Without laughter, a show unto children, alone with remembrance and fear,

All emptied of purple hours as a beggar’s cloak in the rain,

As a grass seed crushed by a pebble, as a wolf sucked under a weir.

It were sad to gaze on the blessed and no man I loved of old there;

I throw down the chain of small stones! when life in my body has ceased,

I will go to Caolte, and Conan, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair,

And dwell in the house of the Fenians, be they in flames or at feast.


NOTES