No More Learning

In _The Well at the World's End_ green trees and enchanted waters are
shown to us, as they were understood by old writers, who thought that
the generation of all things was through water; for when the water that
gives a long and fortunate life and that can be found by none but such
a one as all women love is found at last, the Dry Tree, the image of
the ruined land, becomes green. To him indeed as to older writers Well
and Tree are all but images of the one thing, of an 'energy' that is
not the less 'eternal delight' because it is half of the body. He never
wrote, and could not have written, of a man or woman who was not of the
kin of Well or Tree. Long before he had named either he had made his
'Wanderers' follow a dream indeed, but a dream of natural happiness,
and all the people of all his poems and stories from the confused
beginning of his art in _The Hollow Land_ to its end in _The Sundering
Flood_, are full of the heavy sweetness of this dream. He wrote indeed
of nothing but of the quest of the Grail, but it was the Heathen Grail
that gave every man his chosen food, and not the Grail of Malory or
Wagner; and he came at last to praise, as other men have praised the
martyrs of religion or of passion, men with lucky eyes and men whom all
women love.

We know so little of man and of the world that we cannot be certain
that the same invisible hands, that gave him an imagination preoccupied
with good fortune, gave him also health and wealth, and the power to
create beautiful things without labour, that he might honour the Green
Tree. It pleases me to imagine the copper mine which brought, as Mr.
Mackail has told, so much unforeseen wealth and in so astonishing a
way, as no less miraculous than the three arrows in _The Sundering
Flood_. No mighty poet in his misery dead could have delighted enough
to make us delight in men 'who knew no vain desire of foolish fame,'
but who thought the dance upon 'the stubble field' and 'the battle
with the earth' better than 'the bitter war' 'where right and wrong
are mixed together. ' 'Oh the trees, the trees! ' he wrote in one of his
early letters, and it was his work to make us, who had been taught to
sympathize with the unhappy till we had grown morbid, to sympathize
with men and women who turned everything into happiness because they
had in them something of the abundance of the beechen boughs or of the
bursting wheat-ear. He alone, I think, has told the story of Alcestis
with perfect sympathy for Admetus, with so perfect a sympathy that he
cannot persuade himself that one so happy died at all; and he, unlike
all other poets, has delighted to tell us that the men after his own
heart, the men of his _News from Nowhere_, sorrowed but a little while
over unhappy love. He cannot even think of nobility and happiness
apart, for all his people are like his men of Burg Dale who lived 'in
much plenty and ease of life, though not delicately or desiring things
out of measure. They wrought with their hands and wearied themselves;
and they rested from their toil and feasted and were merry; to-morrow
was not a burden to them, nor yesterday a thing which they would fain
forget; life shamed them not nor did death make them afraid. As for the
Dale wherein they dwelt, it was indeed most fair and lovely and they
deemed it the Blessing of the earth, and they trod the flowery grass
beside its rippled stream amidst the green tree-boughs proudly and
joyfully with goodly bodies and merry hearts. '


III

I think of his men as with broad brows and golden beards and mild eyes
and tranquil speech, and of his good women as like 'The Bride' in
whose face Rossetti saw and painted for once the abundance of earth
and not the half-hidden light of his star. They are not in love with
love for its own sake, with a love that is apart from the world or at
enmity with it, as Swinburne imagines Mary Stuart and as all men have
imagined Helen. They do not seek in love that ecstasy, which Shelley's
nightingale called death, that extremity of life in which life seems
to pass away like the Phoenix in flame of its own lighting, but rather
a gentle self-surrender that would lose more than half its sweetness
if it lost the savour of coming days. They are good house-wives; they
sit often at the embroidery frame, and they have wisdom in flocks and
herds and they are before all fruitful mothers. It seems at times as
if their love was less a passion for one man out of the world than
submission to the hazard of destiny, and the hope of motherhood and the
innocent desire of the body. They accept changes and chances of life
as gladly as they accept spring and summer and autumn and winter, and
because they have sat under the shadow of the Green Tree and drunk the
Waters of Abundance out of their hollow hands, the barren blossoms do
not seem to them the most beautiful. When Habundia takes the shape of
Birdalone she comes first as a young naked girl standing among great
trees, and then as an old carline, Birdalone in stately old age. And
when she praises Birdalone's naked body, and speaks of the desire it
shall awaken, praise and desire are innocent because they would not
break the links that chain the days to one another. The desire seems
not other than the desire of the bird for its mate in the heart of the
wood, and we listen to that joyous praise as though a bird watching its
plumage in still water had begun to sing in its joy, or as if we heard
hawk praising hawk in the middle air, and because it is the praise of
one made for all noble life and not for pleasure only, it seems, though
it is the praise of the body, that it is the noblest praise.

Birdalone has never seen her image but in 'a broad latten dish,' so the
wood woman must tell her of her body and praise it.

'Thus it is with thee; thou standest before me a tall and slim maiden,
somewhat thin as befitteth thy seventeen summers; where thy flesh
is bare of wont, as thy throat and thine arms and thy legs from the
middle down, it is tanned a beauteous colour, but otherwhere it is
even as fair a white, wholesome and clean as if the golden sunlight
which fulfilleth the promise of the earth were playing therein. . . .
Delicate and clean-made is the little trench that goeth from thy mouth
to thy lips, and sweet it is, and there is more might in it than sweet
words spoken. Thy lips they are of the finest fashion, yet rather thin
than full; and some would not have it so; but I would, whereas I see
therein a sign of thy valiancy and friendliness. Surely he who did thy
carven chin had a mind to a master work and did no less. Great was the
deftness of thine imaginer, and he would have all folk who see thee
wonder at thy deep thinking and thy carefulness and thy kindness. Ah,
maiden! is it so that thy thoughts are ever deep and solemn? Yet at
least I know it of thee that they be hale and true and sweet.

'My friend, when thou hast a mirror, some of all this thou shalt see,
but not all; and when thou hast a lover some deal wilt thou hear, but
not all. But now thy she-friend may tell it thee all, if she have eyes
to see it, as have I; whereas no man could say so much of thee before
the mere love should overtake him, and turn his speech into the folly
of love and the madness of desire. '

All his good women, whether it is Danae in her tower, or that woman in
_The Wood beyond the World_ who can make the withered flowers in her
girdle grow young again by the touch of her hand, are of the kin of the
wood woman. All his bad women too and his half-bad women are of her
kin. The evils their enchantments make are a disordered abundance like
that of weedy places and they are as cruel as wild creatures are cruel
and they have unbridled desires. One finds these evils in their typical
shape in that isle of the Wondrous Isles, where the wicked witch has
her pleasure-house and her prison, and in that 'isle of the old and the
young,' where until her enchantment is broken second childhood watches
over children who never grow old and who seem to the bystander who
knows their story 'like images' or like 'the rabbits on the grass. ' It
is as though Nature spoke through him at all times in the mood that is
upon her when she is opening the apple-blossom or reddening the apple
or thickening the shadow of the boughs, and that the men and women of
his verse and of his stories are all the ministers of her mood.


IV

When I was a child I often heard my elders talking of an old turreted
house where an old great-uncle of mine lived, and of its gardens and
its long pond where there was an island with tame eagles; and one day
somebody read me some verses and said they made him think of that old
house where he had been very happy. The verses ran in my head for years
and became to me the best description of happiness in the world, and
I am not certain that I know a better even now. They were those first
dozen verses of _Golden Wings_ that begin--

'Midways of a walled garden
In the happy poplar land
Did an ancient castle stand,
With an old knight for a warden.

Many scarlet bricks there were
In its walls, and old grey stone;
Over which red apples shone
At the right time of the year.

On the bricks the green moss grew,
Yellow lichen on the stone,
Over which red apples shone;
Little war that castle knew. '

When William Morris describes a house of any kind, and makes his
description poetical, it is always, I think, some house that he would
have liked to have lived in, and I remember him saying about the time
when he was writing of that great house of the Wolfings, 'I decorate
modern houses for people, but the house that would please me would be
some great room where one talked to one's friends in one corner and eat
in another and slept in another and worked in another. ' Indeed all he
writes seems to me like the make-believe of a child who is remaking the
world, not always in the same way, but always after his own heart; and
so unlike all other modern writers he makes his poetry out of unending
pictures of a happiness that is often what a child might imagine, and
always a happiness that sets mind and body at ease. Now it is a picture
of some great room full of merriment, now of the wine-press, now of
the golden threshing-floor, now of an old mill among apple-trees, now
of cool water after the heat of the sun, now of some well-sheltered,
well-tilled place among woods or mountains, where men and women live
happily, knowing of nothing that is too far off or too great for the
affections. He has but one story to tell us, how some man or woman lost
and found again the happiness that is always half of the body; and
even when they are wandering from it, leaves must fall over them, and
flowers make fragrances about them, and warm winds fan them, and birds
sing to them, for being of Habundia's kin they must not forget the
shadow of her Green Tree even for a moment, and the waters of her Well
must be always wet upon their sandals. His poetry often wearies us as
the unbroken green of July wearies us, for there is something in us,
some bitterness because of the Fall it may be, that takes a little from
the sweetness of Eve's apple after the first mouthful; but he who did
all things gladly and easily, who never knew the curse of labour, found
it always as sweet as it was in Eve's mouth. All kinds of associations
have gathered about the pleasant things of the world and half taken the
pleasure out of them for the greater number of men, but he saw them as
when they came from the Divine Hand. I often see him in my mind as I
saw him once at Hammersmith holding up a glass of claret towards the
light and saying, 'Why do people say it is prosaic to get inspiration
out of wine? Is it not the sunlight and the sap in the leaves? Are not
grapes made by the sunlight and the sap? '


V

In one of his little socialistic pamphlets he tells us how he sat
under an elm-tree and watched the starlings and thought of an old
horse and an old labourer that had passed him by, and of the men and
women he had seen in towns; and he wondered how all these had come to
be as they were. He saw that the starlings were beautiful and merry
and that men and the old horse they had subdued to their service were
ugly and miserable, and yet the starlings, he thought, were of one
kind whether there or in the south of England, and the ugly men and
women were of one kind with those whose nobility and beauty had moved
the ancient sculptors and poets to imagine the gods and the heroes
after the images of men. Then he began, he tells us, to meditate how
this great difference might be ended and a new life, which would
permit men to have beauty in common among them as the starlings have,
be built on the wrecks of the old life. In other words, his mind was
illuminated from within and lifted into prophecy in the full right
sense of the word, and he saw the natural things he was alone gifted
to see in their perfect form; and having that faith which is alone
worth having, for it includes all others, a sure knowledge established
in the constitution of his mind that perfect things are final things,
he announced that all he had seen would come to pass. I do not think
he troubled to understand books of economics, and Mr. Mackail says,
I think, that they vexed him and wearied him. He found it enough to
hold up, as it were, life as it is to-day beside his visions, and to
show how faded its colours were and how sapless it was. And if we had
not enough artistic feeling, enough feeling for the perfect that is,
to admit the authority of the vision; or enough faith to understand
that all that is imperfect passes away, he would not, as I think, have
argued with us in a serious spirit. Though I think that he never used
the kinds of words I use in writing of him, though I think he would
even have disliked a word like faith with its theological associations,
I am certain that he understood thoroughly, as all artists understand
a little, that the important things, the things we must believe in or
perish, are beyond argument. We can no more reason about them than
can the pigeon, come but lately from the egg, about the hawk whose
shadow makes it cower among the grass. His vision is true because it
is poetical, because we are a little happier when we are looking at
it; and he knew as Shelley knew by an act of faith that the economists
should take their measurements not from life as it is, but from the
vision of the world made perfect that is buried under all minds. The
early Christians were of the kin of the Wilderness and of the Dry Tree,
and they saw an unearthly Paradise, but he was of the kin of the Well
and of the Green Tree and he saw an Earthly Paradise.

He obeyed his vision when he tried to make first his own house, for he
was in this matter also like a child playing with the world, and then
houses of other people, places where one could live happily; and he
obeyed it when he wrote ? The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of
William Butler Yeats, Vol. 7 (of 8), by William Butler Yeats

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Title: The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 7 (of 8)
The Secret Rose. Rosa Alchemica. The Tables of the Law.
The Adoration of the Magi. John Sherman and Dhoya

Author: William Butler Yeats

Release Date: August 5, 2015 [EBook #49614]

Language: English

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THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

[Illustration: _Emery Walker, Ph. sc. _

_From a drawing by J. B. Yeats_]




THE SECRET ROSE. ROSA ALCHEMICA.
THE TABLES OF THE LAW. THE
ADORATION OF THE MAGI. JOHN
SHERMAN AND DHOYA :: BEING THE
SEVENTH VOLUME OF THE COLLECTED
WORKS IN VERSE & PROSE
OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS :: IMPRINTED
AT THE SHAKESPEARE
HEAD PRESS STRATFORD-ON-AVON
MCMVIII




CONTENTS


PAGE
THE SECRET ROSE:
DEDICATION 3
TO THE SECRET ROSE 5
THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST 7
OUT OF THE ROSE 20
THE WISDOM OF THE KING 31
THE HEART OF THE SPRING 42
THE CURSE OF THE FIRES AND OF THE SHADOWS 51
THE OLD MEN OF THE TWILIGHT 61
WHERE THERE IS NOTHING, THERE IS GOD 69
OF COSTELLO THE PROUD, OF OONA THE DAUGHTER OF
DERMOTT AND OF THE BITTER TONGUE 78

ROSA ALCHEMICA 103

THE TABLES OF THE LAW 141

THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI 165


EARLY STORIES.

JOHN SHERMAN 183

DHOYA 283




THE SECRET ROSE




As for living, our servants will do that for
us. --_Villiers de L'Isle Adam. _

Helen, when she looked in her mirror, seeing the
withered wrinkles made in her face by old age,
wept, and wondered why she had twice been carried
away. --_Leonardo da Vinci. _




_My Dear A. E. --I dedicate this book to you because, whether you think
it well or ill written, you will sympathize with the sorrows and the
ecstasies of its personages, perhaps even more than I do myself.
Although I wrote these stories at different times and in different
manners, and without any definite plan, they have but one subject,
the war of spiritual with natural order; and how can I dedicate such
a book to anyone but to you, the one poet of modern Ireland who has
moulded a spiritual ecstasy into verse? My friends in Ireland sometimes
ask me when I am going to write a really national poem or romance,
and by a national poem or romance I understand them to mean a poem or
romance founded upon some famous moment of Irish history, and built
up out of the thoughts and feelings which move the greater number of
patriotic Irishmen. I on the other hand believe that poetry and romance
cannot be made by the most conscientious study of famous moments and
of the thoughts and feelings of others, but only by looking into that
little, infinite, faltering, eternal flame that we call ourselves. If
a writer wishes to interest a certain people among whom he has grown
up, or fancies he has a duty towards them, he may choose for the
symbols of his art their legends, their history, their beliefs, their
opinions, because he has a right to choose among things less than
himself, but he cannot choose among the substances of art. So far,
however, as this book is visionary it is Irish; for Ireland, which is
still predominantly Celtic, has preserved with some less excellent
things a gift of vision, which has died out among more hurried and
more successful nations: no shining candelabra have prevented us from
looking into the darkness, and when one looks into the darkness there
is always something there. _

_W. B. YEATS. _


_TO THE SECRET ROSE_

_Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,
Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those
Who sought thee at the Holy Sepulchre,
Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir
And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep
Among pale eyelids heavy with the sleep
Men have named beauty. Your great leaves enfold
The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold
Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes
Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of Elder rise
In druid vapour and make the torches dim;
Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him
Who met Fand walking among flaming dew,
By a grey shore where the wind never blew,
And lost the world and Emir for a kiss;
And him who drove the gods out of their liss
And till a hundred morns had flowered red
Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead;
And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown
And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown
Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods;
And him who sold tillage and house and goods,
And sought through lands and islands numberless years
Until he found with laughter and with tears
A woman of so shining loveliness
That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
A little stolen tress. I too await
The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose? _


THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST

A MAN, with thin brown hair and a pale face, half ran, half walked,
along the road that wound from the south to the town of Sligo. Many
called him Cumhal, the son of Cormac, and many called him the Swift,
Wild Horse; and he was a gleeman, and he wore a short parti-coloured
doublet, and had pointed shoes, and a bulging wallet. Also he was of
the blood of the Ernaans, and his birth-place was the Field of Gold;
but his eating and sleeping places were the four provinces of Eri, and
his abiding place was not upon the ridge of the earth. His eyes strayed
from the Abbey tower of the White Friars and the town battlements to
a row of crosses which stood out against the sky upon a hill a little
to the eastward of the town, and he clenched his fist, and shook it at
the crosses. He knew they were not empty, for the birds were fluttering
about them; and he thought how, as like as not, just such another
vagabond as himself was hanged on one of them; and he muttered: 'If it
were hanging or bowstringing, or stoning or beheading, it would be bad
enough. But to have the birds pecking your eyes and the wolves eating
your feet! I would that the red wind of the Druids had withered in
his cradle the soldier of Dathi, who brought the tree of death out of
barbarous lands, or that the lightning, when it smote Dathi at the foot
of the mountain, had smitten him also, or that his grave had been dug
by the green-haired and green-toothed merrows deep at the roots of the
deep sea. '

While he spoke, he shivered from head to foot, and the sweat came
out upon his face, and he knew not why, for he had looked upon many
crosses. He passed over two hills and under the battlemented gate, and
then round by a left-hand way to the door of the Abbey. It was studded
with great nails, and when he knocked at it, he roused the lay brother
who was the porter, and of him he asked a place in the guest-house.
Then the lay brother took a glowing turf on a shovel, and led the way
to a big and naked outhouse strewn with very dirty rushes; and lighted
a rush-candle fixed between two of the stones of the wall, and set
the glowing turf upon the hearth and gave him two unlighted sods and
a wisp of straw, and showed him a blanket hanging from a nail, and a
shelf with a loaf of bread and a jug of water, and a tub in a far
corner. Then the lay brother left him and went back to his place by
the door. And Cumhal the son of Cormac began to blow upon the glowing
turf that he might light the two sods and the wisp of straw; but the
sods and the straw would not light, for they were damp. So he took off
his pointed shoes, and drew the tub out of the corner with the thought
of washing the dust of the highway from his feet; but the water was so
dirty that he could not see the bottom. He was very hungry, for he had
not eaten all that day; so he did not waste much anger upon the tub,
but took up the black loaf, and bit into it, and then spat out the
bite, for the bread was hard and mouldy. Still he did not give way to
his anger, for he had not drunken these many hours; having a hope of
heath beer or wine at his day's end, he had left the brooks untasted,
to make his supper the more delightful. Now he put the jug to his lips,
but he flung it from him straightway, for the water was bitter and
ill-smelling. Then he gave the jug a kick, so that it broke against
the opposite wall, and he took down the blanket to wrap it about him
for the night. But no sooner did he touch it than it was alive with
skipping fleas. At this, beside himself with anger, he rushed to the
door of the guest-house, but the lay brother, being well accustomed to
such outcries, had locked it on the outside; so he emptied the tub and
began to beat the door with it, till the lay brother came to the door
and asked what ailed him, and why he woke him out of sleep. 'What ails
me! ' shouted Cumhal, 'are not the sods as wet as the sands of the Three
Rosses? and are not the fleas in the blanket as many as the waves of
the sea and as lively? and is not the bread as hard as the heart of a
lay brother who has forgotten God? and is not the water in the jug as
bitter and as ill-smelling as his soul? and is not the foot-water the
colour that shall be upon him when he has been charred in the Undying
Fires? ' The lay brother saw that the lock was fast, and went back to
his niche, for he was too sleepy to talk with comfort. And Cumhal went
on beating at the door, and presently he heard the lay brother's foot
once more, and cried out at him, 'O cowardly and tyrannous race of
friars, persecutors of the bard and the gleeman, haters of life and
joy! O race that does not draw the sword and tell the truth! O race
that melts the bones of the people with cowardice and with deceit! '

'Gleeman,' said the lay brother, 'I also make rhymes; I make many
while I sit in my niche by the door, and I sorrow to hear the bards
railing upon the friars. Brother, I would sleep, and therefore I make
known to you that it is the head of the monastery, our gracious abbot,
who orders all things concerning the lodging of travellers. '

'You may sleep,' said Cumhal, 'I will sing a bard's curse on the
abbot. ' And he set the tub upside down under the window, and stood
upon it, and began to sing in a very loud voice. The singing awoke the
abbot, so that he sat up in bed and blew a silver whistle until the lay
brother came to him. 'I cannot get a wink of sleep with that noise,'
said the abbot. 'What is happening? '

'It is a gleeman,' said the lay brother, 'who complains of the sods,
of the bread, of the water in the jug, of the foot-water, and of the
blanket. And now he is singing a bard's curse upon you, O brother
abbot, and upon your father and your mother, and your grandfather and
your grandmother, and upon all your relations. '

'Is he cursing in rhyme? '

'He is cursing in rhyme, and with two assonances in every line of his
curse. '

The abbot pulled his night-cap off and crumpled it in his hands, and
the circular brown patch of hair in the middle of his bald head looked
like an island in the midst of a pond, for in Connaught they had not
yet abandoned the ancient tonsure for the style then coming into use.
'If we do not somewhat,' he said, 'he will teach his curses to the
children in the street, and the girls spinning at the doors, and to the
robbers upon Ben Bulben. '

'Shall I go, then,' said the other, 'and give him dry sods, a fresh
loaf, clean water in a jug, clean foot-water, and a new blanket, and
make him swear by the blessed Saint Benignus, and by the sun and moon,
that no bond be lacking, not to tell his rhymes to the children in the
street, and the girls spinning at the doors, and the robbers upon Ben
Bulben? '

'Neither our blessed Patron nor the sun and moon would avail at all,'
said the abbot; 'for to-morrow or the next day the mood to curse
would come upon him, or a pride in those rhymes would move him, and
he would teach his lines to the children, and the girls, and the
robbers. Or else he would tell another of his craft how he fared in the
guest-house, and he in his turn would begin to curse, and my name would
wither. For learn there is no steadfastness of purpose upon the roads,
but only under roofs, and between four walls. Therefore I bid you go
and awaken Brother Kevin, Brother Dove, Brother Little Wolf, Brother
Bald Patrick, Brother Bald Brandon, Brother James and Brother Peter.
And they shall take the man, and bind him with ropes, and dip him in
the river that he may cease to sing. And in the morning, lest this but
make him curse the louder, we will crucify him. '

'The crosses are all full,' said the lay brother.

'Then we must make another cross. If we do not make an end of him
another will, for who can eat and sleep in peace while men like him
are going about the world? Ill should we stand before blessed Saint
Benignus, and sour would be his face when he comes to judge us at
the Last Day, were we to spare an enemy of his when we had him under
our thumb! Brother, the bards and the gleemen are an evil race, ever
cursing and ever stirring up the people, and immoral and immoderate in
all things, and heathen in their hearts, always longing after the Son
of Lir, and Aengus, and Bridget, and the Dagda, and Dana the Mother,
and all the false gods of the old days; always making poems in praise
of those kings and queens of the demons, Finvaragh, whose home is
under Cruachmaa, and Red Aodh of Cnocna-Sidhe, and Cleena of the Wave,
and Aoibhell of the Grey Rock, and him they call Donn of the Vats of
the Sea; and railing against God and Christ and the blessed Saints. '
While he was speaking he crossed himself, and when he had finished he
drew the nightcap over his ears, to shut out the noise, and closed his
eyes, and composed himself to sleep.

The lay brother found Brother Kevin, Brother Dove, Brother Little Wolf,
Brother Bald Patrick, Brother Bald Brandon, Brother James and Brother
Peter sitting up in bed, and he made them get up. Then they bound
Cumhal, and they dragged him to the river, and they dipped him in it at
the place which was afterwards called Buckley's Ford.

'Gleeman,' said the lay brother, as they led him back to the
guest-house, 'why do you ever use the wit which God has given you to
make blasphemous and immoral tales and verses? For such is the way of
your craft. I have, indeed, many such tales and verses well nigh by
rote, and so I know that I speak true! And why do you praise with rhyme
those demons, Finvaragh, Red Aodh, Cleena, Aoibhell and Donn? I, too,
am a man of great wit and learning, but I ever glorify our gracious
abbot, and Benignus our Patron, and the princes of the province.
My soul is decent and orderly, but yours is like the wind among the
salley gardens. I said what I could for you, being also a man of many
thoughts, but who could help such a one as you? '

'Friend,' answered the gleeman, 'my soul is indeed like the wind, and
it blows me to and fro, and up and down, and puts many things into my
mind and out of my mind, and therefore am I called the Swift, Wild
Horse. ' And he spoke no more that night, for his teeth were chattering
with the cold.

The abbot and the friars came to him in the morning, and bade him get
ready to be crucified, and led him out of the guest-house. And while he
still stood upon the step a flock of great grass-barnacles passed high
above him with clanking cries. He lifted his arms to them and said, 'O
great grass-barnacles, tarry a little, and mayhap my soul will travel
with you to the waste places of the shore and to the ungovernable sea! '
At the gate a crowd of beggars gathered about them, being come there
to beg from any traveller or pilgrim who might have spent the night in
the guest-house. The abbot and the friars led the gleeman to a place
in the woods at some distance, where many straight young trees were
growing, and they made him cut one down and fashion it to the right
length, while the beggars stood round them in a ring, talking and
gesticulating. The abbot then bade him cut off another and shorter
piece of wood, and nail it upon the first. So there was his cross for
him; and they put it upon his shoulder, for his crucifixion was to be
on the top of the hill where the others were. A half-mile on the way he
asked them to stop and see him juggle for them; for he knew, he said,
all the tricks of Aengus the Subtle-hearted. The old friars were for
pressing on, but the young friars would see him: so he did many wonders
for them, even to the drawing of live frogs out of his ears. But after
a while they turned on him, and said his tricks were dull and a shade
unholy, and set the cross on his shoulders again. Another half-mile
on the way, and he asked them to stop and hear him jest for them, for
he knew, he said, all the jests of Conan the Bald, upon whose back a
sheep's wool grew. And the young friars, when they had heard his merry
tales, again bade him take up his cross, for it ill became them to
listen to such follies. Another half-mile on the way, he asked them to
stop and hear him sing the story of White-breasted Deirdre, and how
she endured many sorrows, and how the sons of Usna died to serve her.
And the young friars were mad to hear him, but when he had ended they
grew angry, and beat him for waking forgotten longings in their hearts.
So they set the cross upon his back, and hurried him to the hill.

When he was come to the top, they took the cross from him, and began to
dig a hole to stand it in, while the beggars gathered round, and talked
among themselves. 'I ask a favour before I die,' says Cumhal.

'We will grant you no more delays,' says the abbot.

'I ask no more delays, for I have drawn the sword, and told the truth,
and lived my vision, and am content. '

'Would you, then, confess? '

'By sun and moon, not I; I ask but to be let eat the food I carry in my
wallet.
I carry food in my wallet whenever I go upon a journey, but I
do not taste of it unless I am well-nigh starved. I have not eaten now
these two days. '

'You may eat, then,' says the abbot, and he turned to help the friars
dig the hole.

The gleeman took a loaf and some strips of cold fried bacon out of his
wallet and laid them upon the ground. 'I will give a tithe to the
poor,' says he, and he cut a tenth part from the loaf and the bacon.
'Who among you is the poorest? ' And thereupon was a great clamour, for
the beggars began the history of their sorrows and their poverty, and
their yellow faces swayed like Gara Lough when the floods have filled
it with water from the bogs.

He listened for a little, and, says he, 'I am myself the poorest,
for I have travelled the bare road, and by the edges of the sea; and
the tattered doublet of particoloured cloth upon my back and the
torn pointed shoes upon my feet have ever irked me, because of the
towered city full of noble raiment which was in my heart. And I have
been the more alone upon the roads and by the sea because I heard in
my heart the rustling of the rose-bordered dress of her who is more
subtle than Aengus, the Subtle-hearted, and more full of the beauty of
laughter than Conan the Bald, and more full of the wisdom of tears than
White-breasted Deirdre, and more lovely than a bursting dawn to them
that are lost in the darkness. Therefore, I award the tithe to myself;
but yet, because I am done with all things, I give it unto you. '

So he flung the bread and the strips of bacon among the beggars,
and they fought with many cries until the last scrap was eaten. But
meanwhile the friars nailed the gleeman to his cross, and set it
upright in the hole, and shovelled the earth in at the foot, and
trampled it level and hard. So then they went away, but the beggars
stared on, sitting round the cross. But when the sun was sinking, they
also got up to go, for the air was getting chilly. And as soon as they
had gone a little way, the wolves, who had been showing themselves on
the edge of a neighbouring coppice, came nearer, and the birds wheeled
closer and closer. 'Stay, outcasts, yet a little while,' the crucified
one called in a weak voice to the beggars, 'and keep the beasts and the
birds from me. ' But the beggars were angry because he had called them
outcasts, so they threw stones and mud at him, and went their way. Then
the wolves gathered at the foot of the cross, and the birds flew lower
and lower. And presently the birds lighted all at once upon his head
and arms and shoulders, and began to peck at him, and the wolves began
to eat his feet. 'Outcasts,' he moaned, 'have you also turned against
the outcast? '


OUT OF THE ROSE

ONE winter evening an old knight in rusted chain-armour rode slowly
along the woody southern slope of Ben Bulben, watching the sun go down
in crimson clouds over the sea. His horse was tired, as after a long
journey, and he had upon his helmet the crest of no neighbouring lord
or king, but a small rose made of rubies that glimmered every moment to
a deeper crimson. His white hair fell in thin curls upon his shoulders,
and its disorder added to the melancholy of his face, which was the
face of one of those who have come but seldom into the world, and
always for its trouble, the dreamers who must do what they dream, the
doers who must dream what they do.

After gazing a while towards the sun, he let the reins fall upon the
neck of his horse, and, stretching out both arms towards the west, he
said, 'O Divine Rose of Intellectual Flame, let the gates of thy peace
be opened to me at last! ' And suddenly a loud squealing began in the
woods some hundreds of yards further up the mountain side. He stopped
his horse to listen, and heard behind him a sound of feet and of
voices. 'They are beating them to make them go into the narrow path by
the gorge,' said someone, and in another moment a dozen peasants armed
with short spears had come up with the knight, and stood a little apart
from him, their blue caps in their hands.

'Where do you go with the spears? ' he asked; and one who seemed the
leader answered: 'A troop of wood-thieves came down from the hills a
while ago and carried off the pigs belonging to an old man who lives by
Glen Car Lough, and we turned out to go after them. Now that we know
they are four times more than we are, we follow to find the way they
have taken; and will presently tell our story to De Courcey, and if he
will not help us, to Fitzgerald; for De Courcey and Fitzgerald have
lately made a peace, and we do not know to whom we belong. '

'But by that time,' said the knight, 'the pigs will have been eaten. '

'A dozen men cannot do more, and it was not reasonable that the whole
valley should turn out and risk their lives for two, or for two dozen
pigs. '

'Can you tell me,' said the knight, 'if the old man to whom the pigs
belong is pious and true of heart? '

'He is as true as another and more pious than any, for he says a prayer
to a saint every morning before his breakfast. '

'Then it were well to fight in his cause,' said the knight, 'and if you
will fight against the wood-thieves I will take the main brunt of the
battle, and you know well that a man in armour is worth many like these
wood-thieves, clad in wool and leather. '

And the leader turned to his fellows and asked if they would take the
chance; but they seemed anxious to get back to their cabins.

'Are the wood-thieves treacherous and impious? '

'They are treacherous in all their dealings,' said a peasant, 'and no
man has known them to pray. '

'Then,' said the knight, 'I will give five crowns for the head of every
wood-thief killed by us in the fighting'; and he bid the leader show
the way, and they all went on together. After a time they came to where
a beaten track wound into the woods, and, taking this, they doubled
back upon their previous course, and began to ascend the wooded slope
of the mountains. In a little while the path grew very straight and
steep, and the knight was forced to dismount and leave his horse tied
to a tree-stem. They knew they were on the right track: for they could
see the marks of pointed shoes in the soft clay and mingled with them
the cloven footprints of the pigs. Presently the path became still
more abrupt, and they knew by the ending of the cloven footprints that
the thieves were carrying the pigs. Now and then a long mark in the
clay showed that a pig had slipped down, and been dragged along for a
little way. They had journeyed thus for about twenty minutes, when a
confused sound of voices told them that they were coming up with the
thieves. And then the voices ceased, and they understood that they had
been overheard in their turn. They pressed on rapidly and cautiously,
and in about five minutes one of them caught sight of a leather jerkin
half hidden by a hazel-bush. An arrow struck the knight's chain-armour,
but glanced off harmlessly, and then a flight of arrows swept by them
with the buzzing sound of great bees. They ran and climbed, and climbed
and ran towards the thieves, who were now all visible standing up
among the bushes with their still quivering bows in their hands: for
they had only their spears, and they must at once come hand to hand.
The knight was in the front, and smote down first one and then another
of the wood-thieves. The peasants shouted, and, pressing on, drove
the wood-thieves before them until they came out on the flat top of
the mountain, and there they saw the two pigs quietly grubbing in the
short grass, so they ran about them in a circle, and began to move back
again towards the narrow path: the old knight coming now the last of
all, and striking down thief after thief. The peasants had got no very
serious hurts among them, for he had drawn the brunt of the battle upon
himself, as could well be seen from the bloody rents in his armour; and
when they came to the entrance of the narrow path he bade them drive
the pigs down into the valley, while he stood there to guard the way
behind them. So in a moment he was alone, and, being weak with loss of
blood, might have been ended there and then by the wood-thieves he had
beaten off, had fear not made them begone out of sight in a great hurry.

An hour passed, and they did not return; and now the knight could stand
on guard no longer, but had to lie down upon the grass. A half-hour
more went by, and then a young lad, with what appeared to be a number
of cock's feathers stuck round his hat, came out of the path behind
him, and began to move about among the dead thieves, cutting their
heads off. Then he laid the heads in a heap before the knight, and
said: 'O great knight, I have been bid come and ask you for the crowns
you promised for the heads: five crowns a head. They bid me tell you
that they have prayed to God and His Mother to give you a long life,
but that they are poor peasants, and that they would have the money
before you die. They told me this over and over for fear I might forget
it, and promised to beat me if I did. '

The knight raised himself upon his elbow, and opening a bag that hung
to his belt, counted out the five crowns for each head. There were
thirty heads in all.

