“‘No cure there lives for wounds like these.’”
Here ceased the lamentable sound.
Five steps the old man moved apart;
Then dashed him on the ground.
“My Oscar stared upon his wounds;
To fields long past his thoughts took flight:
‘My son, I cried, thou hadst not died
If Fionn had ruled the fight!’
“O Patrick! I have sung thee lays,
Emprize of others, or my own;
Where he was bravest all were brave;
But his, and his alone,
“The gracious ways, the voice that smiled,
The heart so loving and so strong:
The women laughed my harp to hear;
They wept at Oscar’s song!
“All night we watched the dying man:
To staunch his blood we strove in vain:
We heard the demon-loaded wind
Along the mountain strain.
“All night we propped him with our spears:
To staunch his blood we strove in vain:
Till, drenched in falling floods, the moon
Went down beyond the plain.
“Alas! the dawning of that morn,
My Oscar’s last! With barren glare
It flashed along the broken arms,
And the red pools here and there.
“Then saw we pacing from afar,
A kingly form, a shape of woe:
King Fionn it was that toward us moved
With measured footsteps slow:
“King Fionn himself; and far behind
Came many warriors more of Fail,[81]
Down-gazing on Baoigne’s clan,
Death-cold, and still, and pale.
“There lay all dumb the men of might;
There, foot to foot, the foemen, strewn
Like seaweed lines on stormy shores,
Or forests overblown!