‘When you have told how I weep endlessly, Flutter along the froth lips of the sea And home to me again, And in the shadow of my hair lie hid, And tell me how you came to one unbid, The saddest of all men.’ A maiden with soft eyes like funeral tapers, And face that seemed wrought out of moonlit vapours, And a sad mouth, that fear made tremulous As any ruddy moth, looked down on us; And she with a wave-rusted chain was tied To two old eagles, full of ancient pride, That with dim eyeballs stood on either side. Few feathers were on their dishevelled wings, For their dim minds were with the ancient things. ‘I bring deliverance,’ pearl-pale Niamh said. ‘Neither the living, nor the unlabouring dead, Nor the high gods who never lived, may fight My enemy and hope; demons for fright Jabber and scream about him in the night; For he is strong and crafty as the seas That sprang under the Seven Hazel Trees. And I must needs endure and hate and weep, Until the gods and demons drop asleep, Hearing Aed touch the mournful strings of gold.’ ‘Is he so dreadful?’ ‘Be not over-bold, But flee while you may flee from him.’ Then I: ‘This demon shall be pierced and drop and die, And his loose bulk be thrown in the loud tide.’ ‘Flee from him,’ pearl-pale Niamh weeping cried, ‘For all men flee the demons’; but moved not, Nor shook my firm and spacious soul one jot; There was no mightier soul of Heber’s line; Now it is old and mouse-like: for a sign I burst the chain: still earless, nerveless, blind, Wrapped in the things of the unhuman mind, In some dim memory or ancient mood Still earless, nerveless, blind, the eagles stood. And then we climbed the stair to a high door, A hundred horsemen on the basalt floor Beneath had paced content: we held our way And stood within: clothed in a misty ray I saw a foam-white seagull drift and float Under the roof, and with a straining throat Shouted, and hailed him: he hung there a star, For no man’s cry shall ever mount so far; Not even your God could have thrown down that hall; Stabling His unloosed lightnings in their stall, He had sat down and sighed with cumbered heart, As though His hour were come.