'O great knight,' said the lad, 'they have also bid me take all care of
you, and light a fire, and put this ointment upon your wounds. ' And he
gathered sticks and leaves together, and, flashing his flint and steel
under a mass of dry leaves, had made a very good blaze. Then, drawing
off the coat of mail, he began to anoint the wounds: but he did it
clumsily, like one who does by rote what he had been told. The knight
motioned him to stop, and said: 'You seem a good lad. '

'I would ask something of you for myself. '

'There are still a few crowns,' said the knight; 'shall I give them to
you? '

'O no,' said the lad. 'They would be no good to me. There is only one
thing that I care about doing, and I have no need of money to do it. I
go from village to village and from hill to hill, and whenever I come
across a good cock I steal him and take him into the woods, and I keep
him there under a basket, until I get another good cock, and then I set
them to fight. The people say I am an innocent, and do not do me any
harm, and never ask me to do any work but go a message now and then. It
is because I am an innocent that they send me to get the crowns: anyone
else would steal them; and they dare not come back themselves, for now
that you are not with them they are afraid of the wood-thieves. Did you
ever hear how, when the wood-thieves are christened, the wolves are
made their godfathers, and their right arms are not christened at all? '

'If you will not take these crowns, my good lad, I have nothing for
you, I fear, unless you would have that old coat of mail which I shall
soon need no more. '

'There was something I wanted: yes, I remember now,' said the lad. 'I
want you to tell me why you fought like the champions and giants in the
stories and for so little a thing. Are you indeed a man like us? Are
you not rather an old wizard who lives among these hills, and will not
a wind arise presently and crumble you into dust? '

'I will tell you of myself,' replied the knight, 'for now that I am
the last of the fellowship, I may tell all and witness for God. Look
at the Rose of Rubies on my helmet, and see the symbol of my life and
of my hope. ' And then he told the lad this story, but with always
more frequent pauses; and, while he told it, the Rose shone a deep
blood-colour in the firelight, and the lad stuck the cock's feathers in
the earth in front of him, and moved them about as though he made them
actors in the play.

'I live in a land far from this, and was one of the Knights of Saint
John,' said the old man; 'but I was one of those in the Order who
always longed for more arduous labours in the service of the Most High.
At last there came to us a knight of Palestine, to whom the truth of
truths had been revealed by God Himself. He had seen a great Rose of
Fire, and a Voice out of the Rose had told him how men would turn from
the light of their own hearts, and bow down before outer order and
outer fixity, and that then the light would cease, and none escape the
curse except the foolish good man who could not, and the passionate
wicked man who would not, think. Already, the Voice told him, the
wayward light of the heart was shining out upon the world to keep it
alive, with a less clear lustre, and that, as it paled, a strange
infection was touching the stars and the hills and the grass and the
trees with corruption, and that none of those who had seen clearly
the truth and the ancient way could enter into the Kingdom of God,
which is in the Heart of the Rose, if they stayed on willingly in the
corrupted world; and so they must prove their anger against the Powers
of Corruption by dying in the service of the Rose of God. While the
knight of Palestine was telling us these things we seemed to see in a
vision a crimson Rose spreading itself about him, so that he seemed to
speak out of its heart, and the air was filled with fragrance. By this
we knew that it was the very Voice of God which spoke to us by the
knight, and we gathered about him and bade him direct us in all things,
and teach us how to obey the Voice. So he bound us with an oath, and
gave us signs and words whereby we might know each other even after
many years, and he appointed places of meeting, and he sent us out in
troops into the world to seek good causes, and die in doing battle for
them. At first we thought to die more readily by fasting to death in
honour of some saint; but this he told us was evil, for we did it for
the sake of death, and thus took out of the hands of God the choice
of the time and manner of our death, and by so doing made His power
the less. We must choose our service for its excellence, and for this
alone, and leave it to God to reward us at His own time and in His own
manner. And after this he compelled us to eat always two at a table to
watch each other lest we fasted unduly, for some among us said that
if one fasted for a love of the holiness of saints and then died, the
death would be acceptable. And the years passed, and one by one my
fellows died in the Holy Land, or in warring upon the evil princes of
the earth, or in clearing the roads of robbers; and among them died the
knight of Palestine, and at last I was alone. I fought in every cause
where the few contended against the many, and my hair grew white, and a
terrible fear lest I had fallen under the displeasure of God came upon
me. But, hearing at last how this western isle was fuller of wars and
rapine than any other land, I came hither, and I have found the thing I
sought, and, behold! I am filled with a great joy. '

Thereat he began to sing in Latin, and, while he sang, his voice grew
fainter and fainter. Then his eyes closed, and his lips fell apart, and
the lad knew he was dead. 'He has told me a good tale,' he said, 'for
there was fighting in it, but I did not understand much of it, and it
is hard to remember so long a story. '

And, taking the knight's sword, he began to dig a grave in the soft
clay. He dug hard, and a faint light of dawn had touched his hair and
he had almost done his work when a cock crowed in the valley below.
'Ah,' he said, 'I must have that bird'; and he ran down the narrow path
to the valley.


THE WISDOM OF THE KING

THE High-Queen of the Island of Woods had died in childbirth, and her
child was put to nurse with a woman who lived in a hut of mud and
wicker, within the border of the wood. One night the woman sat rocking
the cradle, and pondering over the beauty of the child, and praying
that the gods might grant him wisdom equal to his beauty. There came
a knock at the door, and she got up, not a little wondering, for the
nearest neighbours were in the dun of the High-King a mile away; and
the night was now late. 'Who is knocking? ' she cried, and a thin voice
answered, 'Open! for I am a crone of the grey hawk, and I come from the
darkness of the great wood. ' In terror she drew back the bolt, and a
grey-clad woman, of a great age, and of a height more than human, came
in and stood by the head of the cradle. The nurse shrank back against
the wall, unable to take her eyes from the woman, for she saw by the
gleaming of the firelight that the feathers of the grey hawk were upon
her head instead of hair. But the child slept, and the fire danced, for
the one was too ignorant and the other too full of gaiety to know what
a dreadful being stood there. 'Open! ' cried another voice, 'for I am a
crone of the grey hawk, and I watch over his nest in the darkness of
the great wood. ' The nurse opened the door again, though her fingers
could scarce hold the bolts for trembling, and another grey woman, not
less old than the other, and with like feathers instead of hair, came
in and stood by the first. In a little, came a third grey woman, and
after her a fourth, and then another and another and another, until
the hut was full of their immense bodies. They stood a long time in
perfect silence and stillness, for they were of those whom the dropping
of the sand has never troubled, but at last one muttered in a low thin
voice: 'Sisters, I knew him far away by the redness of his heart under
his silver skin'; and then another spoke: 'Sisters, I knew him because
his heart fluttered like a bird under a net of silver cords'; and then
another took up the word: 'Sisters, I knew him because his heart sang
like a bird that is happy in a silver cage. ' And after that they sang
together, those who were nearest rocking the cradle with long wrinkled
fingers; and their voices were now tender and caressing, now like the
wind blowing in the great wood, and this was their song:

Out of sight is out of mind:
Long have man and woman-kind,
Heavy of will and light of mood,
Taken away our wheaten food,
Taken away our Altar stone;
Hail and rain and thunder alone,
And red hearts we turn to grey,
Are true till Time gutter away.

When the song had died out, the crone who had first spoken, said: 'We
have nothing more to do but to mix a drop of our blood into his blood. '
And she scratched her arm with the sharp point of a spindle, which
she had made the nurse bring to her, and let a drop of blood, grey as
the mist, fall upon the lips of the child; and passed out into the
darkness. Then the others passed out in silence one by one; and all the
while the child had not opened his pink eyelids or the fire ceased to
dance, for the one was too ignorant and the other too full of gaiety to
know what great beings had bent over the cradle.

When the crones were gone, the nurse came to her courage again, and
hurried to the dun of the High-King, and cried out in the midst of the
assembly hall that the Sidhe, whether for good or evil she knew not,
had bent over the child that night; and the king and his poets and men
of law, and his huntsmen, and his cooks, and his chief warriors went
with her to the hut and gathered about the cradle, and were as noisy as
magpies, and the child sat up and looked at them.

Two years passed over, and the king died fighting against the Fer Bolg;
and the poets and the men of law ruled in the name of the child, but
looked to see him become the master himself before long, for no one
had seen so wise a child, and tales of his endless questions about
the household of the gods and the making of the world went hither and
thither among the wicker houses of the poor. Everything had been well
but for a miracle that began to trouble all men; and all women, who,
indeed, talked of it without ceasing. The feathers of the grey hawk
had begun to grow in the child's hair, and though his nurse cut them
continually, in but a little while they would be more numerous than
ever. This had not been a matter of great moment, for miracles were a
little thing in those days, but for an ancient law of Eri that none
who had any blemish of body could sit upon the throne; and as a grey
hawk was a wild thing of the air which had never sat at the board, or
listened to the songs of the poets in the light of the fire, it was not
possible to think of one in whose hair its feathers grew as other than
marred and blasted; nor could the people separate from their admiration
of the wisdom that grew in him a horror as at one of unhuman blood. Yet
all were resolved that he should reign, for they had suffered much from
foolish kings and their own disorders, and moreover they desired to
watch out the spectacle of his days; and no one had any other fear but
that his great wisdom might bid him obey the law, and call some other,
who had but a common mind, to reign in his stead.

When the child was seven years old the poets and the men of law were
called together by the chief poet, and all these matters weighed and
considered. The child had already seen that those about him had hair
only, and, though they had told him that they too had had feathers
but had lost them because of a sin committed by their forefathers,
they knew that he would learn the truth when he began to wander into
the country round about. After much consideration they decreed a new
law commanding every one upon pain of death to mingle artificially
the feathers of the grey hawk into his hair; and they sent men with
nets and slings and bows into the countries round about to gather a
sufficiency of feathers. They decreed also that any who told the truth
to the child should be flung from a cliff into the sea.

The years passed, and the child grew from childhood into boyhood and
from boyhood into manhood, and from being curious about all things
he became busy with strange and subtle thoughts which came to him in
dreams, and with distinctions between things long held the same and
with the resemblance of things long held different. Multitudes came
from other lands to see him and to ask his counsel, but there were
guards set at the frontiers, who compelled all that came to wear the
feathers of the grey hawk in their hair. While they listened to him
his words seemed to make all darkness light and filled their hearts
like music; but, alas, when they returned to their own lands his words
seemed far off, and what they could remember too strange and subtle
to help them to live out their hasty days. A number indeed did live
differently afterwards, but their new life was less excellent than the
old: some among them had long served a good cause, but when they heard
him praise it and their labour, they returned to their own lands to
find what they had loved less lovable and their arm lighter in the
battle, for he had taught them how little a hair divides the false and
true; others, again, who had served no cause, but wrought in peace the
welfare of their own households, when he had expounded the meaning of
their purpose, found their bones softer and their will less ready for
toil, for he had shown them greater purposes; and numbers of the young,
when they had heard him upon all these things, remembered certain words
that became like a fire in their hearts, and made all kindly joys and
traffic between man and man as nothing, and went different ways, but
all into vague regret.

When any asked him concerning the common things of life; disputes about
the mear of a territory, or about the straying of cattle, or about the
penalty of blood; he would turn to those nearest him for advice; but
this was held to be from courtesy, for none knew that these matters
were hidden from him by thoughts and dreams that filled his mind like
the marching and counter-marching of armies. Far less could any know
that his heart wandered lost amid throngs of overcoming thoughts and
dreams, shuddering at its own consuming solitude.

Among those who came to look at him and to listen to him was the
daughter of a little king who lived a great way off; and when he
saw her he loved, for she was beautiful, with a strange and pale
beauty unlike the women of his land; but Dana, the great mother, had
decreed her a heart that was but as the heart of others, and when she
considered the mystery of the hawk feathers she was troubled with a
great horror. He called her to him when the assembly was over and
told her of her beauty, and praised her simply and frankly as though
she were a fable of the bards; and he asked her humbly to give him
her love, for he was only subtle in his dreams. Overwhelmed with his
greatness, she half consented, and yet half refused, for she longed to
marry some warrior who could carry her over a mountain in his arms. Day
by day the king gave her gifts; cups with ears of gold and findrinny
wrought by the craftsmen of distant lands; cloth from over sea, which,
though woven with curious figures, seemed to her less beautiful than
the bright cloth of her own country; and still she was ever between a
smile and a frown; between yielding and withholding. He laid down his
wisdom at her feet, and told how the heroes when they die return to
the world and begin their labour anew; how the kind and mirthful Men
of Dea drove out the huge and gloomy and misshapen People from Under
the Sea; and a multitude of things that even the Sidhe have forgotten,
either because they happened so long ago or because they have not time
to think of them; and still she half refused, and still he hoped,
because he could not believe that a beauty so much like wisdom could
hide a common heart.

There was a tall young man in the dun who had yellow hair, and was
skilled in wrestling and in the training of horses; and one day when
the king walked in the orchard, which was between the foss and the
forest, he heard his voice among the salley bushes which hid the waters
of the foss. 'My blossom,' it said, 'I hate them for making you weave
these dingy feathers into your beautiful hair, and all that the bird
of prey upon the throne may sleep easy o' nights'; and then the low,
musical voice he loved answered: 'My hair is not beautiful like yours;
and now that I have plucked the feathers out of your hair I will put
my hands through it, thus, and thus, and thus; for it casts no shadow
of terror and darkness upon my heart. ' Then the king remembered many
things that he had forgotten without understanding them, doubtful
words of his poets and his men of law, doubts that he had reasoned
away, his own continual solitude; and he called to the lovers in a
trembling voice. They came from among the salley bushes and threw
themselves at his feet and prayed for pardon, and he stooped down and
plucked the feathers out of the hair of the woman and then turned away
towards the dun without a word. He strode into the hall of assembly,
and having gathered his poets and his men of law about him, stood upon
the dais and spoke in a loud, clear voice: 'Men of law, why did you
make me sin against the laws of Eri? Men of verse, why did you make
me sin against the secrecy of wisdom, for law was made by man for the
welfare of man, but wisdom the gods have made, and no man shall live by
its light, for it and the hail and the rain and the thunder follow a
way that is deadly to mortal things? Men of law and men of verse, live
according to your kind, and call Eocha of the Hasty Mind to reign over
you, for I set out to find my kindred. ' He then came down among them,
and drew out of the hair of first one and then another the feathers
of the grey hawk, and, having scattered them over the rushes upon the
floor, passed out, and none dared to follow him, for his eyes gleamed
like the eyes of the birds of prey; and no man saw him again or heard
his voice. Some believed that he found his eternal abode among the
demons, and some that he dwelt henceforth with the dark and dreadful
goddesses, who sit all night about the pools in the forest watching the
constellations rising and setting in those desolate mirrors.


