And over the tiller and the prow,
But a wild apple hid the grass
Therefore it is but little news
That all this life can give us is
Or birds lost in the one clear space
Where wild bees hive on the Great Plain.
Those other two; for never yet
How could we be so soon content,
And the Brown Bull had not yet come,
Being tumbled and blown about
They wrote on tablets of thin board,
And Findrias and Falias,
When the long wars for the White Horn
For this young girl and this young man
They blossomed to immortal mirth.
Heaven knows what calamity;
Before his eyes, he has tears for none,
In the hid place, being crazed by love.
Who when night thickens are afloat
Aillinn, who was King Lugaidhs heir.
Are trodden and broken hy the herds,
To many-pastured Muirthemne,
"From heat and cold and wind and wave;
And they have news of Deirdres eyes,
Master of Love, wishing them to he happy in his own land
With somebody in your own land.
Wandering from broken street to street
And the grey bird with crooked bill
ARGUMENT. Baile and Aillinn were lovers, but Aengus, the
Under a cairn of sleepy stone
Now had that old gaunt crafty one,
The north wind tumbles to and fro
What were our praise to them? They eat
That old man climbed; the day grew dim;
With: ""You must home again, and wed
Or the door-pillars of one house,
She fell and died of the heart-break.
He ran and laughed until he came
Where the Hound of Uladh sat before
His face bowed low to weep the end
He always wept them on that day,
Young Baile Honey Mouth, whom some
Of the harpers daughter if they will,
After the deaths of many men,
And poets found, old writers say,
Awaken wanderings of light air
Of morning light in a dim sky;
A yew tree where his body lay;
Baile and Aillinn would be wed.
Like them that are no more alive.
When they had come to the matriage-bed,
Two swans came flying up to him,
About the windy water-side,
They know undying things, for they
All the love stories that they knew.
An old man caught the horses head
Forgotten at the threshing-place;
Gathering his cloak about him, mn
Or mice in the one wheaten sheaf
Tall, proud and ruddy, and light wings
And waving white wings to and fro
As though their music were enough
Although he is carrying stone, but two
Our hearts can Fear the voices chide.
Baile And Aillinn
Although he had a squirrels eye.
For all her wanderings over-sea;
<1We hold, because our memory is
But the gods long ago decreed
Rode from the country of her kin,
And pinches among hail and snow?>1
Was carried to the goodly house
That Edain, Midhirs wife, had wove
You put such folly in our heads
Of harpers and young men; and they
The brazen pillars of his door,
Or the two strings that made one sound
That out of sight is out of mind.
Some god or king had made the laws
The towery gates of Gorias,
Has lover lived, but longed to wive
A better time had come again
Made of the apple and the yew,
Where Aillinn rode with waiting-maids,
Their love was never drowned in care
that their hearts were broken and they died.
And with low murmuring laughing speech
A childs laughter, a womans kiss.
Than any whose unhappiness
Because a lovers heart s worn out,
Before my thoughts begin to run
On the heir of Uladh, Buans son,
With its sweet blossom where hers was,
No common love is to our mind,
Bailes heart was broken in two;
He had ragged long grass-coloured hair;
For they should clip and clip again
While over them birds of Aengus fly,
Rode out of Emain with a band
Baile and Aillinns marriage-bed,
That all things fell out happily,
And being in good heart, because
And our poor kate or Nan is less
Grow gentle without sorrowing,
But where it could see her every day.
A young man cried and kissed her hand,
In Muirthemne, and over it
Because their hodies had grown old.
That is bad enough to be true, is true,
And will believe that anything
Before her love-worn heart had broke.
Where that wise harpers finger ran.
Though nothing troubles the great streams
Alighted on the windy grass.
The Hill Seat of Laighen, because
That have one shadow on the ground;
And now that Honey-Mouth is laid
"Anothers hurried off, cried he,
And when no face grew piteous
Dreamed of the hands that would unlace
To tell him how the girl Aillinn
Scale rubbing scale where light is dim
And that long fighting at the ford,
Linked by a gold chain each to each,
Imagined, as they struck the way
They come where some huge watcher is,
Had chosen a husband anywhere
And in the light bodies of birds
Ah! wise, my heart knows well how wise.>1
They have heaped the stones above his grave
For athough years had passed away
On dappled skins in a glass boat,
But Id have bird and rush forget
among the dead, told to each a story of the others death, so
Who know the way that Naoise went?
""O lady, wed with one of us;
Their bodices in some dim place
I run to Baile Honey-Mouth,
But fruit that is of precious stone,
That put this hurry in my shoes.
That runner said: "I am from the south;
About the time when Christ was born,
And old and young men rode with her:
That held the land together there,
Have happiness without an end,
Cauldron and spear and stone and sword,
For all that country had been astir
Of the harpers daughter and her friend
When they had ridden a little way
But the grey rush under the wind
What shall I call them? fish that swim,
And you are more high of heart than she,
Imagining and pondering
Remember Deirdre and her man;
Among the giant kings whose hoard,
With all this crying inthe wind,
Awoke the harp-strings long ago.
And he, being laid upon green boughs,
No waiting-maid should ever spread
Because they have made so good a friend.
Were hovering over the harp-strings
For any gentle thing she spake,
By a broad water-lily leaf;
Beloved, I am not afraid of her.
If anybody half as fair
And long-forgotten Murias,
Nor thegrey rush when the wind is high,
And tremble with their love and kiss.
To that high hill the herdsmen name
Yet they that know all things hut know
Who was it put so great a scorn
In thegrey reeds that night and morn
From the holy orchards, where there is none
To stir their coverlet and their hair.
They found an old man running there:
Quiets wild heart, like daily meat;
They knew him: his changed body was
He had knees that stuck out of his hose;
And harpers, pacing with high head
Of this or that thing, nor grew cold
Who amid leafy lights and shades
They know all wonders, for they pass
Or apples of the sun and moon.
For on that day they had been betrayed;
Then seeing that he scarce had spoke
For whom the cairns but heaped anew.
To make the savage heart of love
And when we walk with Kate or Nan
And that mild woman of the south,
Called rather Baile Little-Land,
I HARDLY hear the curlew cry,
Baile, that was of Rurys seed.
Wander where earth withers away,
Far out under a windless sky;
<1Let rush and hird cry out their fill
By its own blind imagining,
rave such long memories that they still
Sofull of that thing and of this,
He had puddle-water in his shoes;
And there, for all that fools had said,
Baile, who had the honey mouth;
Being forbid to marry on earth,
In old times among the clouds of the air.
Or two sweet blossoming apple-boughs
He had half a cloak to keep him dry,
In changeless Ogham letters writ -
Was robbed before earth gave the wheat;
But light from the pale stars, and gleams
Or, it may be, the eyelids of one eye,
She is not wiser nor lovelier,
Who being lovely was so wise -
<1O wandering hirds and rushy beds,