And the winds made the sands on the sea’s edge turning and turning go, As my mind made the names of the Fenians. Far from the hazel and oak I rode away on the surges, where, high as the saddle bow, Fled foam underneath me, and round me, a wandering and milky smoke. Long fled the foam-flakes around me, the winds fled out of the vast, Snatching the bird in secret; nor knew I, embosomed apart, When they froze the cloth on my body like armour riveted fast, For Remembrance, lifting her leanness, keened in the gates of my heart. Till fattening the winds of the morning, an odour of new-mown hay Came, and my forehead fell low, and my tears like berries fell down; Later a sound came, half lost in the sound of a shore far away, From the great grass-barnacle calling, and later the shore-weeds brown. If I were as I once was, the strong hoofs crushing the sand and the shells, Coming out of the sea as the dawn comes, a chaunt of love on my lips, Not coughing, my head on my knees, and praying, and wroth with the bells, I would leave no saint’s head on his body from Rachlin to Bera of ships. Making way from the kindling surges, I rode on a bridle-path Much wondering to see upon all hands, of wattles and woodwork made, Your bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the rath, And a small and feeble race stooping with mattock and spade. Or weeding or ploughing with faces a-shining with much-toil wet; While in this place and that place, with bodies unglorious, their chieftains stood, Awaiting in patience the straw-death, croziered one, caught in their net: Went the laughter of scorn from my mouth like the roaring of wind in a wood. And because I went by them so huge and so speedy with eyes so bright, Came after the hard gaze of youth, or an old man lifted his head: And I rode and I rode, and I cried out, ‘The Fenians hunt wolves in the night, So sleep they by daytime.’ A voice cried, ‘The Fenians a long time are dead.’ A whitebeard stood hushed on the pathway, the flesh of his face as dried grass, And in folds round his eyes and his mouth, he sad as a child without milk; And the dreams of the islands were gone, and I knew how men sorrow and pass, And their hound, and their horse, and their love, and their eyes that glimmer like silk. And wrapping my face in my hair, I murmured, ‘In old age they ceased’; And my tears were larger than berries, and I murmured, ‘Where white clouds lie spread On Crevroe or broad Knockfefin, with many of old they feast On the floors of the gods.’ He cried, ‘No, the gods a long time are dead.’