She says: 'Poor Friend, you waste a treasure
Which you can ne'er regain—
Time, health, and glory, for the pleasure
Of toying with a chain.'
But then her voice so tender grows,
So kind and so caressing;
Each murmur from her lips that flows
Comes to me like a blessing.
Sometimes she says: 'Sweet Friend, I grieve you—
Alas, it gives me pain!
What can I? Ah, might I relieve you,
You ne'er had mourned in vain!'
And then her little hand she presses
Upon her heart, and sighs;
While tears, whose source not yet she guesses,
Grow larger in her eyes.
Aubrey de Vere
THE BARD ETHELL
Ireland in the Thirteenth Century
I am Ethell, the son of Conn:
Here I bide at the foot of the hill:
I am clansman to Brian, and servant to none:
Whom I hated, I hate: whom I loved, I love still.
Blind am I. On milk I live,
And meat, God sends it, on each Saint's Day;
Though Donald Mac Art—may he never thrive—
Last Shrovetide drove half my kine away.
At the brown hill's base by the pale blue lake
I dwell and see the things I saw:
The heron flap heavily up from the brake;
The crow fly homeward with twig or straw
The wild duck a silver line in wake
Cutting the calm mere to far Bunaw.
And the things that I heard, though deaf, I hear,
From the tower in the island the feastful cheer;
The horn from the wood; the plunge of the stag,
With the loud hounds after him down from the crag.
Sweet is the chase, but the battle is sweeter,
More healthy, more joyous, for true men meeter!
My hand is weak! it once was strong:
My heart burns still with its ancient fire.
If any man smites me he does me wrong,
For I was the bard of Brian Mac Guire.
If any man slay me—not unaware,
By no chance blow, nor in wine and revel,
I have stored beforehand, a curse in my prayer
For his kith and kindred; his deed is evil.
There never was king, and never will be,
In battle or banquet like Malachi!
The seers his reign had predicted long;
He honoured the bards, and gave gold for song.
If rebels arose, he put out their eyes;
If robbers plundered or burned the fanes,
He hung them in chaplets, like rosaries,
That others beholding might take more pains!
There was none to women more reverent-minded,
For he held his mother, and Mary, dear;
If any man wronged them, that man he blinded,
Or straight amerced him of hand or ear.
There was none who founded more convents—none;
In his palace the old and poor were fed;
The orphan might walk, or the widow's son,
Without groom or page to his throne or bed.
In his council he mused, with great brows divine,
And eyes like the eyes of the musing kine,
Upholding a sceptre o'er which men said,
Seven spirits of wisdom like fire-tongues played.
He drained ten lakes, and he built ten bridges;
He bought a gold book for a thousand cows;
He slew ten princes who brake their pledges;
With the bribed and the base he scorned to carouse.
He was sweet and awful; through all his reign
God gave great harvests to vale and plain;
From his nurse's milk he was kind and brave;
And when he went down to his well-wept grave,
Through the triumph of penance his soul arose
To God and the saints. Not so his foes.
The King that came after, ah woe, woe, woe!
He doubted his friend, and he trusted his foe,
He bought and he sold: his kingdom old
He pledged and pawned, to avenge a spite:
No Bard or prophet his birth foretold:
He was guarded and warded both day and night:
He counselled with fools and had boors at his feast:
He was cruel to Christian and kind to beast:
Men smiled when they talked of him far o'er the wave:
Well paid were the mourners that wept at his grave.
God plagued for his sake his people sore:
They sinned; for the people should watch and pray,
That their prayers like angels at window and door,
May keep from the King the bad thought away!