Poems with Fables in Prose :: :: University of Virginia Library

Let my lips finish what my lips began.—
Then to the two amidst the island's boughs
The third, across the water, cried: “Confess!
Though the earth shake beneath you like a sieve
With wheels of Connachar, answer me this:
Naois, could she understand his hate
Whose servant and whose iron flail I am—
Whose arm requiteth—far as runs the wind—
By me, that blow away the gaze and smile
From women's faces; O could Deirdre have guess'd—
Mourning all night the losing of her kingdoms
Fled like a song—what means, a banished man:
That he and I must hound thee to the death;
That thou shalt never see the deep-set eaves,
The lofty thatch familiar with the doves,
On thy sad mother Usnach's house again,
But drift out like some sea-bird, far, far, hence,
Far from the red isle of the roes and berries,
Far from sun-galleries and pleasant dúns
And swards of lovers,—branded, nationless;
That none of all thy famous friends, with thee
Wrestlers on Eman in the summer evenings,

Shall think thee noble now; and that at last
I must upheave thy heart's tough plank to crack it—
Knowing all this, would this fool follow thee?”

Then spoke Naois, keeping back his wrath:
“Strange is it one so old should threat with Death!
Are not both thou and I, are not we all,
By Death drawn from the wickets of the womb—
Seal'd with the thumb of Death when we are born?
As for friends lost (though I believe it not),
A man is nourish'd by his enemies
No less than by his friends. But as for her,
Because no man shall deem me noble still,—
Because I like a sea-gull of the isles
May be driven forth—branded and nationless,—
Because I shall no more, perhaps, behold
The deep-set eaves on that all-sacred house,—
Because the gather'd battle of the powers
Controlling fortune, breaks upon my head,—
Yea! for that very cause, lack'd other cause,
In love the closer, quenchless, absolute,
Would Deirdre choose to follow me. Such pains,
Seër, the kingdoms are of souls like hers!”
He spoke; he felt her life-blood at his side
Sprung of the West, the last of human shores
Throbbing, “Look forth on everlastingness!

Through the coil'd waters and the ebb of light
I'll be thy sail!”

Over the mist like wool
No sound; the echo-trembling tarn grew mute.
But when through matted forest with uproar
The levy of pursuers, brazen, vast,
The thick pursuing host of Connachar,
Gush'd like a river, and torch'd chariots drew
With thunder-footed horses on, and lash'd
Up to the sedge, and at the Druid's shape
Their steamy bellies rose over the brink
Pawing the mist, and when a terrible voice
Ask'd of that shape if druid ken saw now
The twain,—advanced out of the shade of leaves
Nor Deirdre nor Naois heard reply;
For Cathva waved his lean arm toward the north
And mounted with the host, and signed them, “On!”
Pity had seized him for that hidden pair;
And like a burning dream the host, dissolving,
Pass'd. On the pale bank not a torch remain'd.
They look'd on one another, left alone.