The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 1 of 8. Poems Lyrical and Narrative

Of many a figured embroidery;
And it was bound with a pearl-pale shell
That wavered like the summer streams,
As her soft bosom rose and fell.

S. PATRIC

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 maiden,’ answered Finn,
‘We think on Oscar’s pencilled urn,
And on the heroes lying slain,
On Gavra’s raven-covered plain;
But where are your noble kith and kin,
And into what country do you ride?’

‘My father and my mother are
Aengus and Edain, and my name
Is Niamh, and my land where tide
And sleep drown sun and moon and star.’

‘What dream came with you that you came
To this dim shore on foam-wet feet?
Did your companion wander away
From where the birds of Aengus wing?’

She said, with laughter tender and sweet:
‘I have not yet, war-weary king,
Been spoken of with any one;
For love of Oisin foam-wet feet
Have borne me where the tempests blind
Your mortal shores till time is done!’

‘How comes it, princess, that your mind
Among undying people has run
On this young man, Oisin, my son?’

‘I loved no man, though kings besought
And many a man of lofty name,
Until the Danaan poets came,
Bringing me honeyed, wandering thought
Of noble Oisin and his 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 Patric, 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 maidens, 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;
But when the horse had felt my weight,
He shook himself and neighed three times: