cried.
"Take thou the treasures won on hard-fought field,
Spoils of the furrow, tribute of the tide:
These for thy forfeit here I freely yield;
Not her whose smile makes festive life's poor crust,
But lost would turn its glories into dust!"

The stranger calmly answered, "King, the bird
Poised on a little trick within the brain,
Soars sunward. Kings on honour's lightest word
Unshaken, rear a realm that shall remain.
Snaps a small string: lo! all the song that stirred
With beauty and joy, sinks like storm-swallowed ships,
And bards unborn harp a high-king's eclipse.

"But fear not thou. Thy fame shall feel no wind
Of cold rebuke; for when these shadows lift,
Thou in life's loss the Spirit's gain shalt find:
Thou to thyself shalt give thine utmost gift;
And know thou only hast what is resigned.
I go—but come on one clear-omened day,
And thou shalt pay thy debt." He went away.

In that same hour the hungry nestling's cheep
Floods Etain's drowsing ear with gentle woe.
Sleep stirred by waking, waking soothed by sleep,
Around her heart in linking eddies flow;
Till at some passing wind that shakes the deep
Of dream, she wakes with eyes that strain to see
A haunting face behind life's mystery.

And in lone hours of many a moonless night,
Through jetting poplars and the shooting snags
Of wrinkled oaks, the king doth seek a light
From his heart's questionings, whose purpose flags
Before her face, lest in her eye's clear sight
One thought of faithlessness a moment read
Should bring to birth the thing he most doth dread.

  VII Strong in the strength that finds in gentleness
A way to peace, King Eochaidh on the throne
Of Erin sits. Around his footstool press
High cares of sovereignty, that crowd his own
Like gossips out of doors, and ease the stress
Of storming thought which, held from question clear,
Fears its mute doubt, yet vaguely doubts its fear.

In silent step, hushed pulse, and listening gaze,
He marks expectancy behind her smile,
Like some faint gleam from half-remembered days
Ere the high Gods had blown them to this isle
Among inscrutable divided ways,
Some hidden destiny to mar or make
In hands as strong to give as quick to take.

Now to the king the hollow moments haste
Across his heart to some heart-emptied hour:
And now he frets to leap with sinews braced
Through lagging days and meet the threatening power.
Yet from his conflict, inner lips now taste
The mingled wine of sweet and bitter fate—
Strength to withstand, Endurance to await.

These not as gifts the shadowy troublers bear,
But on his table spread what is his own.
So mused the king: "Not all from spade and share
The harvest comes: seed to its fruit has grown,
Self-shaped, though stirred by smart of sun and air;
And in life's myriad hands beaten and pressed,
Man is not made, but man made manifest."

So finding gain in threatened loss, his mind
Self-poised, through sorrow and joy makes even way,
Content if, toiling past, his fingers find
Her fingers, and in trembling silence say,
"Here in unstable circumstance entwined
We two have kissed, and whither we may tend,
Once mixed, must find each other at the end."

And she within her heart's most secret place
Has nursed a thought that grew from day to day,
Like wind-borne seed that on a rocky face
Finds root and strength to shatter ancient sway,
A thought of Love that chafes at time and space,
And moves from Love that was through Love to be
To some exalted end no eye can see.

Yet nought of this was uttered each to each;
But when, like forest monarchs strong and proud,
A silver birch beside a sinewy beech,
They stood at feast to hail the gathering crowd,
Swift winds of joy came full of happy speech,
And through the host light raptures laughed and played,
Witless of yellowing leaf or sodden shade.

Then came a day when on the bare flag-stone
The slow snail crawled; the chestnut's candles turned
Downward as dead; the wolf-hound with a groan
Gazed in King Eochaidh's eyes through eyes that burned
Great threat; the spear-grass hither and thither blown
Bent on the sand and traced its rings awry,
And sun and moon slid sideways down the sky.

Swiftly to Eochaidh the dread omens tell
The day of forfeiture; yet to Etain
No word he speaks. Her eyes so softly well
With wondrous beauty, all his heart is drawn
In love to hold her from the coming spell.
Pushed past its hour, the unspoken doom may break,
And love and honour stand without a shake.

On windy gap and boggy mountain path
He sets his watchers. Knee-deep where the fists
Of bracken fronds are clenched in tiny wrath,
Stern guards now stand, and where in sculptured cists
Old kings are harvested in Death's long swathe.
Closed from alarm the shingled roofs now rise
Ringed through the dark with flaming searching eyes.

The word has passed, "The king shall have his whim:
No stranger looks upon the queen to-night."
Around the feasting board men great of limb
Shut fast each door, and blind the hope of sight
With shining shields that turn the torches dim.
Throned firm in strength defying power or guile,
He joys, and hopes—yet fears Etain's faint smile.

Now harp and song have touched their utmost height,
And fall in sudden silence at a sound
Deeper than sound, and pale before a light
Clearer than light. Above, beneath, around,
All heaven and earth are shaken with a might
Past might, swift chariots clash, and mixed with these,
Far thunderings and the roar of distant seas!

And in their midst is Mider, a shining God
From whose majestic presence swiftly spreads
Peace not of earth. Before his face, unflawed
By shadow of taint, brave warriors bow their heads.
And now the king, snapping his silver rod
Of power, with sudden eyes made clear, with cheeks
Flamed by swift vision, through the silence speaks.

"Now have I seen the shining hand of Him
Who sifts the world for His divine desire;
And gathers, and within His quern's wide rim
Grinds all things meet for His transforming fire,
And kneads them to a purpose far and dim;
Who fashions all things to His growing plan,
And breaks ... and moulds ... and breaks the heart of man.

"Take Thou Thy will—so it be her's?..." A hope
Shoots a faint arrow instantly—no more.
A blinding fire falls from night's glimmering slope.
Flame-like the twain meet on the rushy floor—
And vanish. King and clansmen blindly grope
Into cool air. Across the sky two swans
Fly slowly toward the day that palely dawns.

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POEMS AND LYRICS

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DEATH AND LIFE

To the memory of Eveleen Nicolls

I

The