A fir-tree roaring in its leafless top; And I but held a corpse, with livid chop And dripping and sunken shape, to face and breast, When I tore down that tree; but when the west Surged up in plumy fire, I lunged and drave Through heart and spine, and cast him in the wave, Lest Niamh shudder. Full of hope and dread Those two came carrying wine and meat and bread, And healed my wounds with unguents out of flowers, That feed white moths by some De Danaan shrine; Then in that hall, lit by the dim sea-shine, We lay on skins of otters, and drank wine, Brewed by the sea-gods, from huge cups that lay Upon the lips of sea-gods in their day; And then on heaped-up skins of otters slept. But when the sun once more in saffron stept, Rolling his flagrant wheel out of the deep, We sang the loves and angers without sleep, And all the exultant labours of the strong: But now the lying clerics murder song With barren words and flatteries of the weak. In what land do the powerless turn the beak Of ravening Sorrow, or the hand of Wrath? For all your croziers, they have left the path And wander in the storms and clinging snows, Hopeless for ever: ancient Oisin knows, For he is weak and poor and blind, and lies On the anvil of the world. S. PATRIC. Be still: the skies Are choked with thunder, lightning, and fierce wind, For God has heard, and speaks His angry mind; Go cast your body on the stones and pray, For He has wrought midnight and dawn and day. OISIN. Saint, do you weep? I hear amid the thunder The Fenian horses; armour torn asunder; Laughter and cries: the armies clash and shock; All is done now; I see the ravens flock; Ah, cease, you mournful, laughing Fenian horn! We feasted for three days. On the fourth morn I found, dropping sea-foam on the wide stair, And hung with slime, and whispering in his hair, That demon dull and unsubduable; And once more to a day-long battle fell, And at the sundown threw him in the surge, To lie until the fourth morn saw emerge His new healed shape: and for a hundred years So warred, so feasted, with nor dreams, nor fears Nor languor nor fatigue: an endless feast, An endless war. The hundred years had ceased; I stood upon the stair: the surges bore A beech bough to me, and my heart grew sore, Remembering how I stood by white-haired Finn While the woodpecker made a merry din, The hare leaped in the grass. Young Niamh came Holding that horse, and sadly called my name; I mounted, and we passed over the lone And drifting grayness, while this monotone, Surly and distant, mixed inseparably Into the clangour of the wind and sea: