Wrapt in the wave of that music, with weariness more than of earth, The moil of my centuries filled me; and gone like a sea-covered stone Were the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the memories of the whole of my mirth, And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone. In the roots of the grasses, the sorrels, I laid my body as low; And the pearl-pale Niamh lay by me, her brow on the midst of my breast; And the horse was gone in the distance, and years after years ’gan flow; Square leaves of the ivy moved over us, binding us down to our rest. And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot; How the fetlocks drip blood in the battle, when the fallen on fallen lie rolled; How the falconer follows the falcon in the weeds of the heron’s plot, And the names of the demons whose hammers made armour for Midhir of old. And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot; That the spearshaft is made out of ashwood, the shield out of osier and hide; How the hammers spring on the anvil, on the spear-head’s burning spot; How the slow, blue-eyed oxen of Finn low sadly at evening tide. But in dreams, mild man of the croziers, driving the dust with their throngs, Moved round me, of seamen or landsmen, all who are winter tales; Came by me the Kings of the Red Branch, with roaring of laughter and songs, Or moved as they moved once, love-making or piercing the tempest with sails. Came Blanid, MacNessa, tall Fergus who feastward of old time slunk; Cook Barach, the traitor; and warward, the spittle on his beard never dry, Dark Balor, as old as a forest, car-borne, his mighty head sunk Helpless, men lifting the lids of his weary and death-making eye. And by me, in soft red raiment, the Fenians moved in loud streams, And Grania, walking and smiling, sewed with her needle of bone. So lived I and lived not, so wrought I and wrought not, with creatures of dreams, In a long iron sleep, as a fish in the water goes dumb as a stone. At times our slumber was lightened. When the sun was on silver or gold; When brushed with the wings of the owls, in the dimness they love going by; When a glow-worm was green on a grass leaf lured from his lair in the mould; Half wakening, we lifted our eyelids, and gazed on the grass with a sigh. So watched I when, man of the croziers, at the heel of a century fell, Weak, in the midst of the meadow, from his miles in the midst of the air, A starling like them that forgathered ’neath a moon waking white as a shell, When the Fenians made foray at morning with Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair.