V

Hard by the swift-winged star, the moth-like moon

Sheds golden dust on waves of day that ebb

Into the deep beyond life's wan lagoon.

The spider Night now spins his monstrous web,

And spots the dark with many a pale cocoon

Hung in his vaporous cave, whose phantoms creep

In visions round the heavy brain of sleep.

Yet one, among the sleepers, never turns

To ease his shoulder of the weight of night;

But with the shield of sweet oblivion spurns

Those wandering shafts that tease with sound and sight;

Till in a quiet, deep as kingly urns

In buried places, Ailill deadly lies,

Blind to the spreading signal of the skies.

Now the thick dark, that pressed Etain's calm face

Like softest wool, thins out, and moves, and lifts;

And like a memory's vague recovered trace

The silent world, looming through cloudy rifts,

Floats greyly on the grey abyss of space,

Then slowly forms, and stands at last in light

Built on the crumbled ruins of the night.

Soon on a cloud o'erhung with heliotrope

Day's harp is lifted, wire on golden wire;

And now great Dagda's burning fingers grope

From string to string, then reaching high and higher

Unto the utterance of some eager hope,

Break through the vibrant silences, and spring

Into one living voice of leaf and wing.

Somewhere the snipe now taps his tiny drum;

The moth goes fluttering upward from the heath;

And where no lightest foot unmarked may come,

The rabbit, tiptoe, plies his shiny teeth

On luscious herbage; and with strident hum

The yellow bees, blustering from flower to flower,

Scatter from dew-filled cups a sparkling shower.

The meadowsweet shakes out its feathery mass;

And rumorous winds, that stir the silent eaves,

Bearing abroad faint perfumes as they pass,

Thrill with some wondrous tale the fluttering leaves,

And whisper secretly along the grass

Where gossamers, for day's triumphal march,

Hang out from blade to blade their diamond arch.

Forth came Etain, and with a little cry

Scattered the councils of the feathery brood;

And faced unblenched the red sun's winkless eye

That hawk-like hung above the quivering wood;

And passed with stately step and head on high

Toward a secluded place — where one doth wait

Silent and imperturbable as fate.

Sweetly the wizard palms of morning sleek

Her brow with spells; and when a butterfly

Brushes with soft familiar wing her cheek,

Through the deep woods she hears a ghostly sigh,

As if a hidden god were fain to speak

An ancient ageless love that, fold by fold,

Wraps her with joy in throbbing arms of old.

Now is her sandalled foot upon the edge

Of a loud-leaping stream, that flings its damp

To cool the sorrel shaking on its ledge

Under the squirrel's pine, and in a swamp

Goes dumb among the heron-haunted sedge,

Where the swift kingfisher, a moment seen,

Flashes and fades, a flame of sudden green.

At length she stands within the appointed place,

Where leafy boughs in odorous dusk are blent.

But wherefore now across her tranced face

Pass the quick fingers of bewilderment,

And doubt on doubt like shadows shadows chase?

Faintly she speaks, “Ailill I came to see.

Who art thou — for thou art yet art not he?”

From her soft eye no loosened glances tell

Desire or dread, to him whose cloudless gaze

Knows from what heights of old her footsteps fell

Out of clear light, into this web of days

And nights and mystery inscrutable,

And marks how in the calm of inner power

She moves unmoved to meet her destined hour.

“Etain,” he whispered, and again, “Etain.”

Such utter love went throbbing through her name

That nigh beyond her doubt her foot had gone;

Yet stood she wavering like a lonely flame

Outburning night, that feels the shake of dawn;

Then said, “Thy name, that doubt aside he cast?”

“Mider,” he answered, “come for thee at last.”

“Mider?” she echoed, “Mider?” and the sound

Smote upon hidden doors, and roused from sleep

Faint eyes that dreamed, vague hands that groped around

The thought behind her thought, and from the deep

Beneath her thought climbed upward, to the bound

Whose shadowy marge like midnight gloom is cast

Between the passing moment and the past.

Then Mider said, “For no poor worm's desire,

Nor aught of earth, thou comest, O beloved!

But for another's good thy thoughts conspire;

And far from self thy feet have hither moved

To the high purpose of the sacred fire

That burns thine upward path through joy and pain,

Through birth, through life, through death, to me again.”

Then asked she all bewildered: “Who art thou

Whose eyes have read my soul?” And answered he,

“Thine am I by the immemorial vow

That made thee mine, beloved! eternally,

When for a bride-price, on thy peerless brow

I set a diadem beyond the worth

Of all the crowns of all the queens of earth.”

Swiftly her thought divining, “Where, and when,

And wherefore parted, thou, beloved! shalt know.

That land which gleams in the rapt poet's ken,

Set in a sea that has no ebb or flow,

Beyond the spear-cast of the dreams of men,

Is mine, and from all changings far withdrawn

There spreads the realm of Mider — and Etain.

“And there we loved, till that Almighty Power

Who set the heavens wheeling with a nod,

Blew thee, a butterfly, from flower to flower,

Until beyond our realm, a splendid God

Knew thee and cherished in a blossomy bower,

And nightly thy fair form in purple laid,

And at thy side his couch of slumber made.

“But thee again the breath of tempest found,

And swept thee forth, and whirled from field to field,

And dashed thee where a roar of festal sound

Shook brazenly doffed helm and resting shield,

And flung thee in a cup that passed around

To one who drank it deep in bridal mirth —

And thou wert born a daughter of the earth.

“From year to year life's pleasures round thee played,

And fell behind the question of thine eyes

That searched the mysteries of leafy shade,

And the blue heron sailing in the skies

Cutting the silence with the rusty blade

His voice, and sought to spy the subtile might

That killed your gathered iris in a night.

“Ah, soon I saw sweet longing on thy face,

And love's compelling poppy on thy mouth,

And watched thee robe thy maiden blossoming grace

And dream a king came riding from the south;

Yet in thy sigh in Eochaidh's royal place,

Unseen I saw the waft of hidden wings

Set past these perishing substantial things.

“For thou wert born for love whose windless sail

Moves on great deeps beyond life's shallow range.

Love linked in flesh with failing flesh shall fail:

Love knit in thought with changing thought shall change,

Nor all desire against slow Time prevail;

For that old worm all dreams shall gnaw and rend,

And love that finds an end — itself shall end.

“Oh! not for thee the little irking chain

That frets the bark on life's expanding bole;

Nor love that maketh free, though it contain

All earth's white loves and thee supreme and sole

Beloved beneath all heaven; for who shall gain,

Since between love and love most subtly mixed

Untrodden silence stands forever fixed?

“My love would brood upon the holy thing

Within thine inmost being folded far,

Till it at length come forth on perfect wing

To brush with sweet eclipse the morning star,

And in high heaven its utter rapture sing,

Filling the universe with golden sound

Of love immortal, measureless, unbound!

“How shall immortal love find mortal bliss,

Or measureless be bound in narrow speech,

Or free and forge the bondage of a kiss?

Nay, but its end is ever out of reach,

Its life, of fairer life the chrysalis;

And all its days, desirable and fleet,

But prints of unseen Beauty's passing feet.

“Ah! Love is thine whose all-transfusing sun

Burns out the mystery of life and death;

And all thine hours but blossom unto one

That us in utter bondage compasseth.

Now to that timeless hour Time's footsteps run

To rear our throne, whose foot shall never know

The chafe of life's eternal ebb and flow.

“And he whose heart long time was scarred and swept

By hungering winds that robbed him of repose,

Wrapt in deep joy, beyond his joy has slept

Into a passionless calm, that wakes and knows

Love's highest bliss in honour stainless kept.

Farewell, and when a little while has flown

I come again.” He ceased. She stood alone.

Far through the morn the horn of Eochaidh blew,

Outspeeding runners hot with glad return.

From post to post goes welcoming halloo:

Far off the shouldered spear-heads dance and burn

Through smother of wheels, and marching men that strew

Their wake with dust and song, and storm at last

Round dun and liss, their prosperous journey past.

And all that day go question and reply,

Twin bodkins looping up the stuff of life:

And all that dusk, warm cheek and glancing eye

Blow up love's ruddy peat in man and wife:

And all that night, harps throb and warpipes cry

Around the king, enthroned in joy complete,

Etain beside him, Ailill at his feet.

But through the songs of praise that round him swell,

One voice to him has music sweeter far.

Close to his heart she now the tale doth tell

Of duty done, and love escaped a scar;—

But not of that deep hour, unspeakable

With visitation from beyond the world,

Shut in her heart, a blossom closely curled.

On Eochaidh's royal brow sits glad content

That she, fate's minister to Ailill's pain,

Who dared in faith the perilous descent,

Now stands more white against averted stain.

And Ailill, all his heart in service spent,

Fills their glad hours with tender friendship's light

Sweet as the beam that silvers quiet night.