And by them were arrow and war-axe, arrow and shield and blade; And dew-blanched horns, in whose hollow a child of three years old Could sleep on a bed of rushes, and all inwrought and inlaid, And more comely than man can make them with bronze and silver and gold. And each of the huge white creatures was huger than four-score men; The tops of their ears were feathered, their hands were the claws of birds, And, shaking the plumes of the grasses and the leaves of the mural glen, The breathing came from those bodies, long-warless, grown whiter than curds. The wood was so spacious above them, that He who had stars for His flocks Could fondle the leaves with His fingers, nor go from His dew-cumbered skies; So long were they sleeping, the owls had builded their nests in their locks, Filling the fibrous dimness with long generations of eyes. And over the limbs and the valley the slow owls wandered and came, Now in a place of star-fire, and now in a shadow place wide; And the chief of the huge white creatures, his knees in the soft star-flame, Lay loose in a place of shadow: we drew the reins by his side. Golden the nails of his bird-claws, flung loosely along the dim ground; In one was a branch soft-shining, with bells more many than sighs, In midst of an old man’s bosom; owls ruffling and pacing around, Sidled their bodies against him, filling the shade with their eyes. And my gaze was thronged with the sleepers; for nowhere in any clann Of the high people of Soraca nor in glamour by demons flung, Are faces alive with such beauty made known to the salt eye of man, Yet weary with passions that faded when the sevenfold seas were young. And I gazed on the bell-branch, sleep’s forebear, far sung by the Sennachies. I saw how those slumberers, grown weary, there camping in grasses deep, Of wars with the wide world and pacing the shores of the wandering seas, Laid hands on the bell-branch and swayed it, and fed of unhuman sleep. Snatching the horn of Niamh, I blew a lingering note; Came sound from those monstrous sleepers, a sound like the stirring of flies. He, shaking the fold of his lips, and heaving the pillar of his throat, Watched me with mournful wonder out of the wells of his eyes. I cried, ‘Come out of the shadow, king of the nails of gold! And tell of your goodly household and the goodly works of your hands, That we may muse in the starlight and talk of the battles of old; Your questioner, Oisin, is worthy, he comes from the Fenian lands.’ Half open his eyes were, and held me, dull with the smoke of their dreams; His lips moved slowly in answer, no answer out of them came; Then he swayed in his fingers the bell-branch, slow dropping a sound in faint streams Softer than snow-flakes in April and piercing the marrow like flame.