BOOK I

S.  Patrick. You who are bent, and bald, and blind,
With a heavy heart and a wandering mind,
Have known three centuries, poets sing,
Of dalliance with a demon thing.

Oisin. Sad to remember, sick with years,
The swift innumerable spears,
The horsemen with their floating hair,
And bowls of barley, honey, and wine,
Those merry couples dancing in tune,
And the white body that lay by mine;
But the tale, though words be lighter than air.
Must live to be old like the wandering moon.

Caoilte, and Conan, and Finn were there,
When we followed a deer with our baying hounds.
With Bran, Sceolan, and Lomair,
And passing the Firbolgs' burial-motmds,
Came to the cairn-heaped grassy hill
Where passionate Maeve is stony-still;
And found On the dove-grey edge of the sea
A pearl-pale, high-born lady, who rode
On a horse with bridle of findrinny;
And like a sunset were her lips,
A stormy sunset on doomed ships;
A citron colour gloomed in her hair,

But down to her feet white vesture flowed,
And with the glimmering crimson glowed
Of many a figured embroidery;
And it was bound with a pearl-pale shell
That wavered like the summer streams,
As her soft ***** rose and fell.

S.  Patrick. You are still wrecked among heathen dreams.

Oisin. "Why do you wind no horn?' she said
"And every hero droop his head?
The hornless deer is not more sad
That many a peaceful moment had,
More sleek than any granary mouse,
In his own leafy forest house
Among the waving fields of fern:
The hunting of heroes should be glad.'

'O pleasant woman,' answered Finn,
"We think on Oscar's pencilled urn,
And on the heroes lying slain
On Gabhra's raven-covered plain;
But where are your noble kith and kin,
And from what country do you ride?'

"My father and my mother are
Aengus and Edain, my own name
Niamh, and my country far
Beyond the tumbling of this tide.'

"What dream came with you that you came
Through bitter tide on foam-wet feet?
Did your companion wander away
From where the birds of Aengus wing?'
Thereon did she look haughty and sweet:
"I have not yet, war-weary king,
Been spoken of with any man;
Yet now I choose, for these four feet
Ran through the foam and ran to this
That I might have your son to kiss.'

"Were there no better than my son
That you through all that foam should run?'

"I loved no man, though kings besought,
Until the Danaan poets brought
Rhyme that rhymed upon Oisin's name,
And now I am dizzy with the thought
Of all that wisdom and the fame
Of battles broken by his hands,
Of stories builded by his words
That are like coloured Asian birds
At evening in their rainless lands.'

O Patrick, by your brazen bell,
There was no limb of mine but fell
Into a desperate gulph of love!
'You only will I wed,' I cried,
"And I will make a thousand songs,
And set your name all names above,
And captives bound with leathern thongs
Shall kneel and praise you, one by one,
At evening in my western dun.'

"O Oisin, mount by me and ride
To shores by the wash of the tremulous tide,
Where men have heaped no burial-mounds,
And the days pass by like a wayward tune,
Where broken faith has never been known
And the blushes of first love never have flown;
And there I will give you a hundred hounds;
No mightier creatures bay at the moon;
And a hundred robes of murmuring silk,
And a hundred calves and a hundred sheep
Whose long wool whiter than sea-froth flows,
And a hundred spears and a hundred bows,
And oil and wine and honey and milk,
And always never-anxious sleep;
While a hundred youths, mighty of limb,
But knowing nor tumult nor hate nor strife,
And a hundred ladies, merry as birds,
Who when they dance to a fitful measure
Have a speed like the speed of the salmon herds,
Shall follow your horn and obey your whim,
And you shall know the Danaan leisure;
And Niamh be with you for a wife.'
Then she sighed gently, "It grows late.
Music and love and sleep await,
Where I would be when the white moon climbs,
The red sun falls and the world grows dim.'

And then I mounted and she bound me
With her triumphing arms around me,
And whispering to herself enwound me;
He shook himself and neighed three times:
Caoilte, Conan, and Finn came near,
And wept, and raised their lamenting hands,
And bid me stay, with many a tear;
But we rode out from the human lands.
In what far kingdom do you go'
Ah Fenians, with the shield and bow?
Or are you phantoms white as snow,
Whose lips had life's most prosperous glow?
O you, with whom in sloping vallcys,
Or down the dewy forest alleys,
I chased at morn the flying deer,
With whom I hurled the hurrying spear,
And heard the foemen's bucklers rattle,
And broke the heaving ranks of battle!
And Bran, Sceolan, and Lomair,
Where are you with your long rough hair?
You go not where the red deer feeds,
Nor tear the foemen from their steeds.

S.  Patrick. Boast not, nor mourn with drooping head
Companions long accurst and dead,
And hounds for centuries dust and air.

Oisin. We galloped over the glossy sea:
I know not if days passed or hours,
And Niamh sang continually
Danaan songs, and their dewy showers
Of pensive laughter, unhuman sound,
Lulled weariness, and softly round
My human sorrow her white arms wound.
We galloped; now a hornless deer
Passed by us, chased by a phantom hound
All pearly white, save one red ear;
And now a lady rode like the wind
With an apple of gold in her tossing hand;
And a beautiful young man followed behind
With quenchless gaze and fluttering hair.
"Were these two born in the Danaan land,
Or have they breathed the mortal air?'

"Vex them no longer,' Niamh said,
And sighing bowed her gentle head,
And sighing laid the pearly tip
Of one long finger on my lip.

But now the moon like a white rose shone
In the pale west, and the sun'S rim sank,
And clouds atrayed their rank on rank
About his fading crimson ball:
The floor of Almhuin's hosting hall
Was not more level than the sea,
As, full of loving fantasy,
And with low murmurs, we rode on,
Where many a trumpet-twisted shell
That in immortal silence sleeps
Dreaming of her own melting hues,
Her golds, her ambers, and her blues,
Pierced with soft light the shallowing deeps.
But now a wandering land breeze came
And a far sound of feathery quires;
It seemed to blow from the dying flame,
They seemed to sing in the smouldering fires.
The horse towards the music raced,
Neighing along the lifeless waste;
Like sooty fingers, many a tree
Rose ever out of the warm sea;
And they were trembling ceaselessly,
As though they all were beating time,
Upon the centre of the sun,
To that low laughing woodland rhyme.
And, now our wandering hours were done,
We cantered to the shore, and knew
The reason of the trembling trees:
Round every branch the song-birds flew,
Or clung thereon like swarming bees;
While round the shore a million stood
Like drops of frozen rainbow light,
And pondered in a soft vain mood
Upon their shadows in the tide,
And told the purple deeps their pride,
And murmured snatches of delight;
And on the shores were many boats
With bending sterns and bending bows,
And carven figures on their prows
Of bitterns, and fish-eating stoats,
And swans with their exultant throats:
And where the wood and waters meet
We tied the horse in a leafy clump,
And Niamh blew three merry notes
Out of a little silver trump;
And then an answering whispering flew
Over the bare and woody land,
A whisper of impetuous feet,
And ever nearer, nearer grew;
And from the woods rushed out a band
Of men and ladies, hand in hand,
And singing, singing all together;
Their brows were white as fragrant milk,
Their cloaks made out of yellow silk,
And trimmed with many a crimson feather;
And when they saw the cloak I wore
Was dim with mire of a mortal shore,
They fingered it and gazed on me
And laughed like murmurs of the sea;
But Niamh with a swift distress
Bid them away and hold their peace;
And when they heard her voice they ran
And knelt there, every girl and man,
And kissed, as they would never cease,
Her pearl-pale hand and the hem of her dress.
She bade them bring us to the hall
Where Aengus dreams, from sun to sun,
A Druid dream of the end of days
When the stars are to wane and the world be done.

They led us by long and shadowy ways
Where drops of dew in myriads fall,
And tangled creepers every hour
Blossom in some new crimson flower,
And once a sudden laughter sprang
From all their lips, and once they sang
Together, while the dark woods rang,
And made in all their distant parts,
With boom of bees in honey-marts,
A rumour of delighted hearts.
And once a lady by my side
Gave me a harp, and bid me sing,
And touch the laughing silver string;
But when I sang of human joy
A sorrow wrapped each merry face,
And, patrick! by your beard, they wept,
Until one came, a tearful boy;
"A sadder creature never stept
Than this strange human bard,' he cried;
And caught the silver harp away,
And, weeping over the white strings, hurled
It down in a leaf-hid, hollow place
That kept dim waters from the sky;
And each one said, with a long, long sigh,
"O saddest harp in all the world,
Sleep there till the moon and the stars die!'

And now, still sad, we came to where
A beautiful young man dreamed within
A house of wattles, clay, and skin;
One hand upheld his beardless chin,
And one a sceptre flashing out
Wild flames of red and gold and blue,
Like to a merry wandering rout
Of dancers leaping in the air;
And men and ladies knelt them there
And showed their eyes with teardrops dim,
And with low murmurs prayed to him,
And kissed the sceptre with red lips,
And touched it with their finger-tips.
He held that flashing sceptre up.
"Joy drowns the twilight in the dew,
And fills with stars night's purple cup,
And wakes the sluggard seeds of corn,
And stirs the young kid's budding horn,
And makes the infant ferns unwrap,
And for the peewit paints his cap,
And rolls along the unwieldy sun,
And makes the little planets run:
And if joy were not on the earth,
There were an end of change and birth,
And Earth and Heaven and Hell would die,
And in some gloomy barrow lie
Folded like a frozen fly;
Then mock at Death and Time with glances
And wavering arms and wandering dances.

"Men's hearts of old were drops of flame
That from the saffron morning came,
Or drops of silver joy that fell
Out of the moon's pale twisted shell;
But now hearts cry that hearts are slaves,
And toss and turn in narrow caves;
But here there is nor law nor rule,
Nor have hands held a weary tool;
And here there is nor Change nor Death,
But only kind and merry breath,
For joy is God and God is joy.'
With one long glance for girl and boy
And the pale blossom of the moon,
He fell into a Druid swoon.

And in a wild and sudden dance
We mocked at Time and Fate and Chance
And swept out of the wattled hall
And came to where the dewdrops fall
Among the foamdrops of the sea,
And there we hushed the revelry;
And, gathering on our brows a frown,
Bent all our swaying bodies down,
And to the waves that glimmer by
That sloping green De Danaan sod
Sang, "God is joy and joy is God,
And things that have grown sad are wicked,
And things that fear the dawn of the morrow
Or the grey wandering osprey Sorrow.'

We danced to where in the winding thicket
The damask roses, bloom on bloom,
Like crimson meteors hang in the gloom.
And bending over them softly said,
Bending over them in the dance,
With a swift and friendly glance
From dewy eyes:  "Upon the dead
Fall the leaves of other roses,
On the dead dim earth encloses:
But never, never on our graves,
Heaped beside the glimmering waves,
Shall fall the leaves of damask roses.
For neither Death nor Change comes near us,
And all listless hours fear us,
And we fear no dawning morrow,
Nor the grey wandering osprey Sorrow.'

The dance wound through the windless woods;
The ever-summered solitudes;
Until the tossing arms grew still
Upon the woody central hill;
And, gathered in a panting band,
We flung on high each waving hand,
And sang unto the starry broods.
In our raised eyes there flashed a glow
Of milky brightness to and fro
As thus our song arose:  "You stars,
Across your wandering ruby cars
Shake the loose reins:  you slaves of God.
He rules you with an iron rod,
He holds you with an iron bond,
Each one woven to the other,
Each one woven to his brother
Like bubbles in a frozen pond;
But we in a lonely land abide
Unchainable as the dim tide,
With hearts that know nor law nor rule,
And hands that hold no wearisome tool,
Folded in love that fears no morrow,
Nor the grey wandering osprey Sorrow.'

O Patrick! for a hundred years
I chased upon that woody shore
The deer, the badger, and the boar.
O patrick! for a hundred years
At evening on the glimmering sands,
Beside the piled-up hunting spears,
These now outworn and withered hands
Wrestled among the island bands.
O patrick! for a hundred years
We went a-fishing in long boats
With bending sterns and bending bows,
And carven figures on their prows
Of bitterns and fish-eating stoats.
O patrick! for a hundred years
The gentle Niamh was my wife;
But now two things devour my life;
The things that most of all I hate:
Fasting and prayers.

S.  Patrick. Tell On.

Oisin. Yes, yes,
For these were ancient Oisin's fate
Loosed long ago from Heaven's gate,
For his last days to lie in wait.
When one day by the tide I stood,
I found in that forgetfulness
Of dreamy foam a staff of wood
From some dead warrior's broken lance:
I tutned it in my hands; the stains
Of war were on it, and I wept,
Remembering how the Fenians stept
Along the blood-bedabbled plains,
Equal to good or grievous chance:
Thereon young Niamh softly came
And caught my hands, but spake no word
Save only many times my name,
In murmurs, like a frighted bird.
We passed by woods, and lawns of clover,
And found the horse and bridled him,
For we knew well the old was over.
I heard one say, "His eyes grow dim
With all the ancient sorrow of men';
And wrapped in dreams rode out again
With hoofs of the pale findrinny
Over the glimmering purple sea.
Under the golden evening light,
The Immortals moved among thc fountains
By rivers and the woods' old night;
Some danced like shadows on the mountains
Some wandered ever hand in hand;
Or sat in dreams on the pale strand,
Each forehead like an obscure star
Bent down above each hooked knee,
And sang, and with a dreamy gaze
Watched where the sun in a saffron blaze
Was slumbering half in the sea-ways;
And, as they sang, the painted birds



























































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Kept time with their bright wings and feet;
Like drops of honey came their words,
But fainter than a young lamb's bleat.

"An old man stirs the fire to a blaze,
In the house of a child, of a friend, of a brother.
He has over-lingered his welcome; the days,
Grown desolate, whisper and sigh to each other;
He hears the storm in the chimney above,
And bends to the fire and shakes with the cold,
While his heart still dreams of battle and love,
And the cry of the hounds on the hills of old.

But We are apart in the grassy places,
Where care cannot trouble the least of our days,
Or the softness of youth be gone from our faces,
Or love's first tenderness die in our gaze.
The hare grows old as she plays in the sun
And gazes around her with eyes of brightness;
Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done
She limps along in an aged whiteness;
A storm of birds in the Asian trees
Like tulips in the air a-winging,
And the gentle waves of the summer seas,
That raise their heads and wander singing,
Must murmur at last, ""Unjust, unjust';
And ""My speed is a weariness,' falters the mouse,
And the kingfisher turns to a ball of dust,
And the roof falls in of his tunnelled house.
But the love-dew dims our eyes till the day
When God shall come from the Sea with a sigh
And bid the stars drop down from the sky,
And the moon like a pale rose wither away.'

#######
BOOK II
#######

NOW, man of croziers, shadows called our names
And then away, away, like whirling flames;
And now fled by, mist-covered, without sound,
The youth and lady and the deer and hound;
"Gaze no more on the phantoms,' Niamh said,
And kissed my eyes, and, swaying her bright head
And her bright body, sang of faery and man
Before God was or my old line began;
Wars shadowy, vast, exultant; faeries of old
Who wedded men with rings of Druid gold;
And how those lovers

S.  Patrick. You who are bent, and bald, and blind,
With a heavy heart and a wandering mind,
Have known three centuries, poets sing,
Of dalliance with a demon thing.

Oisin. Sad to remember, sick with years,
The swift innumerable spears,
The horsemen with their floating hair,
And bowls of barley, honey, and wine,
Those merry couples dancing in tune,
And the white body that lay by mine;
But the tale, though words be lighter than air.
Must live to be old like the wandering moon.

Caoilte, and Conan, and Finn were there,
When we followed a deer with our baying hounds.
With Bran, Sceolan, and Lomair,
And passing the Firbolgs' burial-motmds,
Came to the cairn-heaped grassy hill
Where passionate Maeve is stony-still;
And found On the dove-grey edge of the sea
A pearl-pale, high-born lady, who rode
On a horse with bridle of findrinny;
And like a sunset were her lips,
A stormy sunset on doomed ships;
A citron colour gloomed in her hair,

But down to her feet white vesture flowed,
And with the glimmering crimson glowed
Of many a figured embroidery;
And it was bound with a pearl-pale shell
That wavered like the summer streams,
As her soft ***** rose and fell.

S.  Patrick. You are still wrecked among heathen dreams.

Oisin. 'Why do you wind no horn?' she said
'And every hero droop his head?
The hornless deer is not more sad
That many a peaceful moment had,
More sleek than any granary mouse,
In his own leafy forest house
Among the waving fields of fern:
The hunting of heroes should be glad.'

'O pleasant woman,' answered Finn,
'We think on Oscar's pencilled urn,
And on the heroes lying slain
On Gabhra's raven-covered plain;
But where are your noble kith and kin,
And from what country do you ride?'

'My father and my mother are
Aengus and Edain, my own name
Niamh, and my country far
Beyond the tumbling of this tide.'

'What dream came with you that you came
Through bitter tide on foam-wet feet?
Did your companion wander away
From where the birds of Aengus wing?'
Thereon did she look haughty and sweet:
'I have not yet, war-weary king,
Been spoken of with any man;
Yet now I choose, for these four feet
Ran through the foam and ran to this
That I might have your son to kiss.'

'Were there no better than my son
That you through all that foam should run?'

'I loved no man, though kings besought,
Until the Danaan poets brought
Rhyme that rhymed upon Oisin's name,
And now I am dizzy with the thought
Of all that wisdom and the fame
Of battles broken by his hands,
Of stories builded by his words
That are like coloured Asian birds
At evening in their rainless lands.'

O Patrick, by your brazen bell,
There was no limb of mine but fell
Into a desperate gulph of love!
'You only will I wed,' I cried,
'And I will make a thousand songs,
And set your name all names above,
And captives bound with leathern thongs
Shall kneel and praise you, one by one,
At evening in my western dun.'

'O Oisin, mount by me and ride
To shores by the wash of the tremulous tide,
Where men have heaped no burial-mounds,
And the days pass by like a wayward tune,
Where broken faith has never been known
And the blushes of first love never have flown;
And there I will give you a hundred hounds;
No mightier creatures bay at the moon;
And a hundred robes of murmuring silk,
And a hundred calves and a hundred sheep
Whose long wool whiter than sea-froth flows,
And a hundred spears and a hundred bows,
And oil and wine and honey and milk,
And always never-anxious sleep;
While a hundred youths, mighty of limb,
But knowing nor tumult nor hate nor strife,
And a hundred ladies, merry as birds,
Who when they dance to a fitful measure
Have a speed like the speed of the salmon herds,
Shall follow your horn and obey your whim,
And you shall know the Danaan leisure;
And Niamh be with you for a wife.'
Then she sighed gently, 'It grows late.
Music and love and sleep await,
Where I would be when the white moon climbs,
The red sun falls and the world grows dim.'

