Part 2 — THE LEGENDS OF OISIN, BARD OF ERIN. BY AUBREY DE VERE.

As dim through snowy flakes the dawn Peered o’er the moorlands frore, The old, snow-headed Bard, Oisin,[57] Sat by the convent door. His chin he propp’d on that clenched hand Of old in battles feared: And like a silver flood, far-kenned, To earth down streamed his beard. That sun his eyes could see no more Their thin lids loved to feel: It rose; and on his cheek a tear Began to uncongeal. Then slowly thus he spake: “Three times This thought has come to me, Patrick, that I am older thrice Than I am famed to be: “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: “‘That so, ere yet that great old time Is wholly gone and past, Her manlier with her saintlier day May blend in bridal fast. “‘And since of deadly deeds he sang Above him we will sing The Death that saved: and we from him Will keep the gadfly’s wing. “‘For him an age, for us an hour, Here, like a cradled child, Shall sleep the man whose hand was red, Whose heart was undefiled.’ “Patrick! That vision, was it truth? Or fancy’s mocking gleam? That I should tarry till He came— ’Twas not, ’twas not a dream! “And wondrous is mine age, I know; For whiter than the thorn Was this once-honored head before The men now white were born: “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.” Then said the monks, “His brain is hurt”: But Patrick said, “They lie! Thou God that lov’st thy gray-haired child, Would I for him might die!” And Patrick cried, “Oisin! the thirst Of God is in thy breast! He who has dealt thy heart the wound Ere long will give it rest!”