| |
| “WE ride but slowly though so near our home.” | |
| King Eochaid 1 said, and he that bore his shield | |
| Sighing replied: “What need have we for haste | |
| Towards the hour for speaking of the dead? | |
| My married sister put into my care | 5 |
| A boy of twenty years;—a mound and stone | |
| Between the wood of Duras and Magai | |
| Have been the measure of that care.” But Eochaid, | |
| Having no thought but for his queen Edain, | |
| Outrode his troop that after twelve months’ war | 10 |
| Toiled with empounded cattle through the mire, | |
| And came into a wood as the sun set | |
| Westward of Tara. Where in the middle wood | |
| A clump of beech trees made an empty space | |
| He thought to have given his horse the spur, but saw, | 15 |
| Between the pale-green light of the beech leaves | |
| And the ground ivy’s bluer light, a stag | |
| Whiter than curds, its eyes the tint of the sea. | |
| Because it stood upon his path and seemed | |
| More hands in height than any stag in the world | 20 |
| He sat with tightened rein amazed, his horse | |
| Trembling beneath him, and then drove the spur | |
| Not doubting to have shouldered it away. | |
| But the stag stooped its heavy branching horns, | |
| And ran at him, and passed, and as it passed | 25 |
| Ripped through the horse’s flanks. King Eochaid reeled, | |
| But drew his sword, and thought with levelled point | |
| To stay the stag’s next rush. When sword met horn | |
| The horn resounded as though it had been silver. | |
| Horn locked in sword, they tugged and struggled there | 30 |
| As though a stag and unicorn were met | |
| In Africa on mountain of the moon, | |
| Until at last the unlocked horn had torn | |
| Through the entrails of the horse. Dropping his sword | |
| Eochaid seized both the horns in his strong hands | 35 |
| And stared into the sea-green eyes, and so | |
| Hither and thither to and fro they trod | |
| Till all the place was beaten into mire. | |
| The strong thigh and the agile thigh were met— | |
| The hands that gathered up the might of the world, | 40 |
| And hoof and horn that had sucked in their speed | |
| Amid the elaborate wilderness of the air. | |
| Through bush they plunged and over ivied root | |
| And where the stone struck fire, while in the leaves | |
| A squirrel whinnied and a bird screamed out; | 45 |
| But when at last he forced those sinewy flanks | |
| Against a beech bole he threw down the beast | |
| And knelt above it with drawn knife. On the instant | |
| It vanished like a shadow, and a cry, | |
| So mournful that it seemed the cry of one | 50 |
| Who had lost some unimaginable treasure, | |
| Wandered between the blue and the green leaf | |
| And climbed into the air, crumbling away | |
| Till all had seemed a shadow or a vision | |
| But for the trodden mire, the pool of blood, | 55 |
| The disembowelled horse. King Eochaid gazed, | |
| And then, as terror-stricken as a child | |
| Who has seen a garden image or twisted tree | |
| In the half light, and runs to its own door | |
| Its terror growing wilder at every foot-fall, | 60 |
| He ran towards the house his fathers built | |
| On peopled Tara, nor stood to draw his breath | |
| Until he came before the painted wall, | |
| The posts of polished yew, circled with bronze, | |
| Of the great door; but though the hanging lamps | 65 |
| Showed their faint light through the unshuttered windows, | |
| Nor door, nor mouth, nor slipper made a noise, | |
| Nor on the ancient beaten paths, that wound | |
| From well side or from plough land, was their noise; | |
| And there had been no sound of living thing | 70 |
| Before him or behind, but that far-off | |
| On the horizon edge bellowed the herds. | |
| Knowing that silence brings no good to kings, | |
| And mocks returning victory, he passed | |
| Between the pillars with a beating heart | 75 |
| And saw where in the midst of the great hall, | |
| Pale-faced, alone upon a bench, his wife | |
| Sat upright with a sword before her feet. | |
| A kind mild woman had she been, who poured | |
| Her beauty as the constellations pour | 80 |
| Their richness through the summer and the spring; | |
| But now she had no mild and no kind look: | |
| Her hands on either side had gripped the bench, | |
| Her eyes were cold and steady, her lips tight. | |
| Some passion had made her stone. Hearing a foot | 85 |
| She started and then knew whose foot it was; | |
| But when he thought to take her in his arms | |
| She motioned him afar, and rose and spoke: | |
| “I have sent out into the fields and woods | |
| The fighting men and servants of this house, | 90 |
| For I would have your judgment upon one | |
| Who is self-accused. If she be innocent | |
| She would not look in any known man’s face | |
| Till judgment has been given, and if guilty, | |
| Because that were a guilt against her king, | 95 |
| Will never look again on known man’s face.” | |
| And at these words he paled, as she had paled, | |
| Knowing that he should find upon her lips | |
The meaning of that monstrous day.
Then she: | |
| “You brought me where your brother Ardan sat | 100 |
| Always in his one seat, and bid me care him | |
| Through that strange illness that had fixed him there, | |
| And should he die to heap his burial mound | |
| And raise his pillar stone.” King Eochaid said, | |
| Gazing upon her with bewildered eyes: | 105 |
| “If he be living still the whole world’s mine, | |
| But if not living, half the world is lost.” | |
| “I bid them make his bed under this roof, | |
| And carried him his food with my own hands, | |
| And so the weeks passed by. But when I said, | 110 |
| ‘What is this trouble?’ he would answer nothing, | |
| Though always at my words his trouble grew. | |
| And I, that I might find and stub it out, | |
| But asked the more until he spoke these words, | |
| Weary of many questions: ‘There are things | 115 |
| That make the heart akin to the dumb stone.’ | |
| Then I replied: ‘Although you hide a secret, | |
| Dearer than any that the dumb stone hides, | |
| Speak it, that I may send through the wide world | |
| For medicine.’ Thereon he cried aloud: | 120 |
| ‘Day after day you question me, and I, | |
| Because there is such a storm amid my thoughts | |
| I shall be carried in the gust, command | |
| Forbid, beseech and waste my breath.’ Then I: | |
| ‘Although the thing that you have hid were evil | 125 |
| The speaking of it could be no great wrong; | |
| And evil must it be, if done ’twere worse | |
| Than mound and stone that keep all virtue in | |
| And loosen on us dreams that waste our life, | |
| Shadows and shows that can but turn the brain.’ | 130 |
| But finding him still silent I stooped down, | |
| And, whispering that none but he should hear, | |
| Said: ‘If a woman has put this on you | |
| My men, whether it please her or displease, | |
| And though they have to cross the Loughlan seas | 135 |
| And take her in the middle of armed men, | |
| Shall make her look upon her handiwork | |
| That she may quench the rick she has fired, and though | |
| She may have worn silk clothes, or worn a crown, | |
| She’ll not be proud, knowing within her heart | 140 |
| That our sufficient portion of the world | |
| Is that we give, although it be brief giving | |
| Happiness to children and to men.’ | |
| Then he, driven by his thought beyond his thought, | |
| And speaking what he would not though he would, | 145 |
| Sighed: ‘You, even you yourself could work the cure.’ | |
| And at those words I rose and I went out | |
| And for nine days he had food from other hands, | |
| And for nine days my mind went whirling round | |
| The one disastrous zodiac, muttering | 150 |
| That the immedicable wound’s beyond | |
| Question of ours, beyond our pity even. | |
| But when nine days had gone I stood again | |
| Before his chair, and bending down my head | |
| Told him, that when Orion rose, and all | 155 |
| The women of his household were asleep, | |
| To go—for hope would give his limbs the power— | |
| To an old empty woodman’s house that’s hidden | |
| Close to a clump of beech trees in the wood | |
| Westward of Tara, there to await a friend | 160 |
| That could, as he had told her, work his cure, | |
And would be no harsh friend.
“When night had deepened | |
| I groped my way through boughs, and over roots, | |
| Till oak and hazel ceased and beech began, | |
| And found the house, a sputtering torch within, | 165 |
| And, stretched out sleeping on a pile of skins, | |
| Ardan; and though I called to him and tried | |
| To shake him out of sleep I could not rouse him. | |
| I waited till the night was on the turn, | |
| Then fearing that some labourer, on his way | 170 |
| To plough or pasture land, might see me there | |
Went out.
“Among the ivy-covered rocks, | |
| As on the blue light of a sword, a man | |
| Who had unnatural majesty, and eyes | |
| Like the eyes of some great kite scouring the woods, | 175 |
| Stood on my path. Trembling from hand to foot | |
| I gazed at him like grouse upon a kite, | |
| But with a voice that had unnatural music | |
| ‘A weary wooing and a long,’ he said, | |
| ‘Speaking of love through other lips and looking | 180 |
| Under an alien eyelid, for it was my craft | |
| That put a passion in the sleeper there, | |
| And when I had got my will and drawn you here, | |
| Where I may speak to you alone, my craft | |
| Sucked up the passion out of him again | 185 |
| And left mere sleep. He’ll wake when the sun wakes, | |
| Push out his vigorous limbs and rub his eyes | |
| And wonder what has ailed him these twelve months.’ | |
| I cowered back upon the wall in terror | |
| But that sweet-sounding voice ran on: ‘Woman, | 190 |
| I was your husband when you rode the air, | |
| Danced in the whirling foam and in the dust | |
| In days you have not kept in memory, | |
| Being betrayed into a cradle; and I come | |
| That I may claim you as my wife again.’ | 195 |
| I was no longer terrified, his voice | |
| Had half wakened some old memory, | |
| Yet answered him: ‘I am King Eochaid’s wife, | |
| And with him have found every happiness | |
| Women can find.’ With a most burning voice | 200 |
| That made the body seem as it were a string | |
| Under a bow, he cried: ‘What happiness | |
| Can lovers have that know their happiness | |
| Must end at the dumb stone, but where we build | |
| Our sudden palaces in the still air | 205 |
| Pleasure itself can bring no weariness, | |
| Nor can time waste the cheek, nor is there foot | |
| That has grown weary of the whirling dance, | |
| Nor an unlaughing mouth, but mine that mourns, | |
| Among those mouths that sing their sweethearts’ praise, | 210 |
| Your empty bed.’ ‘How should I love,’ I answered, | |
| ‘Were it not that when the dawn has lit my bed | |
| And shown my husband sleeping there I have sighed, | |
| ‘Your strength and nobleness will pass away.’ | |
| Or how should love be worth its pains were it not | 215 |
| That when he has fallen asleep within my arms, | |
| Being wearied out, I love in man the child? | |
| What can they know of love that do not know | |
| She builds her nest upon a narrow ledge | |
| Above a windy precipice?’ Then he: | 220 |
| ‘Seeing that when you come to the death-bed | |
| You must return, whether you would or no, | |
| This human life blotted from memory, | |
| Why must I live some thirty, forty years, | |
| Alone with all this useless happiness?’ | 225 |
| Thereon he seized me in his arms, but I | |
| Thrust him away with both my hands and cried: | |
| ‘Never will I believe there’s any change | |
| Can blot out of my memory this life | |
| Sweetened by death, but if I could believe | 230 |
| That were a double hunger on my lips | |
For what is doubly brief.’
“But now the shape, | |
| My hands were pressed to, vanished suddenly. | |
| I staggered, but a beech tree stayed my fall, | |
| And clinging to it I could hear the cocks | 235 |
Crow upon Tara.”
She had fixed her eyes | |
| Upon Kind Eochaid’s face, who lowered his face | |
| And touched her forehead with his lips and said: | |
| “I thank you for your kindness to my brother, | |
| And for the love that you have shown your king, | 240 |
| For that you promised, and for that refused.” | |
| |
| Thereon the bellowing of the empounded herds | |
| Rose round the walls, and through the bronze-ringed door | |
| Jostled and shouted those war-wasted men, | |
| And in the midst King Eochaid’s brother stood. | 245 |
| He’d heard that din on the horizon’s edge | |
| And ridden out to welcome them, and now, | |
| Giving his hand to that man and to this, | |
| Praised their great victories and gave them joy | |
| Of their return to that ancestral house. | 250 |
