“For on the ruins of that house,
Once stately to behold,
Where feasted Fionn the King, there sighs
A wood of alders old.
“And on my Oscar’s grave three elms
Have risen; and mouldered three:
And on my Father’s grave, the oak
Is now a hollow tree.
“Patrick, of me they noised a tale,
That down beneath a lake
A hundred years I lived, unchanged,
For a Faery Lady’s sake:
“They said that, home when I returned,
The men I loved were dead;
And that the whiteness fell that hour
Like snow-storm on my head.
“A song of mine—a dream in youth,
That tale, misdeemed for true:
Far other dream was mine in age:
A dream that no man knew.
“For though I sang of things loved well,
I hid the things loved best:
Patrick, to thee that later dream
At last shall be confessed.
“On Gahbra’s field my Oscar fell:
Last died my Father, Fionn:
The wind went o’er their grassy mounds:
I heard it, and lived on.
“I loved no more the lark by Lee
Nor yet the battle-cry;
And therefore in a dell, one day,
I laid me down to die.
“The cold went on into my heart:
Methought that I was dead:
Yet I was ’ware that angels waved
Their wings above my head.
“They said, ‘This man, for Erin’s sake,
Shall tarry here an age,
Till Christ to Erin comes—shall sleep
In this still hermitage: