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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Legends of Saint Patrick, by Aubrey de Vere
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+Title: The Legends of Saint Patrick
+
+Author: Aubrey de Vere
+
+Release Date: December, 2004  [EBook #7165]
+[This file was first posted on March 18, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE LEGENDS OF SAINT PATRICK ***
+
+
+
+
+This etext was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEGENDS OF SAINT PATRICK BY
+AUBREY DE VERE, LL.D.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+INTRODUCTION BY HENRY MORLEY.
+
+SAINT PATRICK--FROM "ENGLISH WRITERS," BY HENRY MORLEY.
+
+PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR.
+
+POEMS:-
+THE BAPTISM OF SAINT PATRICK.
+THE DISBELIEF OF MILCHO.
+SAINT PATRICK AT TARA.
+SAINT PATRICK AND THE TWO PRINCESSES.
+SAINT PATRICK AND THE CHILDREN OF FOCHLUT WOOD.
+SAINT PATRICK AND KING LAEGHAIRE.
+SAINT PATRICK AND THE IMPOSTOR.
+SAINT PATRICK AT CASHEL.
+SAINT PATRICK AND THE CHILDLESS MOTHER.
+SAINT PATRICK AT THE FEAST OF KNOCK CAE.
+SAINT PATRICK AND KING EOCHAID.
+SAINT PATRICK AND THE FOUNDING OF ARMAGH CATHEDRAL.
+THE ARRAIGNMENT OF SAINT PATRICK.
+THE STRIVING OF SAINT PATRICK ON MOUNT CRUACHAN.
+EPILOGUE.  THE CONFESSION OF SAINT PATRICK.
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION BY HENRY MORLEY.
+
+Once more our readers are indebted to a living poet for wide
+circulation of a volume of delightful verse.  The name of Aubrey de
+Vere is the more pleasantly familiar because its association with
+our highest literature has descended from father to son.  In 1822,
+sixty-seven years ago, Sir Aubrey de Vere, of Curragh Chase, by
+Adare, in the county of Limerick--then thirty-four years old--first
+made his mark with a dramatic poem upon "Julian the Apostate."  In
+1842 Sir Aubrey published Sonnets, which his friend Wordsworth
+described as "the most perfect of our age;" and in the year of his
+death he completed a dramatic poem upon "Mary Tudor," published in
+the next year, 1847, with the "Lamentation of Ireland, and other
+Poems."  Sir Aubrey de Vere's "Mary Tudor" should be read by all who
+have read Tennyson's play on the same subject.
+
+The gift of genius passed from Sir Aubrey to his third son, Aubrey
+Thomas de Vere, who was born in 1814, and through a long life has
+put into music only noble thoughts associated with the love of God
+and man, and of his native land.  His first work, published forty-
+seven years ago, was a lyrical piece, in which he gave his sympathy
+to devout and persecuted men whose ways of thought were not his own.
+Aubrey de Vere's poems have been from time to time revised by
+himself, and they were in 1884 finally collected into three volumes,
+published by Messrs. Kegan Paul.  Left free to choose from among
+their various contents, I have taken this little book of "Legends of
+St. Patrick," first published in 1872, but in so doing I have
+unwillingly left many a piece that would please many a reader.
+
+They are not, however, inaccessible.  Of the three volumes of
+collected works, each may be had separately, and is complete in
+itself.  The first contains "The Search after Proserpine, and other
+Poems--Classical and Meditative."  The second contains the "Legends
+of St. Patrick, and Legends of Ireland's Heroic Age," including a
+version of the "Tain Bo."  The third contains two plays, "Alexander
+the Great," "St. Thomas of Canterbury," and other Poems.
+
+For the convenience of some readers, the following extract from the
+second volume of my "English Writers," may serve as a prosaic
+summary of what is actually known about St. Patrick.
+                                           H. M.
+
+
+
+
+ST. PATRICK.
+
+FROM "ENGLISH WRITERS."
+
+The birth of St. Patrick, Apostle and Saint of Ireland, has been
+generally placed in the latter half of the fourth century; and he is
+said to have died at the age of a hundred and twenty.  As he died in
+the year 493--and we may admit that he was then a very old man--if
+we may say that he reached the age of eighty-eight, we place his
+birth in the year 405.  We may reasonably believe, therefore, that
+he was born in the early part of the fifth century.  His birthplace,
+now known as Kilpatrick, was at the junction of the Levin with the
+Clyde, in what is now the county of Dumbarton.  His baptismal name
+was Succath.  His father was Calphurnius, a deacon, son of Potitus,
+who was a priest.  His mother's name was Conchessa, whose family may
+have belonged to Gaul, and who may thus have been, as it is said she
+was, of the kindred of St. Martin of Tours; for there is a tradition
+that she was with Calphurnius as a slave before he married her.
+Since Eusebius spoke of three bishops from Britain at the Council of
+Arles, Succath, known afterwards in missionary life by his name in
+religion, Patricius (pater civium), might very reasonably be a
+deacon's son.
+
+In his early years Succath was at home by the Clyde, and he speaks
+of himself as not having been obedient to the teaching of the
+clergy.  When he was sixteen years old he, with two of his sisters
+and other of his countrymen, was seized by a band of Irish pirates
+that made descent on the shore of the Clyde and carried him off to
+slavery.  His sisters were taken to another part of the island, and
+he was sold to Milcho MacCuboin in the north, whom he served for six
+or seven years, so learning to speak the language of the country,
+while keeping his master's sheep by the Mountain of Slieve Miss.
+Thoughts of home and of its Christian life made the youth feel the
+heathenism that was about him; his exile seemed to him a punishment
+for boyish indifference; and during the years when young enthusiasm
+looks out upon life with new sense of a man's power--growing for
+man's work that is to do--Succath became filled with religious zeal.
+
+Three Latin pieces are ascribed to St. Patrick:  a "Confession,"
+which is in the Book of Armagh, and in three other manuscripts;
+{10a} a letter to Coroticus, and a few "Dieta Patricii," which are
+also in the Book of Armagh. {10b}  There is no strong reason for
+questioning the authenticity of the "Confession," which is in
+unpolished Latin, the writer calling himself "indoctus,
+rusticissimus, imperitus," and it is full of a deep religious
+feeling.  It is concerned rather with the inner than the outer life,
+but includes references to the early days of trial by which
+Succath's whole heart was turned to God.  He says, "After I came
+into Ireland I pastured sheep daily, and prayed many times a day.
+The love and fear of God, and faith and spirit, wrought in me more
+and more, so that in one day I reached to a hundred prayers, and in
+the night almost as many, and stayed in the woods and on the
+mountains, and was urged to prayer before the dawn, in snow, in
+frost, in rain, and took no harm, nor, I think, was there any sloth
+in me.  And there one night I heard a voice in a dream saying to me,
+'Thou hast well fasted; thou shalt go back soon to thine own land;'
+and again after a little while, 'Behold! thy ship is ready.'"  In
+all this there is the passionate longing of an ardent mind for home
+and Heaven.
+
+At the age of twenty-two Succath fled from his slavery to a vessel
+of which the master first refused and finally consented to take him
+on board.  He and the sailors were then cast by a storm upon a
+desert shore of Britain, possibly upon some region laid waste by
+ravages from over sea.  Having at last made his way back, by a sea
+passage, to his home on the Clyde, Succath was after a time captured
+again, but remained captive only for two months, and went back home.
+Then the zeal for his Master's service made him feel like the
+Seafarer in the Anglo-Saxon poem; and all the traditions of his home
+would have accorded with the rise of the resolve to cross the sea,
+and to spread Christ's teaching in what had been the land of his
+captivity.
+
+There were already centres of Christian work in Ireland, where
+devoted men were labouring and drew a few into their fellowship.
+Succath aimed at the gathering of all these scattered forces, by a
+movement that should carry with it the whole people.  He first
+prepared himself by giving about four years to study of the
+Scriptures at Auxerre, under Germanus, and then went to Rome, under
+the conduct of a priest, Segetius, and probably with letters from
+Germanus to Pope Celestine.  Whether he received his orders from the
+Pope seems doubtful; but the evidence is strong that Celestine sent
+him on his Irish mission.  Succath left Rome, passed through North
+Italy and Gaul, till he met on his way two followers of Palladius,
+Augustinus and Benedictus, who told him of their master's failure,
+and of his death at Fordun.  Succath then obtained consecration from
+Amathus, a neighbouring bishop, and as Patricius, went straight to
+Ireland.  He landed near the town of Wicklow, by the estuary of the
+River Varty, which had been the landing-place of Palladius.  In that
+region he was, like Palladius, opposed; but he made some
+conversions, and advanced with his work northward that he might
+reach the home of his old master, Milcho, and pay him the purchase-
+money of his stolen freedom.  But Milcho, it is said, burnt himself
+and his goods rather than bear the shame of submission to the
+growing power of his former slave.
+
+St. Patrick addressed the ruling classes, who could bring with them
+their followers, and he joined tact with his zeal; respecting
+ancient prejudices, opposing nothing that was not directly hostile
+to the spirit of Christianity, and handling skilfully the chiefs
+with whom he had to deal.  An early convert--Dichu MacTrighim--was a
+chief with influential connections, who gave the ground for the
+religious house now known as Saul.  This chief satisfied so well the
+inquiries of Laeghaire, son of Niall, King of Erin, concerning the
+stranger's movements, that St. Patrick took ship for the mouth of
+the Boyne, and made his way straight to the king himself.  The
+result of his energy was that he met successfully all the opposition
+of those who were concerned in the maintenance of old heathen
+worship, and brought King Laeghaire to his side.
+
+Then Laeghaire resolved that the old laws of the country as
+established by the judges, whose order was named Brehon, should be
+revised, and brought into accord with the new teaching.  So the
+Brehon laws of Ireland were revised, with St. Patrick's assistance,
+and there were no ancient customs broken or altered, except those
+that could not be harmonised with Christian teaching.  The good
+sense of St. Patrick enabled this great work to be done without
+offence to the people.  The collection of laws thus made by the
+chief lawyers of the time, with the assistance of St. Patrick, is
+known as the "Senchus Mor," and, says an old poem -
+
+     "Laeghaire, Corc Dairi, the brave;
+      Patrick, Beuen, Cairnech, the just;
+      Rossa, Dubtach, Fergus, the wise;
+      These are the nine pillars of the Senchus Mor."
+
+This body of laws, traditions, and treatises on law is found in no
+manuscript of a date earlier than the fourteenth century.  It
+includes, therefore, much that is of later date than the fifth
+century.
+
+St. Patrick's greatest energies are said to have been put forth in
+Ulster and Leinster.  Among the churches or religious communities
+founded by him in Ulster was that of Armagh.  If he was born about
+the year 405, when he was carried to Ireland as a prisoner at the
+age of sixteen the date would have been 421.  His age would have
+been twenty-two when he escaped, after six or seven years of
+captivity, and the date 427.  A year at home, and four years with
+Germanus at Auxerre, would bring him to the age of twenty-seven, and
+the year 432, when he began his great endeavour to put Christianity
+into the main body of the Irish people.  That work filled all the
+rest of his life, which was long.  If we accept the statement, in
+which all the old records agree, that the time of Patrick's labour
+in Ireland was not less than sixty years; sixty years bring him to
+the age of eighty-eight in the year 493.  And in that year he died.
+
+The "Letter to Coroticus," ascribed to St. Patrick, is addressed to
+a petty king of Brittany who persecuted Christians, and was meant
+for the encouragement of Christian soldiers who served under him.
+It may, probably, be regarded as authentic.  The mass of legend
+woven into the life of the great missionary lies outside this piece
+and the "Confession."  The "Confession" only expresses heights and
+depths of religious feeling haunted by impressions and dreams,
+through which, to the fervid nature out of which they sprang heaven
+seemed to speak.  St. Patrick did not attack heresies among the
+Christians; he preached to those who were not Christians the
+Christian faith and practice.  His great influence was not that of a
+writer, but of a speaker.  He must have been an orator, profoundly
+earnest, who could put his soul into his voice; and, when his words
+bred deeds, conquered all difficulties in the way of action with
+right feeling and good sense.
+                                         HENRY MORLEY.
+
+
+
+
+                         TO THE MEMORY
+                               OF
+                           WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO "THE LEGENDS OF SAINT PATRICK."
