Kitabı oku: «The Mountainy Singer», sayfa 4

THE BEGGAR’S WAKE

 
I watched at a beggar’s wake
In the hills of Bearna-barr,
And the old men were telling stories
Of Troy and the Trojan war.
 
 
And a flickering fire of bog-deal
Burned on the open hearth,
And the night-wind roared in the chimney,
And darkness was over the earth.
 
 
And Tearlach Ban MacGiolla,
The piper of Gort, was there,
And he sat and he dreamed apart
In the arms of a sugan chair.
 
 
And sudden he woke from his dream
Like a dream-frightened child,
And his lips were pale and trembling,
And his eyes were wild.
 
 
And he stood straight up, and he cried,
With a wave of his withered hand,
“The days of the grasping stranger
Shall be few in the land!
 
 
“The scrip of his doom is written,
The thread of his shroud is spun;
The net of his strength is broken,
The tide of his life is run..”
 
 
Then he sank to his seat like a stone,
And the watchers stared aghast,
And they crossed themselves for fear
As the coffin cart went past.
 

…

 
“At the battle of Gleann-muic-duibh
The fate the poets foretold
Shall fall on the neck of the stranger,
And redden the plashy mould.
 
 
“The bagmen carry the story
The circuit of Ireland round,
And they sing it at fair and hurling
From Edair to Acaill Sound.
 
 
“And the folk repeat it over
About the winter fires,
Till the heart of each one listening
Is burning with fierce desires.
 
 
“In the Glen of the Bristleless Boar
They say the battle shall be,
Where Breiffne’s iron mountains
Look on the Western sea.
 
 
“In the Glen of the Pig of Diarmad,
On Gulban’s hither side,
The battle shall be broken
About the Samhain tide.
 
 
“Forth from the ancient hills,
With war-cries strident and loud,
The people shall march at daybreak,
Massed in a clamorous crowd.
 
 
“War-pipes shall scream and cry,
And battle-banners shall wave,
And every stone on Gulban
Shall mark a hero’s grave.
 
 
“The horses shall wade to their houghs
In rivers of smoking blood,
Charging thro’ heaps of corpses
Scattered in whinny and wood.
 
 
“The girths shall rot from their bellies
After the battle is done,
For lack of a hand to undo them
And hide them out of the sun.
 
 
“It shall not be the battle
Between the folk and the Sidhe
At the rape of a bride from her bed
Or a babe from its mother’s knee.
 
 
“It shall not be the battle
Between the white hosts flying
And the shrieking devils of hell
For a priest at the point of dying.
 
 
“It shall not be the battle
Between the sun and the leaves,
Between the winter and summer,
Between the storm and the sheaves.
 
 
“But a battle to doom and death
Between the Gael and the Gall,
Between the sword of light
And the shield of darkness and thrall.
 
 
“And the Gael shall have the mastery
After a month of days,
And the lakes of the west shall cry,
And the hills of the north shall blaze.
 
 
“And the neck of the fair-haired Gall
Shall be as a stool for the feet
Of Ciaran, chief of the Gael,
Sitting in Emer’s seat!” —
 

…

 
At this MacGiolla fainted,
Tearing his yellow hair,
And the young men cursed the stranger,
And the old men mouthed a prayer.
 
 
For they knew the day would come,
As sure as the piper said,
When many loves would be parted,
And many graves would be red.
 
 
And the wake broke up in tumult,
And the women were left alone,
Keening over the beggar
That died at Gobnat’s Stone.
 

THE BESOM-MAN

 
Did you see Paidin,
Paidin, the besom-man,
Last night as you came by
Over the mountain?
 
 
A barth of new heather
He bore on his shoulder,
And a bundle of whitlow-grass
Under his oxter.
 
 
I spied him as he passed
Beyond the carn head,
But no eye saw him
At the hill foot after.
 
 
What has come over him?
The women are saying.
What can have crossed
Paidin, the besom-man?
 
 
The bogholes he knew
As the curlews know them,
And the rabbits’ pads,
And the derelict quarries.
 
 
He was humming a tune —
The “Enchanted Valley” —
As he passed me westward
Beyond the carn.
 
 
I stood and I listened,
For his singing was strange:
It rang in my ears
The long night after.
 
 
What has come over
Paidin, the besom-man?
What can have crossed him?
The women keep saying.
 
 
They talk of the fairies —
And, God forgive me,
Paidin knew them
Like his prayers!
 
 
Will you fetch word
Up to the cross-roads
If you see track of him,
Living or dead?
 
 
The boys are loafing
Without game or caper;
And the dark piper
Is gone home with the birds.
 

EVERY SHUILER IS CHRIST

 
Every shuiler is Christ,
Then be not hard or cold:
The bit that goes for Christ
Will come a hundred-fold.
 
 
The ear upon your corn
Will burst before its time;
Your roots will yield a crop
Without manure or lime.
 
 
And every sup you give
To crutch him on his way
Will fill your churn with milk,
And choke your barn with hay.
 
 
Then when the shuiler begs,
Be neither hard nor cold;
The share that goes for Christ
Will come a hundred-fold.
 

I WISH AND I WISH

 
I wish and I wish
And I wish I were
A golden bee
In the blue of the air,
Winging my way
At the mouth of day
To the honey marges
Of Loch-ciuin-ban;
Or a little green drake,
Or a silver swan,
Floating upon
The stream of Aili,
And I to be swimming
Gaily, gaily!
 

I AM THE MAN-CHILD

 
I am the man-child. From a virgin womb,
Begot among the hills of virgin loins,
The generation of a hundred kings,
I come. I am the man-child glorious,
The love-son of the second birth foretold
By western bards, the fruit of form and strength
By nature’s prophylactic forethought joined
In marriage with their kind, the crown, the peak,
The summit of the scheme of things, the pride
And glory of the hand of God.
 
 
Behold!
Where in the spaces of the morning world
The sunrise shines my harbinger, the hills
Leap up, the young winds sing, the rivers dance,
The leaving forests laugh, the eagles scream;
For I am one with them, a mate, a brother,
Bound by nature to the human soul
That thro’ the accidents of nature runs.
And wherefore do they leap and laugh and sing,
And dance like vestals on a holyday?
Because their hearts are glad, and mænad-like,
They fain would share the frenzied cup they drink
With me, the man-child glorious.
 
 
I am he,
Even he, the master-mould, the paragon!
Behold me in my nonage, child and man:
The ripest grape on beauty’s procreant vine,
The reddest apple of ingathering:
Perfect in form, of peerless strength, and free
As Caoilte when he roamed the primal hills
(Those “wildernesses rich with liberty”),
A hero that the shocks of chance might strike,
But never tame, a giant druid-ringed,
A god-like savage of the golden days
Ere service shackled action: free itself
As Oisin when he strayed in Doire-cairn,
His hand upon the mountain top, his feet
Fixt in the flowing sea, his holy head
Crowned by a flight of birds, acclaiming him
The singer of the dawn.
 

FRAGMENT

 
I stand upon the summit now:
The falcon, flying from the heath,
Trails darkly o’er the mountain brow
And drops into the gloom beneath.
Night falls, and with it comes the wind
That blew on Fionn time out of mind,
When weary of love-feasts and wars
He left his comrades all behind
To dream upon the quiet stars.
Here on the lonely mountain height
Is ecstasy and living light —
The living inner light that burns
With magic caught from those white urns
That wander thro’ the trackless blue
Forever, touching those they know
With beauty, and the things that come
Of beauty. Earth lies at my feet,
A dumb, vast shadow, vast as dumb.