THE GREY ROCK
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Poets with whom I learned my trade,__Companions of the Cheshire Cheese,__Here's an old story I've re-made,__Imagining 'twould better please__Your ears than stories now in fashion,__Though you may think I waste my breath__Pretending that there can be passion__That has more life in it than death,__And though at bottling of your wine__The bow-legged Goban had no say;__The moral's yours because it's mine._ When cups went round at close of day--Is not that how good stories run?--Somewhere within some hollow hill,If books speak truth in Slievenamon,But let that be, the gods were stillAnd sleepy, having had their meal,And smoky torches made a glareOn painted pillars, on a dealOf fiddles and of flutes hung thereBy the ancient holy hands that brought themFrom murmuring Murias, on cups--Old Goban hammered them and wrought them,And put his pattern round their topsTo hold the wine they buy of him.But from the juice that made them wiseAll those had lifted up the dimImaginations of their eyes,For one that was like woman madeBefore their sleepy eyelids ranAnd trembling with her passion said,'Come out and dig for a dead man,Who's burrowing somewhere in the ground,And mock him to his face and thenHollo him on with horse and hound,For he is the worst of all dead men.' _We should be dazed and terror struck,__If we but saw in dreams that room,__Those wine-drenched eyes, and curse our luck__That emptied all our days to come.__I knew a woman none could please,__Because she dreamed when but a child__Of men and women made like these;__And after, when her blood ran wild,__Had ravelled her own story out,__And said, 'In two or in three years__I need must marry some poor lout,'__And having said it burst in tears.__Since, tavern comrades, you have died,__Maybe your images have stood,__Mere bone and muscle thrown aside,__Before that roomful or as good.__You had to face your ends when young--__'Twas wine or women, or some curse--__But never made a poorer song__That you might have a heavier purse,__Nor gave loud service to a cause__That you might have a troop of friends.__You kept the Muses' sterner laws,__And unrepenting faced your ends,__And therefore earned the right--and yet__Dowson and Johnson most I praise--__To troop with those the world's forgot,__And copy their proud steady gaze._ 'The Danish troop was driven outBetween the dawn and dusk,' she said;'Although the event was long in doubt,Although the King of Ireland's deadAnd half the kings, before sundownAll was accomplished.' 'When this dayMurrough, the King of Ireland's son,Foot after foot was giving way,He and his best troops back to backHad perished there, but the Danes ran,Stricken with panic from the attack,The shouting of an unseen man;And being thankful Murrough found,Led by a footsole dipped in bloodThat had made prints upon the ground,Where by old thorn trees that man stood;And though when he gazed here and there,He had but gazed on thorn trees, spoke,"Who is the friend that seems but airAnd yet could give so fine a stroke?"Thereon a young man met his eye,Who said, "Because she held me inHer love, and would not have me die,Rock-nurtured Aoife took a pin,And pushing it into my shirt,Promised that for a pin's sake,No man should see to do me hurt;But there it's gone; I will not takeThe fortune that had been my shameSeeing, King's son, what wounds you have."'Twas roundly spoke, but when night cameHe had betrayed me to his grave,For he and the King's son were dead.I'd promised him two hundred years,And when for all I'd done or said--And these immortal eyes shed tears--He claimed his country's need was most,I'd save his life, yet for the sakeOf a new friend he has turned a ghost.What does he care if my heart break?I call for spade and horse and houndThat we may harry him.' ThereonShe cast herself upon the groundAnd rent her clothes and made her moan:'Why are they faithless when their mightIs from the holy shades that roveThe grey rock and the windy light?Why should the faithfullest heart most loveThe bitter sweetness of false faces?Why must the lasting love what passes,Why are the gods by men betrayed!' But thereon every god stood upWith a slow smile and without sound,And stretching forth his arm and cupTo where she moaned upon the ground,Suddenly drenched her to the skin;And she with Goban's wine adrip,No more remembering what had been,Stared at the gods with laughing lip. _I have kept my faith, though faith was tried,__To that rock-born, rock-wandering foot,__And the world's altered since you died,__And I am in no good repute__With the loud host before the sea,__That think sword strokes were better meant__Than lover's music--let that be,__So that the wandering foot's content._
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