Of twilight and slumber were gone, and that hoofs impatiently stept.
I cried, ‘O Niamh! O white one! if only a twelve-houred day,
I must gaze on the beard of Finn, and move where the old men and young
In the Fenians’ dwellings of wattle lean on the chessboards and play,
Ah, sweet to me now were even bald Conan’s slanderous tongue!
‘Like me were some galley forsaken far off in Meridian isle,
Remembering its long-oared companions, sails turning to thread-bare rags;
No more to crawl on the seas with long oars mile after mile,
But to be amid shooting of flies and flowering of rushes and flags.’
Their motionless eyeballs of spirits grown mild with mysterious thought,