_Poets with whom I learned my trade,_ _Companions of the Cheshire Cheese,_ _Here's an old story I've re-made,_ _Imagining 'twould better please_ _Your ears than stories now in fashion,_ _Though you may think I waste my breath_ _Pretending that there can be passion_ _That has more life in it than death,_ _And though at bottling of your wine_ _The bow-legged Goban had no say;_ _The moral's yours because it's mine._ When cups went round at close of day-- Is not that how good stories run?-- Somewhere within some hollow hill, If books speak truth in Slievenamon, But let that be, the gods were still And sleepy, having had their meal, And smoky torches made a glare On painted pillars, on a deal Of fiddles and of flutes hung there By the ancient holy hands that brought them From murmuring Murias, on cups-- Old Goban hammered them and wrought them, And put his pattern round their tops To hold the wine they buy of him. But from the juice that made them wise All those had lifted up the dim Imaginations of their eyes, For one that was like woman made Before their sleepy eyelids ran And trembling with her passion said, 'Come out and dig for a dead man, Who's burrowing somewhere in the ground, And mock him to his face and then Hollo him on with horse and hound, For he is the worst of all dead men.' _We should be dazed and terror struck,_ _If we but saw in dreams that room,_ _Those wine-drenched eyes, and curse our luck_ _That emptied all our days to come._ _I knew a woman none could please,_ _Because she dreamed when but a child_ _Of men and women made like these;_ _And after, when her blood ran wild,_ _Had ravelled her own story out,_ _And said, 'In two or in three years_ _I need must marry some poor lout,'_ _And having said it burst in tears._ _Since, tavern comrades, you have died,_ _Maybe your images have stood,_ _Mere bone and muscle thrown aside,_ _Before that roomful or as good._ _You had to face your ends when young--_ _'Twas wine or women, or some curse--_ _But never made a poorer song_ _That you might have a heavier purse,_ _Nor gave loud service to a cause_ _That you might have a troop of friends._ _You kept the Muses' sterner laws,_ _And unrepenting faced your ends,_ _And therefore earned the right--and yet_ _Dowson and Johnson most I praise--_ _To troop with those the world's forgot,_ _And copy their proud steady gaze._ 'The Danish troop was driven out Between the dawn and dusk,' she said; 'Although the event was long in doubt, Although the King of Ireland's dead And half the kings, before sundown All was accomplished.'