Who shall forbid a king to lie
Where lie he will, when life is o'er?
King Cormac laid him down to die;
But first he raised his hand, and swore:
"At Brugh ye shall not lay my bones:
Those pagan kings I scorn to join
Beside the trembling Druid stones,
And on the north bank of the Boyne.
"A grassy grave of poor degree
Upon its southern bank be mine
At Rossnaree, where of things to be
I saw in vision the pledge and sign.
"Thou happier Faith, that from the East
Slow travellest, set my people free!
I sleep, thy Prophet and thy Priest,
By southern Boyne, at Rossnaree."
He died: anon from hill and wood
Down flocked the black-robed Druid race,
And round the darkened palace stood,
And cursed the dead king to his face.
Uptowering round his bed, with lips
Denouncing doom, and cheeks death-pale,
As when at noontide strange eclipse
Invests gray cliffs and shadowed vale;
And proved with cymball'd anthems dread
The gods he spurned had bade him die:
Then spake the pagan chiefs, and said,
"Where lie our kings, this king must lie."
In royal robes the corse they dressed,
And spread the bier with boughs of yew;
And chose twelve men, their first and best,
To bear him through the Boyne to Brugh.
But on his bier the great dead king
Forgot not so his kingly oath;
And from sea-marge to mountain spring,
Boyne heard their coming, and was wroth.
He frowned far off, 'mid gorse and fern,
As those ill-omened steps made way;
He muttered 'neath the flying hern;
He foamed by cairn and cromlech gray;