| |
| Poets with whom I learned my trade, | |
| Companions of the Cheshire Cheese, | |
| Here’s an old story I’ve re-made, | |
| Imagining ’twould better please | |
| Your ears than stories now in fashion, | 5 |
| Though you may think I waste my breath | |
| Pretending that there can be passion | |
| That has more life in it than death, | |
| And though at bottling of your wine | |
| The bow-legged Goban had no say; | 10 |
| The moral’s yours because it’s mine. | |
| |
| When cups went round at close of day— | |
| Is not that how good stories run?— | |
| Somewhere within some hollow hill, | |
| If books speak truth in Slievenamon, | 15 |
| But let that be, the gods were still | |
| And sleepy, having had their meal, | |
| And smoky torches made a glare | |
| On painted pillars, on a deal | |
| Of fiddles and of flutes hung there | 20 |
| By the ancient holy hands that brought them | |
| From murmuring Murias, on cups— | |
| Old Goban hammered them and wrought them, | |
| And put his pattern round their tops | |
| To hold the wine they buy of him. | 25 |
| But from the juice that made them wise | |
| All those had lifted up the dim | |
| Imaginations of their eyes, | |
| For one that was like woman made | |
| Before their sleepy eyelids ran | 30 |
| And trembling with her passion said, | |
| ‘Come out and dig for a dead man, | |
| Who’s burrowing somewhere in the ground, | |
| And mock him to his face and then | |
| Hollo him on with horse and hound, | 35 |
| For he is the worst of all dead men.’ | |
| |
| We should be dazed and terror struck, | |
| If we but saw in dreams that room, | |
| Those wine-drenched eyes, and curse our luck | |
| That emptied all our days to come. | 40 |
| I knew a woman none could please, | |
| Because she dreamed when but a child | |
| Of men and women made like these; | |
| And after, when her blood ran wild, | |
| Had ravelled her own story out, | 45 |
| And said, ‘In two or in three years | |
| I need must marry some poor lout,’ | |
| And having said it burst in tears. | |
| Since, tavern comrades, you have died, | |
| Maybe your images have stood, | 50 |
| Mere bone and muscle thrown aside, | |
| Before that roomful or as good. | |
| You had to face your ends when young— | |
| ’Twas wine or women, or some curse— | |
| But never made a poorer song | 55 |
| That you might have a heavier purse, | |
| Nor gave loud service to a cause | |
| That you might have a troop of friends. | |
| You kept the Muses’ sterner laws, | |
| And unrepenting faced your ends, | 60 |
| And therefore earned the right—and yet | |
| Dowson and Johnson most I praise— | |
| To troop with those the world’s forgot, | |
| And copy their proud steady gaze. | |
| |
| ‘The Danish troop was driven out | 65 |
| Between the dawn and dusk,’ she said; | |
| ‘Although the event was long in doubt, | |
| Although the King of Ireland’s dead | |
| And half the kings, before sundown | |
All was accomplished.’
‘When this day | 70 |
| Murrough, the King of Ireland’s son, | |
| Foot after foot was giving way, | |
| He and his best troops back to back | |
| Had perished there, but the Danes ran, | |
| Stricken with panic from the attack, | 75 |
| The shouting of an unseen man; | |
| And being thankful Murrough found, | |
| Led by a footsole dipped in blood | |
| That had made prints upon the ground, | |
| Where by old thorn trees that man stood; | 80 |
| And though when he gazed here and there, | |
| He had but gazed on thorn trees, spoke, | |
| “Who is the friend that seems but air | |
| And yet could give so fine a stroke?” | |
| Thereon a young man met his eye, | 85 |
| Who said, “Because she held me in | |
| Her love, and would not have me die, | |
| Rock-nurtured Aoife took a pin, | |
| And pushing it into my shirt, | |
| Promised that for a pin’s sake, | 90 |
| No man should see to do me hurt; | |
| But there it’s gone; I will not take | |
| The fortune that had been my shame | |
| Seeing, King’s son, what wounds you have.” | |
| ’Twas roundly spoke, but when night came | 95 |
| He had betrayed me to his grave, | |
| For he and the King’s son were dead. | |
| I’d promised him two hundred years, | |
| And when for all I’d done or said— | |
| And these immortal eyes shed tears— | 100 |
| He claimed his country’s need was most, | |
| I’d saved his life, yet for the sake | |
| Of a new friend he has turned a ghost. | |
| What does he care if my heart break? | |
| I call for spade and horse and hound | 105 |
| That we may harry him.’ Thereon | |
| She cast herself upon the ground | |
| And rent her clothes and made her moan: | |
| ‘Why are they faithless when their might | |
| Is from the holy shades that rove | 110 |
| The grey rock and the windy light? | |
| Why should the faithfullest heart most love | |
| The bitter sweetness of false faces? | |
| Why must the lasting love what passes, | |
| Why are the gods by men betrayed!’ | 115 |
| |
| But thereon every god stood up | |
| With a slow smile and without sound, | |
| And stretching forth his arm and cup | |
| To where she moaned upon the ground, | |
| Suddenly drenched her to the skin; | 120 |
| And she with Goban’s wine adrip, | |
| No more remembering what had been, | |
| Stared at the gods with laughing lip. | |
| |
| I have kept my faith, though faith was tried, | |
| To that rock-born, rock-wandering foot, | 125 |
| And the world’s altered since you died, | |
| And I am in no good repute | |
| With the loud host before the sea, | |
| That think sword strokes were better meant | |
| Than lover’s music—let that be, | 130 |
| So that the wandering foot’s content. | |
| |
