The Wanderings of Oisin
Earlier titled "The Wanderings of Usheen"
“Give me the world if thou wilt, but grant me an asylum for my affections.”
Tulka
To Edwin J. Ellis
Book I
S. Patric
You who are bent, and bald, and blind,With a heavy heart and a wandering mind,Have known three centuries, poets sing,Of dalliance with a demon thing.
Usheen
Sad to remember, sick with years,The swift innumerable spears,The horsemen with their floating hair,And bowls of barley, honey, and wine,And feet of maidens dancing in tune,And the white body that lay by mine;But the tale, though words be lighter than air,Must live to be old like the wandering moon.
Caolte, and Conan, and Finn were there,When we followed a deer with our baying hounds,With Bran, Sgeolan, and Lomair,And passing the Firbolgs’ burial moundsCame to the cairn-heaped grassy hillWhere passionate Maive is stony still;And found on the dove-grey edge of the seaA pearl-pale, high-born lady, who rodeOn a horse with bridle of findrinny;And like a sunset were her lips,A stormy sunset on doomed ships;A citron colour gloomed in her hair,But down to her feet white vesture flowed,And with the glimmering crimson glowedOf many a figured embroidery;And it was bound with a pearl-pale shellThat wavered like the summer streams,As her soft bosom rose and fell.
S. Patric
You are still wrecked among heathen dreams.
Usheen
“Why do you wind no horn?” she said.“And every hero droop his head?The hornless deer is not more sadThat many a peaceful moment had,More sleek than any granary mouse,In his own leafy forest houseAmong the waving fields of fern:The hunting of heroes should be glad.”
“O pleasant woman,” answered Finn,“We think on Oscar’s pencilled urn,And on the heroes lying slain,On Gavra’s raven-covered plain;But where are your noble kith and kin,And into what country do you ride?”
“My father and my mother areAengus and Adene, and my nameNiam, and my country farBeyond the tumbling of this tide.”
“What dream came with you that you cameThrough bitter tide on foam-wet feet?Did your companion wander awayFrom where the birds of Aengus wing?”
She said, with laughter tender and sweet:“I have not yet, war-weary king,Been spoken of with anyone;Yet now I choose, for these four feetRan through the foam and ran to thisThat I might have your son to kiss.”
“Were there no better than my sonThat you through all that foam should run?”
“I loved no man, though kings besoughtUntil the Danaan poets brought,Rhyme, that rhymed to Usheen’s name,And now I am dizzy with the thoughtOf all that wisdom and the fame,Of battles broken by his hands,Of stories builded by his wordsThat are like coloured Asian birdsAt evening in their rainless lands.”
O Patric, by your brazen bell,There was no limb of mine but fellInto a desperate gulf of love!“You only will I wed,” I cried,“And I will make a thousand songs,And set your name all names above,And captives bound with leathern thongsShall kneel and praise you, one by one,At evening in my western dun.”
“O Usheen, mount by me and rideTo shores by the wash of the tremulous tide,Where men have heaped no burial mounds,And the days pass by like a wayward tune,Where broken faith has never been known,And the blushes of first love never have flown;And there I will give you a hundred hounds;No mightier creatures bay at the moon;And a hundred robes of murmuring silk,And a hundred calves and a hundred sheepWhose long wool whiter than sea froth flows,And a hundred spears and a hundred bows,And oil and wine and honey and milk,And always never-anxious sleep;While a hundred youths, mighty of limb,But knowing nor tumult nor hate nor strife,And a hundred maidens, merry as birds,Who when they dance to a fitful measureHave a speed like the speed of the salmon herds,Shall follow your horn and obey your whim,And you shall know the Danaan leisure:And Niam be with you for a wife.”Then she sighed gently, “It grows late,Music and love and sleep await,Where I would be when the white moon climbs,The red sun falls and the world grows dim.”
And then I mounted and she bound meWith her triumphing arms around me,And whispering to herself enwound me;But when the horse had felt my weight,He shook himself and neighed three times:Caolte, Conan, and Finn came near,And wept, and raised their lamenting hands,And bid me stay, with many a tear;But we rode out from the human lands.
In what far kingdom do you go,Ah, Fenians, with the shield and bow?Or are you phantoms white as snow,Whose lips had life’s most prosperous glow?O you, with whom in sloping valleys,Or down the dewy forest alleys,I chased at morn the flying deer,With whom I hurled the hurrying spear,And heard the foemen’s bucklers rattle,And broke the heaving ranks of battle!And Bran, Sgeolan, and Lomair,Where are you with your long rough hair?You go not where the red deer feeds,Nor tear the foemen from their steeds.
S. Patric
Boast not, nor mourn with drooping headCompanions long accurst and dead,And hounds for centuries dust and air.
Usheen
We galloped over the glossy sea:I know not if days passed or hours,And Niam sang continuallyDanaan songs, and their dewy showersOf pensive laughter, unhuman sound,Lulled weariness, and softly roundMy human sorrow her white arms wound.
We galloped; now a hornless deerPassed by us, chased by a phantom houndAll pearly white, save one red ear;And now a maiden rode like the windWith an apple of gold in her tossing hand;And a beautiful young man followed behindWith quenchless eyes and fluttering hair.
“Were these two born in the Danaan land,Or have they breathed the mortal air?”“Vex them no longer,” Niam said,And sighing bowed her gentle head,And sighing laid the pearly tipOf one long finger on my lip.
But now the moon like a white rose shoneIn the pale west, and the sun’s rim sank,And clouds arrayed their rank on rankAbout his fading crimson ball:The floor of Allen’s hosting hallWas not more level than the sea,As full of loving fantasy,And with low murmurs we rode on,Where many a trumpet-twisted shellThat in immortal silence sleepsDreaming of her own melting hues,Her golds, her ambers, and her blues,Pierced with soft light the shallowing deeps.But now a wandering land breeze cameAnd a far sound of feathery quires;It seemed to blow from the dying flame,They seemed to sing in the smouldering fires.The horse towards the music raced,Neighing along the lifeless waste;Like sooty fingers, many a treeRose ever out of the warm sea;And they were trembling ceaselessly,As though they all were beating time,Upon the centre of the sun,To that low laughing woodland rhyme,And, now our wandering hours were done,We cantered to the shore, and knewThe reason of the trembling trees:Round every branch the song-birds flew,Or clung thereon like swarming bees;While round the shore a million stoodLike drops of frozen rainbow light,And pondered in a soft vain moodUpon their shadows in the tide,And told the purple deeps their pride,And murmured snatches of delight;And on the shores were many boatsWith bending sterns and bending bows,And carven figures on their prowsOf bitterns, and fish-eating stoats,And swans with their exultant throats:And where the wood and waters meetWe tied the horse in a leafy clump,And Niam blew three merry notesOut of a little silver trump;And then an answering whisper flewOver the bare and woody land,A whisper of impetuous feet,And ever nearer, nearer grew;And from the woods rushed out a bandOf men and maidens, hand in hand,And singing, singing altogether;Their brows were white as fragrant milk,Their cloaks made out of yellow silk,And trimmed with many a crimson feather;And when they saw the cloak I woreWas dim with mire of a mortal shore,They fingered it and gazed on meAnd laughed like murmurs of the sea;But Niam with a swift distressBid them away and hold their peace;And when they heard her voice they ranAnd knelt them, every maid and manAnd kissed, as they would never cease,Her pearl-pale hand and the hem of her dress.She bade them bring us to the hallWhere Aengus dreams, from sun to sun,A Druid dream of the end of daysWhen the stars are to wane and the world be done.
They led us by long and shadowy waysWhere drops of dew in myriads fall,And tangled creepers every hourBlossom in some new crimson flower,And once a sudden laughter sprangFrom all their lips, and once they sangTogether, while the dark woods rang,And made in all their distant parts,With boom of bees in honey marts,A rumour of delighted hearts.And once a maiden by my sideGave me a harp, and bade me sing,And touch the laughing silver string;But when I sang of human joyA sorrow wrapped each merry face,And, Patric! by your beard, they wept,Until one came, a tearful boy;“A sadder creature never steppedThan this strange human bard,” he cried;And caught the silver harp away,And, weeping over the white strings, hurledIt down in a leaf-hid, hollow placeThat kept dim waters from the sky;And each one said with a long, long sigh,“O saddest harp in all the world,Sleep there till the moon and the stars die!”
And now still sad we came to whereA beautiful young man dreamed withinA house of wattles, clay, and skin;One hand upheld his beardless chin;And one a sceptre flashing outWild flames of red and gold and blue,Like to a merry wandering routOf dancers leaping in the air;And men and maidens knelt them thereAnd showed their eyes with teardrops dim,And with low murmurs prayed to him,And kissed the sceptre with red lips,And touched it with their finger-tips.
He held that flashing sceptre up.“Joy drowns the twilight in the dew,And fills with stars night’s purple cup,And wakes the sluggard seeds of corn,And stirs the young kid’s budding hornAnd makes the infant ferns unwrap,And for the peewit paints his cap,And rolls along the unwieldy sun,And makes the little planets run:And if joy were not on the earth,There were an end of change and birth,And earth and heaven and hell would die,And in some gloomy barrow lieFolded like a frozen fly;Then mock at Death and Time with glancesAnd waving arms and wandering dances.
“Men’s hearts of old were drops of flameThat from the saffron morning came,Or drops of silver joy that fellOut of the moon’s pale twisted shell;But now hearts cry that hearts are slaves,And toss and turn in narrow caves;But here there is nor law nor rule,Nor have hands held a weary tool;And here there is nor Change nor Death,But only kind and merry breath,For joy is God and God is joy.”With one long glance on maid and boyAnd the pale blossom of the moon,He fell into a Druid swoon.
And in a wild and sudden danceWe mocked at Time and Fate and ChanceAnd swept out of the wattled hallAnd came to where the dewdrops fallAmong the foamdrops of the sea,And there we hushed the revelry;And, gathering on our brows a frown,Bent all our swaying bodies down,And to the waves that glimmer byThat slooping green De Danaan sodSang, “God is joy and joy is God.And things that have grown sad are wicked,And things that fear the dawn of the morrowOr the gray wandering osprey Sorrow.”
We danced to where in the winding thicketThe damask roses, bloom on bloom,Like crimson meteors hang in the gloom,And bending over them softly said,Bending over them in the danceWith a swift and friendly glanceFrom dewy eyes: “Upon the deadFall the leaves of other roses,On the dead dim earth encloses:But never, never on our graves,Heaped beside the glimmering waves,Shall fall the leaves of damask roses.For neither Death nor Change comes near us,And all listless hours fear us,And we fear no dawning morrow,Nor the gray wandering osprey Sorrow.”