THE HEART OF THE SPRING

A VERY old man, whose face was almost as fleshless as the foot of a
bird, sat meditating upon the rocky shore of the flat and hazel-covered
isle which fills the widest part of the Lough Gill. A russet-faced boy
of seventeen years sat by his side, watching the swallows dipping for
flies in the still water. The old man was dressed in threadbare blue
velvet, and the boy wore a frieze coat and a blue cap, and had about
his neck a rosary of blue beads. Behind the two, and half hidden by
trees, was a little monastery. It had been burned down a long while
before by sacrilegious men of the Queen's party, but had been roofed
anew with rushes by the boy, that the old man might find shelter in his
last days. He had not set his spade, however, into the garden about it,
and the lilies and the roses of the monks had spread out until their
confused luxuriancy met and mingled with the narrowing circle of the
fern. Beyond the lilies and the roses the ferns were so deep that a
child walking among them would be hidden from sight, even though he
stood upon his toes; and beyond the fern rose many hazels and small oak
trees.

'Master,' said the boy, 'this long fasting, and the labour of beckoning
after nightfall with your rod of quicken wood to the beings who dwell
in the waters and among the hazels and oak-trees, is too much for
your strength. Rest from all this labour for a little, for your hand
seemed more heavy upon my shoulder and your feet less steady under
you to-day than I have known them. Men say that you are older than
the eagles, and yet you will not seek the rest that belongs to age. '
He spoke in an eager, impulsive way, as though his heart were in the
words and thoughts of the moment; and the old man answered slowly and
deliberately, as though his heart were in distant days and distant
deeds.

'I will tell you why I have not been able to rest,' he said. 'It is
right that you should know, for you have served me faithfully these
five years and more, and even with affection, taking away thereby a
little of the doom of loneliness which always falls upon the wise. Now,
too, that the end of my labour and the triumph of my hopes is at hand,
it is the more needful for you to have this knowledge. '

'Master, do not think that I would question you. It is for me to keep
the fire alight, and the thatch close against the rain, and strong,
lest the wind blow it among the trees; and it is for me to take the
heavy books from the shelves, and to lift from its corner the great
painted roll with the names of the Sidhe, and to possess the while an
incurious and reverent heart, for right well I know that God has made
out of His abundance a separate wisdom for everything which lives, and
to do these things is my wisdom. '

'You are afraid,' said the old man, and his eyes shone with a momentary
anger.

'Sometimes at night,' said the boy, 'when you are reading, with the
rod of quicken wood in your hand, I look out of the door and see, now
a great grey man driving swine among the hazels, and now many little
people in red caps who come out of the lake driving little white cows
before them. I do not fear these little people so much as the grey man;
for, when they come near the house, they milk the cows, and they drink
the frothing milk, and begin to dance; and I know there is good in the
heart that loves dancing; but I fear them for all that. And I fear the
tall white-armed ladies who come out of the air, and move slowly hither
and thither, crowning themselves with the roses or with the lilies,
and shaking about their living hair, which moves, for so I have heard
them tell each other, with the motion of their thoughts, now spreading
out and now gathering close to their heads. They have mild, beautiful
faces, but, Aengus, son of Forbis, I fear all these beings, I fear the
people of the Sidhe, and I fear the art which draws them about us. '

'Why,' said the old man, 'do you fear the ancient gods who made the
spears of your father's fathers to be stout in battle, and the little
people who came at night from the depth of the lakes and sang among
the crickets upon their hearths? And in our evil day they still watch
over the loveliness of the earth. But I must tell you why I have fasted
and laboured when others would sink into the sleep of age, for without
your help once more I shall have fasted and laboured to no good end.
When you have done for me this last thing, you may go and build your
cottage and till your fields, and take some girl to wife, and forget
the ancient gods. I have saved all the gold and silver pieces that were
given to me by earls and knights and squires for keeping them from
the evil eye and from the love-weaving enchantments of witches, and
by earls' and knights' and squires' ladies for keeping the people of
the Sidhe from making the udders of their cattle fall dry, and taking
the butter from their churns. I have saved it all for the day when my
work should be at an end, and now that the end is at hand you shall not
lack for gold and silver pieces enough to make strong the roof-tree of
your cottage and to keep cellar and larder full. I have sought through
all my life to find the secret of life. I was not happy in my youth,
for I knew that it would pass; and I was not happy in my manhood, for
I knew that age was coming; and so I gave myself, in youth and manhood
and age, to the search for the Great Secret. I longed for a life
whose abundance would fill centuries, I scorned the life of fourscore
winters. I would be--nay, I _will_ be! --like the Ancient Gods of the
land. I read in my youth, in a Hebrew manuscript I found in a Spanish
monastery, that there is a moment after the Sun has entered the Ram
and before he has passed the Lion, which trembles with the Song of the
Immortal Powers, and that whosoever finds this moment and listens to
the Song shall become like the Immortal Powers themselves; I came back
to Ireland and asked the fairy men, and the cow-doctors, if they knew
when this moment was; but though all had heard of it, there was none
could find the moment upon the hour-glass. So I gave myself to magic,
and spent my life in fasting and in labour that I might bring the Gods
and the Fairies to my side; and now at last one of the Fairies has told
me that the moment is at hand. One, who wore a red cap and whose lips
were white with the froth of the new milk, whispered it into my ear.
To-morrow, a little before the close of the first hour after dawn, I
shall find the moment, and then I will go away to a southern land and
build myself a palace of white marble amid orange trees, and gather the
brave and the beautiful about me, and enter into the eternal kingdom
of my youth. But, that I may hear the whole Song, I was told by the
little fellow with the froth of the new milk on his lips, that you must
bring great masses of green boughs and pile them about the door and the
window of my room; and you must put fresh green rushes upon the floor,
and cover the table and the rushes with the roses and the lilies of the
monks. You must do this to-night, and in the morning at the end of the
first hour after dawn, you must come and find me. '

'Will you be quite young then? ' said the boy.

'I will be as young then as you are, but now I am still old and tired,
and you must help me to my chair and to my books. '

When the boy had left Aengus son of Forbis in his room, and had lighted
the lamp which, by some contrivance of the wizard's, gave forth a sweet
odour as of strange flowers, he went into the wood and began cutting
green boughs from the hazels, and great bundles of rushes from the
western border of the isle, where the small rocks gave place to gently
sloping sand and clay. It was nightfall before he had cut enough for
his purpose, and well-nigh midnight before he had carried the last
bundle to its place, and gone back for the roses and the lilies. It was
one of those warm, beautiful nights when everything seems carved of
precious stones. Sleuth Wood away to the south looked as though cut out
of green beryl, and the waters that mirrored them shone like pale opal.
The roses he was gathering were like glowing rubies, and the lilies had
the dull lustre of pearl. Everything had taken upon itself the look of
something imperishable, except a glow-worm, whose faint flame burnt
on steadily among the shadows, moving slowly hither and thither, the
only thing that seemed alive, the only thing that seemed perishable as
mortal hope. The boy gathered a great armful of roses and lilies, and
thrusting the glow-worm among their pearl and ruby, carried them into
the room, where the old man sat in a half-slumber. He laid armful after
armful upon the floor and above the table, and then, gently closing
the door, threw himself upon his bed of rushes, to dream of a peaceful
manhood with his chosen wife at his side, and the laughter of children
in his ears. At dawn he rose, and went down to the edge of the lake,
taking the hour-glass with him. He put some bread and a flask of wine
in the boat, that his master might not lack food at the outset of his
journey, and then sat down to wait until the hour from dawn had gone
by. Gradually the birds began to sing, and when the last grains of
sand were falling, everything suddenly seemed to overflow with their
music.