And then I mounted and she bound me
With her triumphing arms around me,
And whispering to herself enwound me;
He shook himself and neighed three times:
Caoilte, Conan, and Finn came near,
And wept, and raised their lamenting hands,
And bid me stay, with many a tear;
But we rode out from the human lands.
In what far kingdom do you go'
Ah Fenians, with the shield and bow?
Or are you phantoms white as snow,
Whose lips had life's most prosperous glow?
O you, with whom in sloping vallcys,
Or down the dewy forest alleys,
I chased at morn the flying deer,
With whom I hurled the hurrying spear,
And heard the foemen's bucklers rattle,
And broke the heaving ranks of battle!
And Bran, Sceolan, and Lomair,
Where are you with your long rough hair?
You go not where the red deer feeds,
Nor tear the foemen from their steeds.

S.  Patrick. Boast not, nor mourn with drooping head
Companions long accurst and dead,
And hounds for centuries dust and air.

Oisin. We galloped over the glossy sea:
I know not if days passed or hours,
And Niamh sang continually
Danaan songs, and their dewy showers
Of pensive laughter, unhuman sound,
Lulled weariness, and softly round
My human sorrow her white arms wound.
We galloped; now a hornless deer
Passed by us, chased by a phantom hound
All pearly white, save one red ear;
And now a lady rode like the wind
With an apple of gold in her tossing hand;
And a beautiful young man followed behind
With quenchless gaze and fluttering hair.
'Were these two born in the Danaan land,
Or have they breathed the mortal air?'

'Vex them no longer,' Niamh said,
And sighing bowed her gentle head,
And sighing laid the pearly tip
Of one long finger on my lip.

But now the moon like a white rose shone
In the pale west, and the sun'S rim sank,
And clouds atrayed their rank on rank
About his fading crimson ball:
The floor of Almhuin's hosting hall
Was not more level than the sea,
As, full of loving fantasy,
And with low murmurs, we rode on,
Where many a trumpet-twisted shell
That in immortal silence sleeps
Dreaming of her own melting hues,
Her golds, her ambers, and her blues,
Pierced with soft light the shallowing deeps.
But now a wandering land breeze came
And a far sound of feathery quires;
It seemed to blow from the dying flame,
They seemed to sing in the smouldering fires.
The horse towards the music raced,
Neighing along the lifeless waste;
Like sooty fingers, many a tree
Rose ever out of the warm sea;
And they were trembling ceaselessly,
As though they all were beating time,
Upon the centre of the sun,
To that low laughing woodland rhyme.
And, now our wandering hours were done,
We cantered to the shore, and knew
The reason of the trembling trees:
Round every branch the song-birds flew,
Or clung thereon like swarming bees;
While round the shore a million stood
Like drops of frozen rainbow light,
And pondered in a soft vain mood
Upon their shadows in the tide,
And told the purple deeps their pride,
And murmured snatches of delight;
And on the shores were many boats
With bending sterns and bending bows,
And carven figures on their prows
Of bitterns, and fish-eating stoats,
And swans with their exultant throats:
And where the wood and waters meet
We tied the horse in a leafy clump,
And Niamh blew three merry notes
Out of a little silver trump;
And then an answering whispering flew
Over the bare and woody land,
A whisper of impetuous feet,
And ever nearer, nearer grew;
And from the woods rushed out a band
Of men and ladies, hand in hand,
And singing, singing all together;
Their brows were white as fragrant milk,
Their cloaks made out of yellow silk,
And trimmed with many a crimson feather;
And when they saw the cloak I wore
Was dim with mire of a mortal shore,
They fingered it and gazed on me
And laughed like murmurs of the sea;
But Niamh with a swift distress
Bid them away and hold their peace;
And when they heard her voice they ran
And knelt there, every girl and man,
And kissed, as they would never cease,
Her pearl-pale hand and the hem of her dress.
She bade them bring us to the hall
Where Aengus dreams, from sun to sun,
A Druid dream of the end of days
When the stars are to wane and the world be done.

They led us by long and shadowy ways
Where drops of dew in myriads fall,
And tangled creepers every hour
Blossom in some new crimson flower,
And once a sudden laughter sprang
From all their lips, and once they sang
Together, while the dark woods rang,
And made in all their distant parts,
With boom of bees in honey-marts,
A rumour of delighted hearts.
And once a lady by my side
Gave me a harp, and bid me sing,
And touch the laughing silver string;
But when I sang of human joy
A sorrow wrapped each merry face,
And, patrick! by your beard, they wept,
Until one came, a tearful boy;
'A sadder creature never stept
Than this strange human bard,' he cried;
And caught the silver harp away,
And, weeping over the white strings, hurled
It down in a leaf-hid, hollow place
That kept dim waters from the sky;
And each one said, with a long, long sigh,
'O saddest harp in all the world,
Sleep there till the moon and the stars die!'

And now, still sad, we came to where
A beautiful young man dreamed within
A house of wattles, clay, and skin;
One hand upheld his beardless chin,
And one a sceptre flashing out
Wild flames of red and gold and blue,
Like to a merry wandering rout
Of dancers leaping in the air;
And men and ladies knelt them there
And showed their eyes with teardrops dim,
And with low murmurs prayed to him,
And kissed the sceptre with red lips,
And touched it with their finger-tips.
He held that flashing sceptre up.
'Joy drowns the twilight in the dew,
And fills with stars night's purple cup,
And wakes the sluggard seeds of corn,
And stirs the young kid's budding horn,
And makes the infant ferns unwrap,
And for the peewit paints his cap,
And rolls along the unwieldy sun,
And makes the little planets run:
And if joy were not on the earth,
There were an end of change and birth,
And Earth and Heaven and Hell would die,
And in some gloomy barrow lie
Folded like a frozen fly;
Then mock at Death and Time with glances
And wavering arms and wandering dances.

'Men's hearts of old were drops of flame
That from the saffron morning came,
Or drops of silver joy that fell
Out of the moon's pale twisted shell;
But now hearts cry that hearts are slaves,
And toss and turn in narrow caves;
But here there is nor law nor rule,
Nor have hands held a weary tool;
And here there is nor Change nor Death,
But only kind and merry breath,
For joy is God and God is joy.'
With one long glance for girl and boy
And the pale blossom of the moon,
He fell into a Druid swoon.

And in a wild and sudden dance
We mocked at Time and Fate and Chance
And swept out of the wattled hall
And came to where the dewdrops fall
Among the foamdrops of the sea,
And there we hushed the revelry;
And, gathering on our brows a frown,
Bent all our swaying bodies down,
And to the waves that glimmer by
That sloping green De Danaan sod
Sang, 'God is joy and joy is God,
And things that have grown sad are wicked,
And things that fear the dawn of the morrow
Or the grey wandering osprey Sorrow.'

We danced to where in the winding thicket
The damask roses, bloom on bloom,
Like crimson meteors hang in the gloom.
And bending over them softly said,
Bending over them in the dance,
With a swift and friendly glance
From dewy eyes:  'Upon the dead
Fall the leaves of other roses,
On the dead dim earth encloses:
But never, never on our graves,
Heaped beside the glimmering waves,
Shall fall the leaves of damask roses.
For neither Death nor Change comes near us,
And all listless hours fear us,
And we fear no dawning morrow,
Nor the grey wandering osprey Sorrow.'

The dance wound through the windless woods;
The ever-summered solitudes;
Until the tossing arms grew still
Upon the woody central hill;
And, gathered in a panting band,
We flung on high each waving hand,
And sang unto the starry broods.
In our raised eyes there flashed a glow
Of milky brightness to and fro
As thus our song arose:  'You stars,
Across your wandering ruby cars
Shake the loose reins:  you slaves of God.
He rules you with an iron rod,
He holds you with an iron bond,
Each one woven to the other,
Each one woven to his brother
Like bubbles in a frozen pond;
But we in a lonely land abide
Unchainable as the dim tide,
With hearts that know nor law nor rule,
And hands that hold no wearisome tool,
Folded in love that fears no morrow,
Nor the grey wandering osprey Sorrow.'

O Patrick! for a hundred years
I chased upon that woody shore
The deer, the badger, and the boar.
O patrick! for a hundred years
At evening on the glimmering sands,
Beside the piled-up hunting spears,
These now outworn and withered hands
Wrestled among the island bands.
O patrick! for a hundred years
We went a-fishing in long boats
With bending sterns and bending bows,
And carven figures on their prows
Of bitterns and fish-eating stoats.
O patrick! for a hundred years
The gentle Niamh was my wife;
But now two things devour my life;
The things that most of all I hate:
Fasting and prayers.

S.  Patrick.      Tell on.

Oisin.                 Yes, yes,
For these were ancient Oisin's fate
Loosed long ago from Heaven's gate,
For his last days to lie in wait.
When one day by the tide I stood,
I found in that forgetfulness
Of dreamy foam a staff of wood
From some dead warrior's broken lance:
I tutned it in my hands; the stains
Of war were on it, and I wept,
Remembering how the Fenians stept
Along the blood-bedabbled plains,
Equal to good or grievous chance:
Thereon young Niamh softly came
And caught my hands, but spake no word
Save only many times my name,
In murmurs, like a frighted bird.
We passed by woods, and lawns of clover,
And found the horse and bridled him,
For we knew well the old was over.
I heard one say, 'His eyes grow dim
With all the ancient sorrow of men';
And wrapped in dreams rode out again
With hoofs of the pale findrinny
Over the glimmering purple sea.
Under the golden evening light,
The Immortals moved among thc fountains
By rivers and the woods' old night;
Some danced like shadows on the mountains
Some wandered ever hand in hand;
Or sat in dreams on the pale strand,
Each forehead like an obscure star
Bent down above each hooked knee,
And sang, and with a dreamy gaze
Watched where the sun in a saffron blaze
Was slumbering half in the sea-ways;
And, as they sang, the painted birds
Kept time with their bright wings and feet;
Like drops of honey came their words,
But fainter than a young lamb's bleat.

'An old man stirs the fire to a blaze,
In the house of a child, of a friend, of a brother.
He has over-lingered his welcome; the days,
Grown desolate, whisper and sigh to each other;
He hears the storm in the chimney above,
And bends to the fire and shakes with the cold,
While his heart still dreams of battle and love,
And the cry of the hounds on the hills of old.

But We are apart in the grassy places,
Where care cannot trouble the least of our days,
Or the softness of youth be gone from our faces,
Or love's first tenderness die in our gaze.
The hare grows old as she plays in the sun
And gazes around her with eyes of brightness;
Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done
She limps along in an aged whiteness;
A storm of birds in the Asian trees
Like tulips in the air a-winging,
And the gentle waves of the summer seas,
That raise their heads and wander singing,
Must murmur at last, "Unjust, unjust";
And "My speed is a weariness," falters the mouse,
And the kingfisher turns to a ball of dust,
And the roof falls in of his tunnelled house.
But the love-dew dims our eyes till the day
When God shall come from the Sea with a sigh
And bid the stars drop down from the sky,
And the moon like a pale rose wither away.'

The sky transformed in a matter of seconds
From a bright powder blue
To a sickly gray that reminded me of my darkest days.

The teardrops from the sky came trickling down
bit by bit
Slowly picking up speed
As I could hear the pitter patter on the window sills.

I walked over to my window to watch the show.
To watch the raindrops maneuver its way
past the nooks and crannies of the trees
and soak up into the ground.

I noticed something odd.
Right outside my window, lied a spider web.
A huge one, about two feet in diameter
And in the center, sat a beautiful maroon colored spider,  curled into a ball to protect itself from the penetrating water droplets.

The web had to be one of the most
beautiful creations I'd ever seen.
How could something so minuscule
Create such a wonderful piece of art all on its own?

But as I was looking at this web
I was watching something devastating.
All of the spider's hard work
Was being battered by the rain.

The web was shaking violently back and forth.
Surprisingly, it was remaining mostly intact.
Unlike the fragile spider,
Clinging onto the strings of its creation for dear life.

The rain continued beating down
As I stood there admiring the web's strength.
The web was withstanding everything the storm threw it's way.
But its soul, the creator, didn't seem strong enough to.

The storm faded away.
The web, a little beaten down,
managed to stay strong enough to survive.
The spider, however, did not.

This reminds me of myself, you know.
Beaten down with words, mockeries
Beaten down by my past
My memories

I keep my outer shell perfectly intact
So that no one knows what is really going on inside me.
When in reality, my soul is dying.
My depths are shallowing, just like the spider.

I am not the only one like this.
I was oblivious to this fact
Until I watched this spider
Take his last breath before drowning.

Why couldn't the spider be as strong as its outer shell?
Why can't I be as strong
as I make myself out to be?
Maybe I'll find out one day.

and yes, very much a niche concern, my laptop broke down
   and i'm forced into the box room, albeit not ramped
out with Nabokov's Switzerland lodging:
at a hotel in the Alps catching butterflies and Lolitas -
i've finally matured in my likings -
but let me tell you, it has been painful
adjusting to the upright sitting:
lost the slouch and the quickie
crow-on-a-windowsill with a whiskey
sharpshooter and then a tornado cascade
into the lesser concept of a blank page and that famous
nothing of philosophers... i love the lesser critique
of Heidegger, my grandfather bought me
a 25 volume worths of interest,
and Heidegger stood out foremost,
primarily because of a peculiar surname,
i later learned that he was the German
that would eventually make Wordsworth
pointless in picking up the lyre,
with so many books i had to realise that
i needed a partner akin to walking through
Dante's epic,
              i could have chosen Ovid, but esp.
Horace, but i didn't choose Virgil or Homer,
a blood German peasant... but also
a pheasant, which means auburn peacock...
oh sure, you get familial ties with people
of the world, people who made either their
forenames or surnames akin to the nouns
as familiar as stars chairs and smoked ham rumps...
perfectly akin to everyday familiarity of use...
i wasn't worn in Warsaw or Krakow -
if i were, i probably wouldn't have left the natives,
but living on the outskirts of that great capital
doesn't necessarily impress:
in all honest edict contraction: i feel debased
travelling into London (central), ***** and ******
out my mind...
       i guess this means two more years rereading
Heidegger's being and time
                               after purchasing his ponderings ii - vi
from the years 1931 - 1938;
yes, my family was directly affected by **** Germany,
not in concentration camps, on the frontline,
so why would i be sopping over a **** familiar
in the realm of philosophy?
       a. public intellectuals don't exist in England,
    English doesn't like philosophy,
         proof
                  ?    b. Shakespeare - peer in on shaking
a pear and
                      the dancing of a retired circus bear dancing.
     c. that's Pythagoras, we leave him in the Pascal gambit.
i just think it's a shame that i have this massive
democracy in my room, and i'll end up with something
akin to a Quran -
                              again, why Heidegger?
i don't know, it could have been that Czech Kundera -
     or Kafka, it could have been Seneca,
              but all these writers are city dwellers,
Heidegger was a quasi-villager pseudo-city-dweller,
i find foxes and deer and dead badgers in my little
promenade escapades, also Satanist black masses
with the framework of in excelsior satanis! -
and lightning that strikes but no thunder is heard...
less for the sons of thunder: the 12 hot-air balloons,
it's very much Germanic in Japan with
feng shui or otherwise known in the peninsula as qi
     kee.
                      then there's the **** of the haiku
by the west and me answering: let's make ensō -
smoothed out narratives, ecstatic variation from
     thinking and away from moral decisiveness
in that activity of perpetuated choice-making -
                how clearly thinking extends into narration
rather than the Cartesian
                 precipitation of thought into being -
nope: from thinking into narration
          juiced-up enclosure of "zoological" tightening
with ensō: beefy haikus.
          but what i really find problematic?
the interpretation of Heidegger's concept of dasein
as coupled with ecstasis.... our ex-stasis...
                  with da meaning there
               you can pretend to be "happy" about protests
across the world, and wars and other turbulent
activity...
                   what i am proposing is what Nietzsche
prompted with sum ergo cogito,
         in that the real ecstasis is concerned with being
allocated to a here, and therefore a hesein -
the interpretation posits the ecstasis there
when Heidegger originally posits concern there,
     or as he encodes: "concern"
                       meaning the dittoing puts him in a safety
of the here, it's the ecstasis of not being there,
but here in the present as the ecstasis, and there
     of some abstract venture as being beyond his command
of attributed dynamism of being involved,
for he's not involved. give me an hour and i'll be
in the countryside: we have that weighty countryside mentality,
farmers talking ******* when stacking hay
and laughing with the grammar Nazis when
    people go to the gym but teach their brains
the flab that the brains actually are: primarily spongy fat -
     apart from typos, it's the case
                                           (it is the case that)
   i don't (do not)
                               much concern myself from English
slang of piano (Joanna)
           and the outright **** (Pakistani),
               cos there was no sine                  when people
overacted toward the tan of me swallowing vowels and
replacing them with shortcuts to prop'ah Cockney,
oi oi, ******, bruv! brush up! this bus to school is
mingy with the throng!
                          who ordered the sardines?
        Stendhal is still the love of my life... i can write
enough complexities with Heidegger, but my love
resides with Stendhal... who would have thought
that a film adaptation would make me eager to read the book
(the scarlet & the noir)? Peter Jackson knew, as did J. R. R.
but it comes from the musings,
          once i do the Kantian critique a one over
the missing yawn and what's actually the most underestimated
arithmetics of wording rather than number circus
         or replicas of taxman rubrics:
after enough chemistry, favouring the organic and
later becoming endowed with a palette for Indian cuisine
well: philosophy books are the worded versions
of mathematics in terms of jumping the burning wheels
of 1 + 11 = 12        and          i contemplate
                                            but what's the = and the 12?
it's so ****** open, i could have invited a hundred thieves
to porose a car-boot sale at my house.
but all this, which might seem like self-love,
    it's not about that...the French intellectualise
and have them public because they talk beautifully -
                  the English?
they sing...
                               the Germans are morose and silent...
        the Spanish are simply the onomatopoeias of *******
and the Italians are seen and heard licking their fingers
after enough basil is added to tomatoes...
   i'm still banging on about the apathetic interpretation
of dasein, rather than the ecstatic version popularised
by the scholars...
                                 the version that reads:
if a tree falls in a forest and there's no one to hear it fall,
does it make a sound? that's my interpretation of
dasein / being there / being "there"....
                          a.                          b.
                       concretely            in abstract,
we already know that the abstract of being is nonbeing
or that things are abstracts of nothings with identifiers
of being used, without actually being touched:
i can say that i see a chair without actually having
to sit on it.
                    i was thinking simpler though -
olly murs' heart skips a beat and someone of the major
tracks by one direction...
             when i reference myself to these tracks
i'm being ecstatic, in the dimension of hesein,
                  like da, shortened purposively from the
authentic hier / here in german....
              why am i ecstatic in the here?
   because i don't have to be concerned in the realm of da /
there, where my opinion "might" matter...
                   but really doesn't...
                             which is why i don't understand
this interpretation of dasein meaning ecstasis -
                           or ex status quo....
                                               as already suggested -
our moral obligation toward language is to provoke
a Minotaur to become an architect of our venture in
using language, away from the market place...
into forests, into depths that have no justification
for being imagined, or as such diagnosed as ever being
there and established to planning permission and norms
of established caricatures and cleanly undertaken
shallowing and hollowing out from them being furthered.
i should be sad having trodden such a path
for myself, but i feel a kinship with this German,
come on, what consolidated the Kantian
dichotomy of a priori and a posteriori as in
   or must not philosophy a fortiori poeticize beings?
should not be conversed with from a wholly
anti-intellectual dynamism suggesting a personal
historic aversion of what's otherwise ethnically ******
without suspicion in terms of cultural tact?
again: nothing - which is higher and deeper than nonbeing(s)
(i ensure the ambiguity of the plural, if only
due to the fact that nothing is
    kindred of a definite article - the -
                          and ensures a translation as nonbeing,
while nothing in a quality as in nothingness
            kindred of an indefinite article - a -
         and ensures a translation as nonbeings, the plural,
ambiguity and throng -
   perfect offshoot that's already known as a-
           and -the         with a missing -ism).
yes, language ought to resemble something less
instructional, certainly less capital / monetary,
and more of a preservation of ambiguity and subsequently
myth... or what otherwise concern themselves with
in the hustle and bustle of a public life: integrity,
                                ulterior of the personal sphere of interests:
the person per se;
       and the apéritif (a'per-teeth)?
                 for lack of diacritical insurance, the English
are constantly in need of a tongue-map for waggling it
prop'ah:
                    the Chelsea y'ah
or the Cockney wa'er                - t t t.
                mind you, that's related to the trilling of the R
(originally intended as a trill) and subsequently lost
in the Germanic ethnic cauldron: hark the French and
cipher the English curling the tongue making the R curled
rather than trill - my idiosyncratic fascination aged 8.
  i thought i ought to end this with a thought about
what's a universal maxim in psychiatry
  in England in terms of a standard prognosis:
patient A has lost touch with reality...
      that's the prognosis, the diagnosis: dialectics of Gnostic
teachings? anyway, that's the standard,
that a person has lost touch with reality... what a great swindle!
     y

curled up down the end of the
bed where loose feet hang,
comfort purrs, doused,
incontent. easy game.

so i sleep a little more:
outside, everything
will churn continually
in cyclic tone, oil-slick,
patterns always look the same.

further out, little
is left but the low rush
of breaking wavelets over
shallowing stone retainer
walls kept, keeping
the weight of this inestimable
machine
on track.

breathe stale air, smile,
the skyline accumulates;
handfuls of grey at a time.

No
You say "you don't know her
She's brilliant
she's understanding
She's the best person I've ever met
she's my hopes
my dreams
(gone)"
A fantastic character

I hate to always be the bearer of truth,
But, I've read her cover to cover
She's shallow and superficial
She puts up a facade of a unique individual and yet she's just within the boundary of normalcy.

I've examined all of her (superfluous) pages of work
And they only skim the surface of humanities skin
Circling around the moles and scars that pucker truth-
Brail for the the blind

I've dug deep within her words and read between each space bar
And there lies no feeling- no emotion...
Sheer unintended apathy

Still-With many attempts:
She doesn't capture the essence of regret or sorrow
She merely spits at its feet
And it shows
Because the pain she displays vanishes
From her readers
From the pages
From the words
From the letters
From the simple spaces
From the idea itself

And yet this somehow captivates you
Yet unbeknownst to you- you are not regret, nor are you sorrow,
You are simply embodying what she barely grasps in hopes to find what lies beneath for yourself

But you're burrowing into someone who hasn't yet lived or loved-
Who can't describe the burning bubbles that pop in your eyes from the tears of contempt
Who can't fathom deflation of breath in your shallowing lungs, nor the dam constricting your veins' blood at loss

She can't break down completely with you dangling along
So
She
Keeps you just within reach to describe something she encounters
Something she caused
Something she can never embody  because  her "emotions" are a half lie:A secure defense
For power over others

This is what happened. This summer, across the endless shoulderblade of prairie miles, through the mountains (granite teeth, road the crumbling, ageless tongue) spit out on the other side like seeds, all the way from that little grungy city, carried on the feathers of a bird whose bones were steel and organs vinyl, this summer I dreamt of you.

Nestled in orchards, cheeks as soft and flushed as the apples, lying flat on my back on forest floors, handsome when darkness fell. The trees from that angle looked as if they had tumbled upward, away from their roots, unfurling like hands, spines snapping to attention. Thousands of knotted fingers crawling, thrusting against gravity, reaching for the sun.

Body treasured in musty pocket. Dreamt of you beneath open sky, upon the lips of the ocean, her form vast and sensual. The sand was inviting at first, shallowing to house the contours of my body, growing hard later as my eyes fluttered beneath closed flesh. Unwinding in sleep, body seizing up, slowly. Everything slow.

I wonder if the handcuffs were hereditary
If we were fed through those chainlink umbilical cords
Cut free and raised in disguised prison wards
I think our birth certificates may have been the first warrants for our arrest.
“Prison” was never a ***** word growing up
It was tossed around in potato salads
Mixed into our cole slaws
And served to us like pecan pie
“Prison” was not a ***** word
It was just a place that family members ended up
A Motel 6 specifically designed for Randolphs
But then middle school started
I was told that prison was for bad people
I refused to believe that it was for bad people
That my family shared rooms with criminals
Talked with murderers and thieves over a metal dinner table
That they were bad people.
How are you supposed to feel when you’re told that your DNA is bad people?
What are the charges against my biology?
What crimes have my genetics committed against the court?
Why are their laws written down in my ancestors' blood?
I suppose prisons are for bad people
But I don’t think you’re a bad person.
I wish I could just believe you’re a bad person
Since you’ve missed every warrant for communication
Every request for appearance to the important dates of my life
And I still want to pardon you from all charges
Because you’re my big brother.
I don’t think you’re a bad person
It’s easier to think that the handcuffs were hereditary
Than to believe that you ended up here on your own accord
And I wish this was your first time
But this isn’t my first time crying your name into a cinderblock wall
Begging for the release of my bubba
You always laughed when I called you bubba
Said that I had a way with words yet I still couldn’t pronounce “big brother”
I wish we got to know each other better
We were separated through a cascade of different fathers and custody cases
Names inked into legal paper before I even knew how to write it myself
I haven’t talked to you in over a year now
The only recent photos I have of you were taken at a police station
But you only got arrested a month ago
I can’t excuse the other eleven
What’s your excuse from running from family?
From the only sibling, you have left?
These handcuffs are hereditary
And every time they rubbed against your wrists, mine burn
Every time they say your name in a court setting
I hear it slamming into the sides of my skull
Every time they shut the bars of your cell
I am barred from another part of my soul
And I wonder if my name even passes through your thoughts
Cause when we mourned for our lost sister together
You said it was us against the world
So what’s the reason why you never returned my calls?
You said we were the only family that we had left
But as children of parents who didn’t care for them
The word “family” didn’t exactly hold much importance
We spent decades masquerading ourselves in the backgrounds of other people’s family photos
Trying to pretend like we weren’t secondhand children
We weren’t lost souls
Yet when they recounted their old memories
We could never fit ourselves into their homes
I relied on you to keep out of trouble
And raise your kids better than Mom ever raised us
But my nieces and nephews are still shallowing down the word prison like it’s Tylenol
You said I was the only family you could trust
The way you’ve treated me and your kids show me what I should’ve known all along
Whereas I had a way with your words
You never understood their meaning
Preferred silent smiles and passive-aggressive grunts towards showing emotion
You don’t know what family means
And I wonder if you can even feel my pain
Yes, these handcuffs are hereditary
And I feel your felonies burn in my veins
Causing avalanches in despair to cover my brain
Because what you don’t realize is as the youngest sibling
I inherited everyone’s pain.
Even your's.

Stephan W

I have seen you there,
standing alone, along the shoreline
    --if you only knew--
Your thoughts- a poetic buffering,
spoken out- onto weathered paper,
through trembling hands;  words
let in to the ocean wind--
the dreams of your heart, the needs,
ah, yes.. the deep needs of your heart...

    among these rocks,
    you are always alone.
    ~

At the tip of your fingers-- the small ridges;
fragmental, yet monumental imprints, etched
in to you, the moment your spirit entered
your temple. They tell the world of your story:
through fine, texture-perception, you feel it--
your trembling fingers grip the pen, expressing,
conveying your truth into a world that does not
hear.. a shallowing, that deafens..

    You glance at your fingertips--
    to assure, you're really there
    ~ ~

(The sea has picked up a bit, now
the waves, crashing against the rocks
rocks, that still won't hear..)

And here also, outlined
within the warm beat of the
human heart,
there is a sound that can be heard--
one similar to the aliveness
of the crashing waves.
Place your fingertips against those
that are real-
the sound blends-in perfectly
with the sea
as the uniqueness of imprinted ridge,
moves up against that of the other--
contrasting, here.. fitting together
perfectly, there..

    Scream, "I am!" to the sea; and see, love..
    scream it out, and see.
    ~ ~ ~

I am everywhere near you-- encouraging,
celebrating.. at times, weeping;  hands
outstretched, the uniqueness of my
own finger prints, longing
Along this shoreline, I have watched you
for an eternity, hoping
that you might somehow take it all, in.
Clouds beckon, asking again for the
earth's moisture

      and I respond,  e v ap o r a t i ng.

      ~ ~ ~ ~

Your small, beautiful feet, now
all pigeon-toed- now, standing
at the water's edge; as the
rain cloud gives up its prize
just beyond the breakers--

    (my imprint remains,
    but I am of the sea now..)

    Wade into me, love
    that I may wrap myself around you:
    Along this shoreline,
    may you never be alone again.

Kiss me like the moonlit stars, reflect and reach the Everglades, and embue with blue like the Sunday shade. Cool, crisp, refreshing, and new.

Don't cut my leaves and curb my bite, to melt me into pasty walls of glowing white. Which will only hold the captured light of the sun which shines to rise.

Don't let me fall without a trace. To meet my end in the shallowing streams of fading grey, where I could never dream of meeting thee, with such a wave.

But take my greeting in from rooftops as a simple sign of life to stay, and fall like stars of burning Orr if you must. Frozen until crashing down, only catch me along the way.

I’m a hostage to the abyss
Of torrent seas
I can’t find my feet
I can’t touch the ground
I’m struggling to breathe
Give me your hand
Or look me in the eye
Save me from this,
Ignite my fire.
You’ll hear the chime my eyes glow hollow
The black waves shallowing
The ink from your tail I’ll follow.

I won’t wary on any of this
Because we all are going through it.

All I can say right now is…
That I wish I had wings
Something I can use to -
Take me from the wreck beneath me.
Something to show me more perspective.

…
I’m afraid I am absorbing too much
of what is fed to me, constantly.
Through the screen.
Through too much conversation.

shallowing my thoughts.

I am not owned by a God.
I would love to know we have one.
Human remains.
Remains is how they’ll find us.

Mother Earth is so powerful
She will spit us out
If we continue to deny…

The whole truth…
And nothing but the truth…
So help me…