The dance wound through the windless woods:The ever-summered solitudes;Until the tossing arms grew stillUpon the woody central hill;And, gathered in a panting band,We flung on high each waving hand,And sang unto the starry broods.In our raised eyes there flashed a glowOf milky brightness to and froAs thus our song arose: “You stars,Across your wandering ruby carsShake the loose reins: you slaves of God,He rules you with an iron rod,He holds you with an iron bond,Each one woven to the other,Each one woven to his brotherLike bubbles in a frozen pond;But we in a lonely land abideUnchainable as the dim tide,With hearts that know nor law nor rule,And hands that hold no wearisome tool,Folded in love that fears no morrow,Nor the grey wandering osprey Sorrow.”
O Patric! for a hundred yearsI chased upon that woody shoreThe deer, the badger, and the boar.O Patric! for a hundred yearsAt evening on the glimmering sands,Beside the piled-up hunting spears,These now outworn and withered handsWrestled among the island bands.O Patric! for a hundred yearsWe went a-fishing in long boatsWith bending sterns and bending bows,And carven figures on their prowsOf bitterns and fish-eating stoats.O Patric! for a hundred yearsThe gentle Niam was my wife;But now two things devour my life;The things that most of all I hate;Fasting and prayers.
S. Patric
Tell on.
Usheen
Yes, yes.For these were ancient Oisin’s fate,Loosed long ago from heaven’s gate,For his last days to lie in wait.
When one day by the tide I stood,I found in that forgetfulnessOf dreamy foam a staff of woodFrom some dead warrior’s broken lance:I turned it in my hands; the stainsOf war were on it, and I wept,Remembering how the Fenians steppedAlong the blood-bedabbled plains,Equal to good or grievous chance:Thereon young Niam softly cameAnd caught my hands, but spake no wordSave only many times my name,In murmurs, like a frighted bird.We passed by woods, and lawns of clover,And found the horse and bridled him,For we knew well the old was over.I heard one say, “his eyes grow dimWith all the ancient sorrow of men”;And wrapped in dreams rode out againWith hoofs of the pale findrinnyOver the glimmering purple sea:Under the golden evening light.The immortals moved among the fountainsBy rivers and the woods’ old night;Some danced like shadows on the mountains,Some wandered ever hand in hand;Or sat in dreams on the pale strand,Each forehead like an obscure starBent down above each hooked knee,And sang, and with a dreamy gazeWatched where the sun in a saffron blazeWas slumbering half in the sea ways;And, as they sang, the painted birdsKept time with their bright wings and feet;Like drops of honey came their words,But fainter than a young lamb’s bleat.
“An old man stirs the fire to blaze,In the house of a child, of a friend, of a brother;He has over-lingered his welcome; the days,Grown desolate, whisper and sigh to each other;He hears the storm in the chimney above,And bends to the fire and shakes with the cold,While his heart still dreams of battle and love,And the cry of the hounds on the hills of old.
“But we are apart in the grassy places,Where care cannot trouble the least of our days,Or the softness of youth be gone from our faces,Or love’s first tenderness die in our gaze.The hare grows old as she plays in the sunAnd gazes around her with eyes of brightness;Before the swift things that she dreamed of were doneShe limps along in an aged whiteness;A storm of birds in the Asian treesLike tulips in the air a-winging,And the gentle waves of the summer seas,That raise their heads and wander singing,Must murmur at last ‘Unjust, unjust’;And ‘my speed is a weariness,’ falters the mouse,And the kingfisher turns to a ball of dust,And the roof falls in of his tunnelled house,But the love-dew dims our eyes till the dayWhen God shall come from the sea with a sighAnd bid the stars drop down from the sky,And the moon like a pale rose wither away.”
Book II
Usheen
Now, man of croziers, shadows called our namesAnd then away, away, like whirling flames;And now fled by, mist-covered, without sound,The youth and lady and the deer and hound;“Gaze no more on the phantoms,” Niam said,And kissed my eyes, and, swaying her bright headAnd her bright body, sang of faery and manBefore God was or my old line began;Wars shadowy, vast, exultant; faeries of oldWho wedded men with rings of Druid gold;And how those lovers never turn their eyesUpon the life that fades and flickers and dies,But love and kiss on dim shores far awayRolled round with music of the sighing spray:But sang no more, as when, like a brown beeThat has drunk full, she crossed the misty seaWith me in her white arms a hundred yearsBefore this day; for now the fall of tearsTroubled her song.I do not know if daysOr hours passed by, yet hold the morning raysShone many times among the glimmering flowersWoven in her hair, before dark towersRose in the darkness, and the white surf gleamedAbout them; and the horse of faery screamedAnd shivered, knowing the Isle of many Fears,Nor ceased until white Niam stroked his earsAnd named him by sweet names.A foaming tideWhitened afar with surge, fan-formed and wide,Burst from a great door marred by many a blowFrom mace and sword and pole-axe, long agoWhen gods and giants warred. We rode betweenThe seaweed-covered pillars; and the greenAnd surging phosphorus alone gave lightOn our dark pathway, till a countless flightOf moonlit steps glimmered; and left and rightDark statues glimmered over the pale tideUpon dark thrones. Between the lids of oneThe imaged meteors had flashed and runAnd had disported in the stilly jet,And the fixed stars had dawned and shone and set,Since God made Time and Death and Sleep: the otherStretched his long arm to where, a misty smother,The stream churned, churned, and churned—his lips apart,As though he told his never-slumbering heartOf every foamdrop on its misty way.Tying the horse to his vast foot that layHalf in the unvesselled sea, we climbed the stairsAnd climbed so long, I thought the last steps wereHung from the morning star; when these mild wordsFanned the delighted air like wings of birds:“My brothers spring out of their beds at morn,A-murmur like young partridge: with loud hornThey chase the noontide deer;And when the dew-drowned stars hang in the airLook to long fishing-lines, or point and pareAn ashen hunting spear.
