To the grandchild teasing, teasing, and pink as the bedtime daisy-bud,
Tells it over.—“When that happened, I was a boy, and I sat one day
By the river, in mid-morning, my drowsy cheek to the pleasant clay.
“Sudden opened, near and under, the believed-in cave on the green hillside!
Thick the darkness, but I saw them: the Earl Hugh’s men that never have died,
“Men gone by, ensainted, fabled, the men unnamed in the living air:
Like a taper’s flame among them, my soul and body were shaken there.
“Nine full hundred, nine and ninety, (O’Neil the thousandth when he comes back!)
All a-row, asleep in armor, by horses magical white or black:
“Mighty horses satin-shouldered, with sheen of the golden stirrups grand;