it sailed; the flames sprang forth
Like sea-vext Hecla glaring!

‘We'll pledge him to-night in the blood-red wine:
'Tis wrought, the task he set me!
From coast to coast this Isle is mine:
Not soon will her sons forget me!

‘I have burned their shrines and their cities sacked;
Their Fair Ones our castles cumber;
We were shamed to-night if the bevy lacked
The fairest from their number.

‘Young wives for us all; too many by half!
Strange mates—the hind with the dragon!’
He laughed as when the reveller's laugh
Rings back from the half-drained flagon.

PART III.

The girl hath prayed at her Mother's grave,
And kissed that grave, and risen:
She hath swathed a knife in a silken glaive:
She is calm, but her great eyes glisten.

Between silk vest and spotless breast
A dagger she hath hidden;
With lips compressed gone forth, a guest
Unhonoured—not unbidden.

Through moonshine wan on moves she, on:
But who are those, the others?
They are garbed like maids, but maids are none:
They are lovers of maids, and brothers.

The gates lie wide: they enter in:
Loud roars the riot and wassail:
They hear at times 'mid the conquerors' din
The harp of the Gaelic vassal.

The Dane has laid on her head his hand,
The love in his eye is cruel:
Out leap the swords of that well-masked band:
Two nations have met in duel!

'Twas God their sentence on high that wrote!
'Tis a righteous doom—that slaughter!
His Sea-Kings lie drowned in the castle moat,
And the Tyrant in Annin water.

From mountain to mountain the tidings flashed:
It pealed from turret to turret:
Like a sunlit storm o'er the plains it dashed:
It hung o'er the vales like a spirit.

'Twas a maiden's honour that crowned the right:
'Twas a vestal claim, scarce noted
By the power which trampled it out of sight,
That rose on the wrong, and smote it!

The harper ceased: aloud the young men cried,
‘That maid is Erin! Live, O maid, for ever!’
‘Not Erin but her Faith,’ the old priests replied:
‘Her Faith—that only—shall the Land deliver!’

University of Virginia Library

THE BALLAD OF TURGESIUS THE DANE;

OR, THE GIRL DELIVERER.

A BARD SONG.

PART I.

PART II.

PART III.