“O sigh, O fluttering sigh, be kind to me;Flutter along the froth lips of the sea,And shore, the froth lips wet:And stay a little while, and bid them weep:Ah, touch their blue-veined eyelids if they sleep,And shake their coverlet.
“When you have told how I weep endlessly,Flutter along the froth lips of the seaAnd home to me again,And in the shadow of my hair lie hid,And tell that you found a man unbid,The saddest of all men.”
A lady with soft eyes like funeral tapers,And face that seemed wrought out of moonlit vapours,And a sad mouth, that fear made tremulousAs any ruddy moth, looked down on us;And she with a wave-rusted chain was tiedTo two old eagles, full of ancient pride,That with dim eyeballs stood on either side.Few feathers were on their dishevelled wings,For their dim minds were with the ancient things.
“I bring deliverance,” pearl-pale Niam said.
“Neither the living, nor the unlabouring dead,Nor the high gods who never lived, may fightMy enemy and hope; demons for frightJabber and scream about him in the night;For he is strong and crafty as the seasThat sprang under the Seven Hazel Trees,And I must needs endure and hate and weep.Until the gods and demons drop asleep,Hearing Aed touch the mournful strings of gold.”
“Is he so dreadful?”
“Be not over-bold,But, fly while still you may.”
And thereon I:“This demon shall be battered till he die,And his loose bulk be thrown in the loud tide.”
“Flee from him,” pearl-pale Niam weeping cried,“For all men flee the demons”; but moved notMy angry king-remembering soul one jot;There was no mightier soul of Heber’s line;Now it is old and mouse-like. For a signI burst the chain: still earless, nerveless, blind,Wrapped in the things of the unhuman mind,In some dim memory or ancient moodStill earless, nerveless, blind, the eagles stood.And then we climbed the stair to a high door;A hundred horsemen on the basalt floorBeneath had paced content: we held our wayAnd stood within: clothed in a misty rayI saw a foam-white seagull drift and floatUnder the roof, and with a straining throatShouted, and hailed him: he hung there a star.For no man’s cry shall ever mount so far;Not even your God could have thrown down that hall;Stabling His unloosed lightnings in their stall,He had sat down and sighed with cumbered heart,As though His hour were come.
We sought the partThat was most distant from the door; green slimeMade the way slippery, and time on timeShowed prints of sea-born scales, while down through itThe captive’s journeys to and fro were writLike a small river, and where feet touched, cameA momentary gleam of phosphorus flame.Under the deepest shadows of the hallThat maiden found a ring hung on the wall,And in the ring a torch, and with its flareMaking a world about her in the air,Passed under the dim doorway, out of sightAnd came again, holding a second lightBurning between her fingers, and in mineLaid it and sighed: I held a sword whose shineNo centuries could dim, and a word ranThereon in Ogham letters, “Mananan”;That sea-god’s name, who in a deep contentSprang dripping, and, with captive demons sentOut of the seven-fold seas, built the dark hallRooted in foam and clouds, and cried to allThe mightier masters of a mightier race;And at his cry there came no milk-pale faceUnder a crown of thorns and dark with blood,But only exultant faces.
Niam stoodWith bowed head, trembling when the white blade shone,But she whose hours of tenderness were goneHad neither hope nor fear. I bade them hideUnder the shadows till the tumults diedOf the loud crashing and earth-shaking fight,Lest they should look upon some dreadful sight,And thrust the torch between the slimy flags.A dome made out of endless carven jags,Where shadowy face flowed into shadowy face,Looked down on me; and in the self-same placeI waited hour by hour, and the high dome,Windowless, pillarless, multitudinous homeOf faces, waited; and the leisured gazeWas loaded with the memory of daysBuried and mighty. When through the great doorThe dawn came in, and glimmered on the floorWith a pale light, I journeyed round the hallAnd found a door deep sunken in the wall,The least of doors; beyond on a dim plainA little runnel made a bubbling strain,And on the runnel’s stony and bare edgeA dusky demon dry as a withered sedgeSwayed, crooning to himself an unknown tongue:In a sad revelry he sang and swungBacchant and mournful, passing to and froHis hand along the runnel’s side, as thoughThe flowers still grew there: far on the sea’s wasteShaking and waving, vapour vapour chased,While high frail cloudlets, fed with a green light,Like drifts of leaves, immovable and bright,Hung in the passionate dawn. He slowly turned:A demon’s leisure: eyes, first white, now burnedLike wings of kingfishers; and he aroseBarking. We trampled up and down with blowsOf sword and brazen battle-axe, while dayGave to high noon and noon to night gave wayAnd when he knew the sword of ManananAmid the shades of night, he changed and ranThrough many shapes; I lunged at the smooth throatOf a great eel; it changed, and I but smoteA fir-tree roaring in its leafless top:And thereupon I drew the livid chopOf a drowned dripping body to my breast;Horror from horror grew; but when the westHad surged up in a plumy fire, I draveThrough heart and spine; and cast him in the waveLest Niam shudder.
Full of hope and dreadThose two came carrying wine and meat and bread,And healed my wounds with unguents out of flowersThat feed white moths by some De Danaan shrine:Then in that hall, lit by the dim sea shine,We lay on skins of otters, and drank wine,Brewed by the sea-gods, from huge cups that layUpon the lips of sea-gods in their day;And then on heaped-up skins of otters slept.And when the sun once more in saffron stepped,Rolling his flagrant wheel out of the deep,We sang the loves and angers without sleep,And all the exultant labours of the strong.But now the lying clerics murder songWith barren words and flatteries of the weak.In what land do the powerless turn the beakOf ravening Sorrow, or the hand of Wrath?For all your croziers, they have left the pathAnd wander in the storms and clinging snows,Hopeless for ever: ancient Usheen knows,For he is weak and poor and blind, and liesOn the anvil of the world.
