I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods

Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees

Hum in the lime tree flowers; and put away

The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness

That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile

Tara uprooted, and new commonness

Upon the throne and crying about the streets

And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,

Because it is alone of all things happy.

I am contented for I know that Quiet

Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart

Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer,

Who but awaits His hour to shoot, still hangs

A cloudy quiver over Parc-na-Lee.

August, 1902.

Maeve the great queen was pacing to and fro,

Between the walls covered with beaten bronze,

In her high house at Cruachan; the long hearth,

Flickering with ash and hazel, but half showed

Where the tired horse-boys lay upon the rushes,

Or on the benches underneath the walls,

In comfortable sleep; all living slept

But that great queen, who more than half the night

Had paced from door to fire and fire to door.

Though now in her old age, in her young age

She had been beautiful in that old way

That’s all but gone; for the proud heart is gone

And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all

But soft beauty and indolent desire.

She could have called over the rim of the world

Whatever woman’s lover had hit her fancy,

And yet had been great bodied and great limbed,

Fashioned to be the mother of strong children;

And she’d had lucky eyes and a high heart,

And wisdom that caught fire like the dried flax,

At need, and made her beautiful and fierce,

Sudden and laughing.

O unquiet heart,

Why do you praise another, praising her,

As if there were no tale but your own tale

Worth knitting to a measure of sweet sound?

Have I not bid you tell of that great queen

Who has been buried some two thousand years?

When night was at its deepest, a wild goose

Cried from the porter’s lodge, and with long clamour

Shook the ale horns and shields upon their hooks;

But the horse-boys slept on, as though some power

Had filled the house with Druid heaviness;

And wondering who of the many changing Sidhe

Had come as in the old times to counsel her,

Maeve walked, yet with slow footfall being old,

To that small chamber by the outer gate.

The porter slept although he sat upright

With still and stony limbs and open eyes.

Maeve waited, and when that ear-piercing noise

Broke from his parted lips and broke again,

She laid a hand on either of his shoulders,

And shook him wide awake, and bid him say

Who of the wandering many-changing ones

Had troubled his sleep. But all he had to say

Was that, the air being heavy and the dogs

More still than they had been for a good month,

He had fallen asleep, and, though he had dreamed nothing,

He could remember when he had had fine dreams.

It was before the time of the great war

Over the White-Horned Bull, and the Brown Bull.

She turned away; he turned again to sleep

That no god troubled now, and, wondering

What matters were afoot among the Sidhe,

Maeve walked through that great hall, and with a sigh

Lifted the curtain of her sleeping room,

Remembering that she too had seemed divine

To many thousand eyes, and to her own

One that the generations had long waited

That work too difficult for mortal hands

Might be accomplished. Bunching the curtain up

She saw her husband Ailell sleeping there,

And thought of days when he’d had a straight body,

And of that famous Fergus, Nessa’s husband,

Who had been the lover of her middle life.

Suddenly Ailell spoke out of his sleep,

And not with his own voice or a man’s voice,

But with the burning, live, unshaken voice

Of those that it may be can never age.

He said, ‘High Queen of Cruachan and Mag Ai

A king of the Great Plain would speak with you.’

And with glad voice Maeve answered him, ‘What King

Of the far wandering shadows has come to me?

As in the old days when they would come and go

About my threshold to counsel and to help.’

The parted lips replied, ‘I seek your help,

For I am Aengus and I am crossed in love.’

‘How may a mortal whose life gutters out

Help them that wander with hand clasping hand

By rivers where nor rain nor hail has dimmed

Their haughty images, that cannot fade

Although their beauty’s like a hollow dream.’

‘I come from the undimmed rivers to bid you call

The children of the Maines out of sleep,

And set them digging into Anbual’s hill.

We shadows, while they uproot his earthy house,

Will overthrow his shadows and carry off

Caer, his blue eyed daughter that I love.

I helped your fathers when they built these walls

And I would have your help in my great need,

Queen of high Cruachan.’

‘I obey your will

With speedy feet and a most thankful heart:

For you have been, O Aengus of the birds,

Our giver of good counsel and good luck.’

And with a groan, as if the mortal breath

Could but awaken sadly upon lips

That happier breath had moved, her husband turned

Face downward, tossing in a troubled sleep;

But Maeve, and not with a slow feeble foot,

Came to the threshold of the painted house,

Where her grandchildren slept, and cried aloud,

Until the pillared dark began to stir

With shouting and the clang of unhooked arms.

She told them of the many-changing ones;

And all that night, and all through the next day

To middle night, they dug into the hill.

At middle night great cats with silver claws,

Bodies of shadow and blind eyes like pearls,

Came up out of the hole, and red-eared hounds

With long white bodies came out of the air

Suddenly, and ran at them and harried them.

The Maines’ children dropped their spades, and stood

With quaking joints and terror strucken faces,

Till Maeve called out, ‘These are but common men.

The Maines’ children have not dropped their spades

Because Earth crazy for its broken power

Casts up a show and the winds answer it

With holy shadows.’ Her high heart was glad,

And when the uproar ran along the grass

She followed with light footfall in the midst,

Till it died out where an old thorn tree stood.

Friend of these many years, you too had stood

With equal courage in that whirling rout;

For you, although you’ve not her wandering heart,

Have all that greatness, and not hers alone.

For there is no high story about queens

In any ancient book but tells of you,

And when I’ve heard how they grew old and died

Or fell into unhappiness I’ve said;

‘She will grow old and die and she has wept!’

And when I’d write it out anew, the words,

Half crazy with the thought, She too has wept!

Outrun the measure.

I’d tell of that great queen

Who stood amid a silence by the thorn

Until two lovers came out of the air

With bodies made out of soft fire. The one

About whose face birds wagged their fiery wings

Said, ‘Aengus and his sweetheart give their thanks

To Maeve and to Maeve’s household, owing all

In owing them the bride-bed that gives peace.’

Then Maeve, ‘O Aengus, Master of all lovers,

A thousand years ago you held high talk

With the first kings of many pillared Cruachan.

O when will you grow weary.’

They had vanished,

But out of the dark air over her head there came

A murmur of soft words and meeting lips.

Argument. Baile and Aillinn were lovers, but

Aengus, the Master of Love, wishing them to be

happy in his own land among the dead, told to

each a story of the other’s death, so that their

hearts were broken and they died.

I hardly hear the curlew cry,

Nor the grey rush when wind is high,

Before my thoughts begin to run

On the heir of Ulad, Buan’s son,

Baile who had the honey mouth,

And that mild woman of the south,

Aillinn, who was King Lugaid’s heir.

Their love was never drowned in care

Of this or that thing, nor grew cold

Because their bodies had grown old;

Being forbid to marry on earth

They blossomed to immortal mirth.

About the time when Christ was born,

When the long wars for the White Horn

And the Brown Bull had not yet come,

Young Baile Honey-Mouth, whom some

Called rather Baile Little-Land,

Rode out of Emain with a band

Of harpers and young men, and they

Imagined, as they struck the way

To many pastured Muirthemne,

That all things fell out happily

And there, for all that fools had said,

Baile and Aillinn would be wed.

They found an old man running there,

He had ragged long grass-yellow hair;

He had knees that stuck out of his hose;

He had puddle water in his shoes;

He had half a cloak to keep him dry;

Although he had a squirrel’s eye.

O wandering birds and rushy beds

You put such folly in our heads

With all this crying in the wind

No common love is to our mind,

And our poor Kate or Nan is less

Than any whose unhappiness

Awoke the harp strings long ago.

Yet they that know all things but know

That all life had to give us is

A child’s laughter, a woman’s kiss.

Who was it put so great a scorn

In the grey reeds that night and morn

Are trodden and broken by the herds,

And in the light bodies of birds

That north wind tumbles to and fro

And pinches among hail and snow?

That runner said, ‘I am from the south;

I run to Baile Honey-Mouth

To tell him how the girl Aillinn

Rode from the country of her kin

And old and young men rode with her:

For all that country had been astir

If anybody half as fair

Had chosen a husband anywhere

But where it could see her every day.

When they had ridden a little way

An old man caught the horse’s head

With “You must home again and wed

With somebody in your own land.”

A young man cried and kissed her hand

“O lady, wed with one of us;”

And when no face grew piteous

For any gentle thing she spake

She fell and died of the heart-break.’

Because a lover’s heart’s worn out

Being tumbled and blown about

By its own blind imagining,

And will believe that anything

That is bad enough to be true, is true,

Baile’s heart was broken in two;

And he being laid upon green boughs

Was carried to the goodly house

Where the Hound of Ulad sat before

The brazen pillars of his door;

His face bowed low to weep the end

Of the harper’s daughter and her friend;

For although years had passed away

He always wept them on that day,

For on that day they had been betrayed;

And now that Honey-Mouth is laid

Under a cairn of sleepy stone

Before his eyes, he has tears for none,

Although he is carrying stone, but two

For whom the cairn’s but heaped anew.

We hold because our memory is

So full of that thing and of this

That out of sight is out of mind.

But the grey rush under the wind

And the grey bird with crooked bill

Have such long memories that they still

Remember Deirdre and her man,

And when we walk with Kate or Nan

About the windy water side

Our heart can hear the voices chide.

How could we be so soon content

Who know the way that Naoise went?

And they have news of Deirdre’s eyes

Who being