I awoke: the strange horse without summons out of the distance ran, Thrusting his nose to my shoulder; he knew in his bosom deep That once more moved in my bosom the ancient sadness of man, And that I would leave the immortals, their dimness, their dews dropping sleep. O, had you seen beautiful Niamh grow white as the waters are white, Lord of the croziers, you even had lifted your hands and wept: But, the bird in my fingers, I mounted, remembering alone that delight Of twilight and slumber were gone, and that hoofs impatiently stept. I cried, ‘O Niamh! O white one! if only a twelve-houred day, I must gaze on the beard of Finn, and move where the old men and young In the Fenians’ dwellings of wattle lean on the chessboards and play, Ah, sweet to me now were even bald Conan’s slanderous tongue! ‘Like me were some galley forsaken far off in Meridian isle, Remembering its long-oared companions, sails turning to thread-bare rags; No more to crawl on the seas with long oars mile after mile, But to be amid shooting of flies and flowering of rushes and flags.’ Their motionless eyeballs of spirits grown mild with mysterious thought, Watched her those seamless faces from the valley’s glimmering girth; As she murmured, ‘O wandering Oisin, the strength of the bell-branch is naught, For there moves alive in your fingers the fluttering sadness of earth. ‘Then go through the lands in the saddle and see what the mortals do, And softly come to your Niamh over the tops of the tide; But weep for your Niamh, O Oisin, weep; for if only your shoe Brush lightly as haymouse earth pebbles, you will come no more to my side. ‘O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?’ I saw from a distant saddle; from the earth she made her moan; ‘I would die like a small withered leaf in the autumn, for breast unto breast We shall mingle no more, nor our gazes empty their sweetness lone ‘In the isles of the farthest seas where only the spirits come. Were the winds less soft than the breath of a pigeon who sleeps on her nest, Nor lost in the star-fires and odours the sound of the sea’s vague drum, O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?’ The wailing grew distant; I rode by the woods of the wrinkling bark, Where ever is murmurous dropping, old silence and that one sound; For no live creatures live there, no weasels move in the dark; In a reverie forgetful of all things, over the bubbling ground. And I rode by the plains of the sea’s edge, where all is barren and gray, Gray sands on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees, Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away, Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.