S. Patric
Be still: the skiesAre choked with thunder, lightning, and fierce wind,For God has heard, and speaks His angry mind;Go cast your body on the stones and pray,For He has wrought midnight and dawn and day.
Usheen
Saint, do you weep? I hear amid the thunderThe Fenian horses; armour torn asunder;Laughter and cries. The armies clash and shock;And now the daylight-darkening ravens flock.Cease, cease, oh mournful, laughing Fenian horn!
We feasted for three days. On the fourth mornI found, dropping sea foam on the wide stair,And hung with slime, and whispering in his hair,That demon dull and unsubduable;And once more to a day-long battle fell,And at the sundown threw him in the surge,To lie until the fourth morn saw emergeHis new healed shape; and for a hundred yearsSo warred, so feasted, with nor dreams nor fears,Nor languor nor fatigue; an endless feast,An endless war.
The hundred years had ceased;I stood upon the stair; the surges boreA beech bough to me, and my heart grew sore,Remembering how I stood by white-haired FinnUnder a beech at Allen and heard the thinOutcry of bats.
And then young Niam cameHolding that horse, and sadly called my name.I mounted, and we passed over the loneAnd drifting greyness, while this monotone,Surly and distant, mixed inseparablyInto the clangour of the wind and sea.
“I hear my soul drop down into decay,And Mananan’s dark tower, stone by stone,Gather sea slime and fall the seaward way,And the moon goad the waters night and day,That all be overthrown.
“But till the moon has taken all, I wageWar on the mightiest men under the skies,And they have fallen or fled, age after age.Light is man’s love, and lighter is man’s rage;His purpose drifts and dies.”
And then lost Niam murmured, “Love, we goTo the Island of Forgetfulness, for lo!The Islands of Dancing and of VictoriesAre empty of all power.”
“And which of theseIs the Island of Content?”
“None know,” she said;And on my bosom laid her weeping head.
Book III
Usheen
Fled foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke,High as the saddle girth, covering away from our glances the tide;And those that fled, and that followed, from the foam-pale distance broke;The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their faces, and sighed.
I mused on the chase with the Fenians, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair,And never a song sang Niam, and over my finger-tipsCame now the sliding of tears and sweeping of mist-cold hair,And now the warmth of sighs, and after the quiver of lips.
Were we days long or hours long in riding, when rolled in a grisly peace,An isle lay level before us, with dripping hazel and oak?And we stood on a sea’s edge we saw not; for whiter than new-washed fleeceFled foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke.
And we rode on the plains of the sea’s edge; the sea’s edge barren and grey,Grey sand on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten awayLike an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.
But the trees grew taller and closer, immense in their wrinkling bark;Dropping; a murmurous dropping; old silence and that one sound;For no live creatures lived there, no weasels moved in the dark:Long sighs arose in our spirits, beneath us bubbled the ground.
And the ears of the horse went sinking away in the hollow night,For, as drift from a sailor slow drowning the gleams of the world and the sun,Ceased on our hands and our faces, on hazel and oak leaf, the light,And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the world was one.
Till the horse gave a whinny; for, cumbrous with stems of the hazel and oak,A valley flowed down from his hoofs, and there in the long grass lay,Under the starlight and shadow, a monstrous slumbering folk,Their naked and gleaming bodies poured out and heaped in the way.
And by them were arrow and war-axe, arrow and shield and blade;And dew-blanched horns, in whose hollow a child of three years oldCould sleep on a couch of rushes, and all inwrought and inlaid,And more comely than man can make them with bronze and silver and gold.
And each of the huge white creatures was huger than fourscore men;The tops of their ears were feathered, their hands were the claws of birds,And, shaking the plumes of the grasses and the leaves of the mural glen,The breathing came from those bodies, long-warless, grown whiter than curds.
The wood was so spacious above them, that He who had stars for His flocksCould fondle the leaves with His fingers, nor go from His dew-cumbered skies;So long were they sleeping, the owls had builded their nests in their locks,Filling the fibrous dimness with long generations of eyes.
And over the limbs and the valley the slow owls wandered and came,Now in a place of star-fire, and now in a shadow place wide:And the chief of the huge white creatures, his knees in the soft star-flame,Lay loose in a place of shadow: we drew the reins by his side.
Golden the nails of his bird-claws, flung loosely along the dim ground;In one was a branch soft-shining with bells more many than sighsIn midst of an old man’s bosom; owls ruffling and pacing around,Sidled their bodies against him, filling the shade with their eyes.
And my gaze was thronged with the sleepers; no, not since the world began,In realms where the handsome were many, nor in glamours by demons flung,Have faces alive with such beauty been known to the salt eye of man,Yet weary with passions that faded when the sevenfold seas were young.
And I gazed on the bell-branch, sleep’s forebear, far sung by the Sennachies.I saw how those slumberers, grown weary, there camping in grasses deep,Of wars with the wide world and pacing the shores of the wandering seas,Laid hands on the bell-branch and swayed it, and fed of unhuman sleep.
Snatching the horn of Niam, I blew a long lingering note.Came sound from those monstrous sleepers, a sound like the stirring of flies.He, shaking the fold of his lips, and heaving the pillar of his throat,Watched me with mournful wonder out of the wells of his eyes.
