The Swallows
EN to us
Your fields, and your cotes, and your glebes;
Secret our nests
Although they be built in your eaves;
Un-eaten by us
The grains that grow in your fields.
The Weathercock on the barn
Not alien to ye
The powers of un-earthbound beings:
Their curse ye would
On our cotes, and our glebes, and our fields,
If aught should
The brood that is bred in the eaves.
The Swallows
If aught should
Our brood that's not travelled the seas,
Your temples would fall,
And blood ye would milk from your beeves:
Against them the curse we would
Of un-earthbound beings!
II saw the wind to-day:
I saw it in the
Of glass upon the wall:
A moving thing 'twas
No bird with widening wing,
No mouse that runs
The meal bag under the beam.
I think it like a horse,
All black, with frightening mane.
That springs out of the earth,
And tramples on his way.
I saw it in the glass,
The shaking of a mane:
A horse that no one rides!
Meet for a town where pennies have few
In children's pockets, this toyshop and its wares:
Jew's-harps and masks and
And paper lanterns with their farthing lights,
All in a dim lit window to be seen:
Within-The walls that have the patches of the damp,
The counter where there burns the murky lamp,
And then, the counter and the shelf between,
The dame,
Meagre, grey-polled, lame.
And here she's been since times are legendary,
For Miler Dowdall whom we used to
Upon the hoarding with deft hands held
To win the champion's belt or silver cup-Would come in here to buy a ball or top-That Miler Dowdall, the great
Who had the world once beneath his fist!
Now Miler's is a name that's blown by!
How's custom?
Bad enough!
She had not
Kites for ten boys along the street to hold-She sold them by the gross in times agone:
Wasn't it poor, the
Where
Would count their mort of marbles, saving
In crock or jar till round the season came,
And buy no more to handsel in first game?
And
The liveliest were stiffened like herself,
The brightest were grown drab upon her shelf!
But she's not tragical no, not a whit :
She laughs as she talks to you that is
As paper lantern's farthing candle
Her eyes are bright,
Her lame, spare frame upborneA paper kite held by a string that's worn;
And like a jew's-harp when you strike its
That way her voice goes
Recalling long ago.
And she will
The inches of her crib, this narrow shop,
When you step in to be her customer:
A bird of little worth, a sparrow, say,
Whose crib's in such neglected
That one's left wondering who brings crumbs to her.
How strange to think that she is still
After so many turns of the
Since this lit window was a dragon's
To turn us all to wonder coming
Since this dim window was a dragon's eye!
Down a street that once I lived
You used to pass, a honey-seller,
And the town in which that street
Was the shabbiest of all places;
You were different from the
Who went by to barter meanly:
Different from the man with
Windmills for the children's pennies;
Different from the drab
With her paper screens to fill
Chill and empty fireplaces.
You went by, a man upstanding,
On your head a wide dish,
Dark and golden lumps of honey;
You went slowly, like an old
That's not driven any longer,
But that likes to take an amble.
No one ever bought your honey,
No one ever paid a
For a single comb of sweetness;
Every house was grim unto
With foregone desire of
Bread whose taste had sweet of honey.
Yet you went, a man contented's though you had a king to call
Who would take you to his parlour,
And buy all your stock of honey.
On you went, and in a
Voice, just like the bell of evening,
Told us of the goods you carried,
Told us of the dark and
Treasure dripping on your wide dish.
You went by, and no one named you!
The crows still fly to that wood, and out of the wood she comes,
Carrying her load of sticks, a little less now than before,
Her strength being less; she bends as the hoar rush bends in the wind;
She will sit by the fire, in the smoke, her thoughts on root and the living branch no more.
The crows still fly to that wood, that wood that is sparse and gapped;
The last one left of the herd makes way by the lane to the stall,
Lowing distress as she goes; the great trees there are all down;
No fiddle sounds in the hut to-night, and a candle only gives light to the hall.
The trees are gapped and sparse, yet a sapling spreads on the
Of the wall, till the castle stones fall down into the moat:
The last one who minds that our race once stood as a spreading tree,
She goes, and thorns are bare, where the blackbird, his summer songs done, strikes one metal note.
The Mountain Thrush I say,
But I am thinking of her,
Nell the Rambler:
She'd come down to our houses bird-alone,
From some haunt that was hers, and we would see
Drawing the water from the well one day,
For one house or another, or we'd hear
Garrulous with the turkeys down the street,
We children.
From neighbour's house to neighbour's house she'd
Until one day we'd
Her worn cloak hanging behind our door;
And then, that night, we'd
Of Earl Gerald: how he rides abroad,
His horse's hooves shod with the weighty silver,
And how he'll ride all roads till those silver
Are worn thin;
As thin as the cat's ears before the fire,
Upraised in such content before the fire,
And making little lanterns in the firelight.
The Mountain Thrush, when every way's a hard one,
Hops on in numbness till a patch of sunlight,
Falling, will turn her to a wayside song;
So it was with her,
Rambler Nell, a shelter,
A bit upon the board, and she flowed
With rambler's discourse tales, and rhymes, and sayings,
With child's light in her worn eyes, and
To all her words.
The lore she had-'Twas like a kingly robe, on which long
Have fallen and fallen, and
The finely woven web, and have washed
The kingly colours, but have left some
Still golden, and some feathers still as
As the kingfisher's.
While she sat there, not spinning,
Not weaving anything but her own fancies,
We ate potatoes out of the ash, and thought
Like golden apples out of Tiprobane.
When winter's over-long, and days that
Come one upon another like snowflakes,
The Mountain Thrush makes way down to our houses:
Hops round for crumbs, and stays a while, a
Upon our floors.
She did not
Bread of dependence bitter; three went with
Hunger,
Sorrow, and Loneliness and
Had crushed all that makes claims, though they'd not bent her,
Nor emptied her of trust what was it led
From house to house, but that she always looked forA warmer welcome at the hearth ahead?
So she went on until it came one
The Mountain Thrush's heart-stop on the way.
An old man said, "I
The chief of the things that are gone;
A stag with head held high,
A doe, and a fawn;"And they were the deer of
That scorned to breed within bound:
The last; they left no
Tame on a pleasure-ground."A stag, with his hide all
With the dew, and a doe and a fawn;
Nearby, on their track on the mountain,
I watched them, two and one,"Down to the Shannon going-Did its waters cease to
When they passed, they that carried the
And the pride of long ago?"The last of the troop that had
Finn's and Oscar's cry;
A doe and a fawn, and before,
A stag with head held
II"A Stranger you came to me over the Sea,
But welcome I made you,
Seumas-a-ree,
And shelter I gave you, my sons set to ward you,
Red war I faced for you,
Seumas-a-ree."Now a craven you go from me over the Sea,
But my best sons go with you,
Seumas-a-ree;
Foreign graves they will gam, and for those who
The black hemp is sown och,
Seumas-a-ree!"But the Boyne shall flow back from the wide Irish Sea,
On the Causeway of Aughrim our victory shall be:
Two hundreds of years and the child on the
Will be rocked to this cronach,
You blew
Where Jillin Brady kept up state on nothing,
Married her daughter, and brought to Jillin's houseA leash of dogs, a run of ferrets, a
In a wired box; linnets and larks and
In their proper cages; and you brought with you this song:
If you come to look for me,
Perhaps you'll not me find:
For I'll not in my Castle be-Inquire where horns wind.
Before I had a man-at-armsI had an eager hound:
Then was I known as Reynardine,
In no crib to be found.
You used to
Five hounds' lives were a man's life, and when
Had died of old age, and when Fury that was a
When Teague was maundering, had turned from hill to
And lay in the dimness of a hound's old age,
I went with you again, and you were
As the circus-rider standing on his horse;
Quick as a goat that will take any path, and lean-Lean as a lash; you'd have no
With wife or child or mother-in-law till
Were out of doors and standing on the
Ready to face the river or the hill:
Then Hen-wife's son once heard the
Talk to his soft-voiced mate;
And what he heard the health-poult
The loon would not relate.
Impatient in the yard he grew,
And patient on the hill;
Of cocks and hens he'd take no charge.
And he went with Reynardine.
Lean days when we were idle as the birds,
That will not preen their feathers, but will
To taste a berry, or pull a shred of
That they will never use.
We pass the bounds:
A forest's grave, the black bog is before us,
And in its very middle you will show
The snipe's nest that is lonelier than the
That's all that's there; and then a stony hill,
A red fox climbing, pausing, looking round his
At us travailing against wind and
To reach the river-spring where Finn or
Hardened a spear, back of a thousand years.
And still your cronies are what they were
The hounds that know the hill and know the hearth(One is Fury that's as old as Argos
That crawled to Odysseus coming back);
Your minstrels, the blackbird singing
When kites are leaving, crows are going home,
And the thrush in the morning like a spectre
Beside the day-spring; and your visitors,
The cuckoo that will swing upon a branch,
The corncrake with quick head between the grass-tufts.
And still your song is what it used to
About that Reynardine who came to lordA castle (O that castle with its trees!),
Who heard the horns, and let his turret
The foxglove where his banner should be seen:
The hawk is for the hill, he cried,
The badger for the glen;
The otter for the
Amen, amen, amen!
At the fore of the year, and on Candlemas Day,
All early at Mass I remarked
Like the dew on green corn, as bright and as
Were her eyes, and her voice was the starling's!
With bragging and lies,
I thought that her mindI'd engage, and then win her with praises,
But through Spring and through Summer she has left me to
Every day with a pain that will slay me!
Oh, come,
O my love, ere the life from me
If your hand but to lightly lay on me,
And a grief take away that none else can
For now 'tis the reaping of barley!
It would not be far for us two to go back to the age of bronze:
Then you were a king's daughter, your father had curraghs on hore,
A herd of horses, good tillage upon the face of four hills,
And clumps of cattle beyond them where rough-browed men showed their spears.
And I was good at the bow, but had no men, no herds,
And your father would have bestowed you in a while on some
Ulysses, or on the old king to whom they afterwards
Three stones as high as the elk's head (this cromlech, maybe, where we sit)How fair you were when you walked beside the old forest trees!
So fair that I thought you would change and fly away as a swan,
And then we were mates for play, and then all eagle you
To drive me to range the tempest king's child of the hero-age!
I called three times as an owl: through the gap where the herdsmen
You ran, and we climbed the height where the brackens pushed at our knees;
And we lay where the brackens drew the earth-smell out of the earth,
And we journeyed and baffled the fighters of three ill-wishing kings!
It would not be far for us two to go back to the age of
The fire left by the nomads is lone as a burning ship!
We eat them as we pass by, the ears of the sweet green wheat!
At last, a king,
I relieve a good clan from a dragon's spleen!
Pieces of amber I brought you, big as a bowman's thumbs,
Trumpets I left beside you, wrought when the smiths had all art,
A dancing-bird that I caught you they are back in the age of bronze:
I give what I made, and found, and caught a score of songs!
