Then to his Chief of Druids, Connor spake Whispering; and he, his oracles explored, Shivering made answer, ‘From a land accursed, O King, that shadow sweeps; therein, this hour, By sinful men sinless God’s Son is slain.’ Then Ulster’s king, down-dashing sceptre and crown, Rose, clamouring, ‘Sinless! shall the sinless die?’ And madness fell on him; and down that steep He rushed whereon the Emanian Palace stood, And reached the grove, Lambraidhè, with two swords, The sword of battle, and the sword of state, And hewed and hewed, crying, ‘Were I but there Thus they should fall who slay that Sinless One;’ And in that madness died. Old Erin’s sons Beheld this thing; nor ever in the land Hath ceased the rumour, nor the tear for him Who, wroth at justice trampled, martyr died. And now we know that not for any dream He died, but for the truth: and whensoe’er The Prophet of that Son of God who died Sinless for sinners, standeth in this place, I, Bacrach, oldest Druid in this Isle, Will rise the first, and kiss his vesture’s hem.” He spake; and Milcho heard, and without speech Departed from that house. A later day When the wild March sunset, gone almost ere come, By glacial shower was hustled out of life, Under a blighted ash tree, near his house, Thus mused the man: “Believe, or Disbelieve! The will does both; Then idiot who would be For profitless belief to sell himself? Yet disbelief not less might work our bane! For, I remember, once a sickly slave Ill shepherded my flock: I spake him plain; ‘When next, through fault of thine, the midnight wolf Worries my sheep, on yonder tree you hang:’ The blear-eyed idiot looked into my face, And smiled his disbelief. On that day week Two lambs lay dead. I hanged him on a tree. What tree? this tree! Why, this is passing strange! For, three nights since, I saw him in a dream: Weakling as wont he stood beside my bed, And, clutching at his wrenched and livid throat, Spake thus, ‘Belief is safest.’”