I cried, “Come out of the shadow, king of the nails of gold!And tell of your goodly household and the goodly works of your hands,That we may muse in the starlight and talk of the battles of old;Your questioner, Usheen, is worthy, he comes from the Fenian lands.”
Half open his eyes were, and held me, dull with the smoke of their dreams;His lips moved slowly in answer, no answer out of them came;Then he swayed in his fingers the bell-branch, slow dropping a sound in faint streamsSofter than snow-flakes in April and piercing the marrow like flame.
Wrapt in the wave of that music, with weariness more than of earth,The moil of my centuries filled me; and gone like a sea-covered stoneWere the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the memories of the whole of my mirth,And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.
In the roots of the grasses, the sorrels, I laid my body as low;And the pearl-pale Niam lay by me, her brow on the midst of my breast;And the horse was gone in the distance, and years after years ’gan flow;Square leaves of the ivy moved over us, binding us down to our rest.
And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot;How the fetlocks drip blood in the battle, when the fallen on fallen lie rolled;How the falconer follows the falcon in the weeds of the heron’s plot,And the names of the demons whose hammers made armour for Conhor of old.
And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot;That the spear-shaft is made out of ashwood, the shield out of ozier and hide;How the hammers spring on the anvil, on the spear-head’s burning spot,How the slow, blue-eyed oxen of Fin low sadly at evening tide.
But in dreams, mild man of the croziers, driving the dust with their throngs,Moved round me, of seamen or landsmen, all who are winter tales;Came by me the kings of the Red Branch, with roaring of laughter and songs,Or moved as they moved once, love-making or piercing the tempest with sails.
Came Blanid, Mac Nessa, tall Fergus who feastward of old time slunk,Cook Barach, the traitor; and warward, the spittle on his beard never dry,Dark Balor, as old as a forest, car borne, his mighty head sunkHelpless, men lifting the lids of his weary and death-making eye.
And by me, in soft red raiment, the Fenians moved in loud streams,And Grania, walking and smiling, sewed with her needle of bone.So lived I and lived not, so wrought I and wrought not, with creatures of dreams,In a long iron sleep, as a fish in the water goes dumb as a stone.
At times our slumber was lightened. When the sun was on silver or gold;When brushed with the wings of the owls, in the dimness they love going by;When a glow-worm was green on a grass leaf, lured from his lair in the mould;Half-wakening, we lifted our eyelids, and gazed on the grass with a sigh.
So watched I when, man of the croziers, at the heel of a century fell,Weak, in the midst of the meadow, from his miles in the midst of the air,A starling like them that forgathered ’neath a moon waking white as a shellWhen the Fenians made foray at morning with Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair.
I awoke: the strange horse without summons out of the distance ran,Thrusting his nose to my shoulder; he knew in his bosom deepThat once more moved in my bosom the ancient sadness of man,And that I would leave the immortals, their dimness, their dews dropping sleep.
O had you seen beautiful Niam grow white as the waters are white,Lord of the croziers, you even had lifted your hands and wept:But, the bird in my fingers, I mounted, remembering alone that delightOf twilight and slumber were gone, and that hoofs impatiently stepped.
I cried, “O Niam! O white one! if only a twelve-houred day,I must gaze on the beard of Finn, and move where the old men and youngIn 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 thoughtWatched her those seamless faces from the valley’s glimmering girth;As she murmured, “O wandering Usheen, the strength of the bell-branch is naught,For there moves alive in your fingers the fluttering sadness of earth.
“Then go through the lands in the saddle and see what the mortals do,And softly come to your Niam over the tops of the tide;But weep for your Niam, O Usheen, weep; for if only your shoeBrush lightly as haymouse earth’s pebbles, you will come no more to my side.
“O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?”I saw from a distant saddle; from the earth she made her moan;“I would die like a small withered leaf in the autumn, for breast unto breastWe shall mingle no more, nor our gazes empty their sweetness lone.
“In the isles of the farthest seas where only the spirits come,Were the winds less soft than the breath of a pigeon who sleeps on her nest,Nor lost in the star-fires and odours the sound of the sea’s vague drum?O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?”
The wailing grew distant; I rode by the woods of the wrinkling bark,Where ever is murmurous dropping, old silence and that one sound;For no live creatures live there, no weasels move in the dark;In a reverie forgetful of all things, over the bubbling ground.
And I rode by the plains of the sea’s edge, where all is barren and grey,Grey sands on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away,Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.
And the winds made the sands on the sea’s edge turning and turning go,As my mind made the names of the Fenians. Far from the hazel and oak,I rode away on the surges, where, high as the saddle bow,Fled foam underneath me, and round me, a wandering and milky smoke.
Long fled the foam-flakes around me, the winds fled out of the vast,Snatching the bird in secret; nor knew I, embosomed apart,When they froze the cloth on my body like armour riveted fast,For Remembrance, lifting her leanness, keened in the gates of my heart.
Till fattening the winds of the morning, an odour of new-mown hayCame and my forehead fell low, and my tears like berries fell down;Later a sound came, half lost in the sound of a shore far away,From the great grass-barnacle calling, and later the shore-weeds brown.
If I were as I once was, the strong hoofs crushing the sand and the shells,Coming out of the sea as the dawn comes, a chaunt of love on my lips,Not coughing, my head on my knees, and praying, and wroth with the bells,I would leave no saint’s head on his body from Rachlin to Bera of ships.
Making way from the kindling surges, I rode on a bridle-pathMuch wondering to see upon all hands, of wattles and woodwork made,Your bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the rath,And a small and a feeble populace stooping with mattock and spade.
Or weeding or ploughing with faces a-shining with much-toil wet;While in this place and that place, with bodies unglorious their chieftains stood,Awaiting in patience the straw-death, croziered one, caught in your net:Went the laughter of scorn from my mouth like the roaring of wind in a wood.
And because I went by them so huge and so speedy with eyes so bright,Came after the hard gaze of youth, or an old man lifted his head:And I rode and I rode, and I cried out, “The Fenians hunt wolves in the night,So sleep they by daytime.” A voice cried, “The Fenians a long time are dead.”
A whitebeard stood hushed on the pathway, the flesh of his face as dried grass,And in folds round his eyes and his mouth, he sad as a child without milk;And the dreams of the islands were gone, and I knew how men sorrow and pass,And their hound, and their horse, and their love, and their eyes that glimmer like silk.
And wrapping my face in my hair, I murmured, “In old age they ceased”;And my tears were larger than berries, and I murmured, “Where white clouds lie spreadOn Crevroe or broad Knockfefin, with many of old they feastOn the floors of the gods.” He cried, “No, the gods a long time are dead.”
And lonely and longing for Niam, I shivered and turned me about,The heart in me longing to leap like a grasshopper into her heart;I turned and rode to the westward, and followed the sea’s old shoutTill I saw where Maive lies sleeping till starlight and midnight part.
And there at the foot of the mountain, two carried a sack full of sand,They bore it with staggering and sweating, but fell with their burden at length.Leaning down from the gem-studded saddle, I flung it five yards with my hand,With a sob for men waxing so weakly, a sob for the Fenians’ old strength.
The rest you have heard of, O croziered one; how, when divided the girth,I fell on the path, and the horse went away like a summer fly;And my years three hundred fell on me, and I rose and walked on the earth,A creeping old man, full of sleep, with the spittle on his beard never dry.
How the men of the sand-sack showed me a church with its belfry in air;Sorry place, where for swing of the war-axe in my dim eyes the crozier gleams;What place have Caolte and Conan, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair?Speak, you too are old with your memories, an old man surrounded with dreams.
S. Patric
Where the flesh of the footsole clingeth on the burning stones is their place;Where the demons whip them with wires on the burning stones of wide hell,Watching the blessed ones move far off, and the smile on God’s face,Between them a gateway of brass, and the howl of the angels who fell.
Usheen
Put the staff in my hands; for I go to the Fenians, O cleric, to chauntThe war-songs that roused them of old; they will rise, making clouds with their breathInnumerable, singing, exultant; the clay underneath them shall pant,And demons be broken in pieces, and trampled beneath them in death.
And demons afraid in their darkness; deep horror of eyes and of wings,Afraid their ears on the earth laid, shall listen and rise up and weep;Hearing the shaking of shields and the quiver of stretched bowstrings,Hearing Hell loud with a murmur, as shouting and mocking we sweep.
We will tear out the flaming stones, and batter the gateway of brassAnd enter, and none sayeth “No” when there enters the strongly armed guest;Make clean as a broom cleans, and march on as oxen move over young grass;Then feast, making converse of wars, and of old wounds, and turn to our rest.
S. Patric
On the flaming stones, without refuge, the limbs of the Fenians are tost;None war on the masters of Hell, who could break up the world in their rage;Kneel, Usheen, wear out the flags and pray for your soul that is lostThrough the demon love of its youth and its godless and passionate age.
Usheen
Ah, me! to be shaken with coughing and broken with old age and pain,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 hay-cock out on the flood, or 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.
Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.
In brief
SummaryAn old Fenian hero tells St Patrick of three centuries in fairyland.
Oisin, son of Finn, now old, bald and blind, tells St Patrick the story of his three hundred years among the immortals. Out hunting with the Fenians, he met Niam, a fairy princess who had fallen in love with his fame, and rode away with her over the sea. Book I takes them to an island of endless dancing and joy, Book II to an island where he fights a shape-changing demon for a hundred years, and Book III to an island of sleep where giants doze under a bell-branch. Each time, a scrap of the human world (a broken lance, a beech bough, a starling) wakes his old sadness. At last he rides home, finds the Fenians long dead and Ireland Christian, and falls from the horse into sudden old age. Patrick tells him his friends are in hell; Oisin chooses to join them there.
Lines to remember
You who are bent, and bald, and blind,
For joy is God and God is joy.
And dwell in the house of the Fenians, be they in flames or at feast.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 31Book I: The hunt
Patrick taunts the "bent, and bald, and blind" old man for his "dalliance with a demon thing". Oisin (spelt Usheen in this text) remembers the Fenian hunt with Caolte, Conan and Finn, past the cairn where "passionate Maive is stony still", and the "pearl-pale, high-born lady" they met on the shore, riding a horse bridled with findrinny.
Lines 32 to 131Book I: Niam's wooing
The lady is Niam, daughter of Aengus, and she has come to marry Oisin, whose fame the poets sang. She promises a land "Where broken faith has never been known", with a hundred hounds, robes, youths and maidens. He mounts behind her, the Fenians weep, and they ride "out from the human lands". His lament for his companions draws Patrick's rebuke.
Lines 132 to 246Book I: Island of dancing
They gallop over the sea past phantoms, a hornless deer and a white hound with "one red ear", to an island of trembling trees and birds. Laughing immortals in yellow silk lead them inland. When Oisin sings "of human joy" they weep, and a boy flings away the harp as the "saddest harp in all the world".
Lines 247 to 342Book I: Aengus's song
Aengus sits dreaming in a house of wattles, holding a flashing sceptre, and sings that joy drives all growth and change: "For joy is God and God is joy." The immortals dance through the woods, singing to the roses and the stars that they fear neither death nor "the grey wandering osprey Sorrow".
Lines 343 to 429Book I: The broken lance
The refrain "O Patric! for a hundred years" sums up a century of hunting, wrestling, fishing and marriage. Then a piece of "some dead warrior's broken lance" washes up, and he weeps for the Fenians. Niam knows the old life is over. As they ride on, the immortals sing that mortal things grow old while their own love lasts.
Lines 430 to 531Book II: The chained lady
Niam's songs are now troubled by tears. They reach dark towers in the surf, "the Isle of many Fears", and climb endless moonlit stairs past giant statues. A lady "with soft eyes like funeral tapers", chained to two ancient eagles, sings of her grief. Niam has brought Oisin to free her, and despite every warning he bursts the chain.
Lines 532 to 643Book II: Sword of Mananan
In the hall built by the sea-god Mananan, the lady brings Oisin a shining sword bearing the god's name. He fights the demon from dawn to night as it turns into an eel, a roaring fir tree and a drowned body, then throws it into the sea. His scorn for "the lying clerics" brings a thunderous warning from Patrick.
Lines 644 to 689Book II: Endless war
Every fourth morning the demon returns, healed, and for a hundred years Oisin lives in "an endless feast" of fighting. Then a beech bough floats up, reminding him of Finn at Allen, and Niam leads him away. The demon's chant says man's purpose "drifts and dies", and no one knows which island is "the Island of Content".
Lines 690 to 765Book III: The sleepers
The lines lengthen as they ride through milky foam to a grey, dripping island of hazel and oak where nothing lives. In a valley lie huge sleepers with bird claws, owls nesting in their hair. Their king sways a bell-branch, whose music drowns Oisin's memories, and he and Niam lie down under creeping ivy.
Lines 766 to 825Book III: The starling
For a century he forgets battle and craft, though heroes of legend drift through his dreams. Then a starling falls into the meadow, like the birds of old Fenian mornings, and "the ancient sadness of man" wakes in him. Niam, grown "white as the waters", lets him go, warning that if his foot touches earth he can never return.
Lines 826 to 889Book III: Home to Ireland
He rides back to find "bell-mounted churches", a small, stooping people, and a voice telling him "The Fenians a long time are dead." Near Maive's resting place he leans from the saddle to lift a sack of sand; the girth breaks, he falls, and three hundred years fall on him. Patrick answers that the Fenians burn in hell.
Lines 890 to 913Book III: Oisin's choice
Oisin imagines leading the Fenians to storm hell and batter its "gateway of brass". Patrick tells him to kneel and pray for his lost soul. The old man mourns his helpless age, throws down his prayer beads, "the chain of small stones", and chooses to join his companions, "be they in flames or at feast".
Themes
Dream and action
The poem sets the life of the Fenians, hunting, fighting and feasting, against the immortal islands. Each island offers one thing forever: joy in Book I, battle in Book II, sleep in Book III. None can hold him, because a scrap of the mortal world, a lance, a bough, a bird, wakes "the ancient sadness of man". Human life, with all its loss, proves stronger than paradise.
Pagan and Christian
The frame is a quarrel between Oisin and Patrick. The old hero hates "Fasting and prayers" and "the lying clerics"; Patrick answers with thunder and hell's "burning stones". Returning home, Oisin finds "bell-mounted churches" and a "small and a feeble populace". His final choice, to join the Fenians "be they in flames or at feast", puts loyalty and pride before salvation.
Time and age
Three hundred years pass as if in a dream ("I know not if days passed or hours"), and the poem opens and closes on an old man. The immortals sing of the hare that "grows old as she plays in the sun", but they never age themselves. When Oisin falls to earth, time strikes all at once: "my years three hundred fell on me".
Love
Niam's love runs through all three books. She chooses Oisin for his songs and battles, soothes him with song and "her white arms", and each time lets him go with deeper grief, until she grows "white as the waters are white". His love for her is real, but it cannot outweigh his longing for his own kind: two worlds that cannot join.
Context
This is Yeats's first long poem and the title poem of his first collection, The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems, published in January 1889. It is drawn from the Fenian tales of Finn and his warriors, in which Oisin, Finn's son, goes to the Land of Youth with Niam and returns centuries later to find St Patrick in Ireland. It stands first in the Narrative and Dramatic section of the collected poems.
Yeats revised the poem heavily. For Poems (1895) he reworked it as "The Wanderings of Usheen", revised it again in 1899, and changed "two or three pages" in 1912; the title became "Oisin" again from 1908. The text printed here keeps the spelling "Usheen" in most places. The dedication is to Edwin J. Ellis, the painter and poet with whom Yeats edited the works of William Blake.
The cairn of "passionate Maive" in line 18 is usually taken to be the great cairn on Knocknarea, near Sligo, traditionally Queen Maeve's grave. Late in life, in "The Circus Animals' Desertion", Yeats looked back on Oisin's three enchanted islands as the first of the dream images of his early work.
Form
Each book has its own music. Book I is in short lines of four beats, mostly rhyming couplets, quick and songlike. Book II moves to longer five-beat couplets, weightier for battle, with the chained lady's song in short six-line stanzas. Book III stretches to long, rolling lines of six or seven beats rhyming alternately, whose slow sway suits sleep, dream and the long ride home.
HEAVILY REVISED. 1889 first text; extensively revised for Poems (1895) as 'The Wanderings of Usheen', again in 1899, and 'two or three pages' changed in 1912 (Yeats's 1912 preface in Gutenberg 38877). Titled 'Oisin' again from 1908 (Gutenberg 49608) and in Collected Poems 1933.