+
+The ancient records of Ireland abound in legends respecting the
+greatest man and the greatest benefactor that ever trod her soil;
+and of these the earlier are at once the more authentic and the
+nobler.  Not a few have a character of the sublime; many are
+pathetic; some have a profound meaning under a strange disguise; but
+their predominant character is their brightness and gladsomeness.  A
+large tract of Irish history is dark:  but the time of Saint
+Patrick, and the three centuries which succeeded it, were her time
+of joy.  That chronicle is a song of gratitude and hope, as befits
+the story of a nation's conversion to Christianity, and in it the
+bird and the brook blend their carols with those of angels and of
+men.  It was otherwise with the later legends connecting Ossian with
+Saint Patrick.  A poet once remarked, while studying the frescoes of
+Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel, that the Sibyls are always
+sad, while the Prophets alternated with them are joyous.  In the
+legends of the Patrician Cycle the chief-loving old Bard is ever
+mournful, for his face is turned to the past glories of his country;
+while the Saint is always bright, because his eyes are set on to the
+glory that has no end.
+
+These legends are to be found chiefly in several very ancient lives
+of Saint Patrick, the most valuable of which is the "Tripartite
+Life," ascribed by Colgan to the century after the Saint's death,
+though it has not escaped later interpolations.  The work was long
+lost, but two copies of it were re-discovered, one of which has been
+recently translated by that eminent Irish scholar, Mr. Hennessy.
+Whether regarded from the religious or the philosophic point of
+view, few things can be more instructive than the picture which it
+delineates of human nature at a period of critical transition, and
+the dawning of the Religion of Peace upon a race barbaric, but far
+indeed from savage.  That wild race regarded it doubtless as a
+notable cruelty when the new Faith discouraged an amusement so
+popular as battle; but in many respects they were in sympathy with
+that Faith.  It was one in which the nobler affections, as well as
+the passions, retained an unblunted ardour; and where Nature is
+strongest and least corrupted it most feels the need of something
+higher than itself, its interpreter and its supplement.  It prized
+the family ties, like the Germans recorded by Tacitus; and it could
+not but have been drawn to Christianity, which consecrated them.
+Its morals were pure, and it had not lost that simplicity to which
+so much of spiritual insight belongs.  Admiration and wonder were
+among its chief habits; and it would not have been repelled by
+Mysteries in what professed to belong to the Infinite.  Lawless as
+it was, it abounded also in loyalty, generosity, and self-sacrifice;
+it was not, therefore, untouched by the records of martyrs, examples
+of self-sacrifice, or the doctrine of a great Sacrifice.  It loved
+children and the poor; and Christianity made the former the
+exemplars of faith, and the latter the eminent inheritors of the
+Kingdom.  On the other hand, all the vices of the race ranged
+themselves against the new religion.
+
+In the main the institutions and traditions of Ireland were
+favourable to Christianity.  She had preserved in a large measure
+the patriarchal system of the East.  Her clans were families, and
+her chiefs were patriarchs who led their households to battle, and
+seized or recovered the spoil.  To such a people the Christian
+Church announced herself as a great family--the family of man.  Her
+genealogies went up to the first parent, and her rule was parental
+rule.  The kingdom of Christ was the household of Christ; and its
+children in all lands formed the tribes of a larger Israel.  Its
+laws were living traditions; and for traditions the Irish had ever
+retained the Eastern reverence.
+
+In the Druids no formidable enemy was found; it was the Bards who
+wielded the predominant social influence.  As in Greece, where the
+sacerdotal power was small, the Bards were the priests of the
+national Imagination, and round them all moral influences had
+gathered themselves.  They were jealous of their rivals; but those
+rivals won them by degrees.  Secknall and Fiacc were Christian
+Bards, trained by St. Patrick, who is said to have also brought a
+bard with him from Italy.  The beautiful legend in which the Saint
+loosened the tongue of the dumb child was an apt emblem of
+Christianity imparting to the Irish race the highest use of its
+natural faculties.  The Christian clergy turned to account the Irish
+traditions, as they had made use of the Pagan temples, purifying
+them first.  The Christian religion looked with a genuine kindness
+on whatever was human, except so far as the stain was on it; and
+while it resisted to the face what was unchristian in spirit, it
+also, in the Apostolic sense, "made itself all things to all men."
+As legislator, Saint Patrick waged no needless war against the
+ancient laws of Ireland.  He purified them, and he amplified them,
+discarding only what was unfit for a nation made Christian.  Thus
+was produced the great "Book of the Law," or "Senchus Mohr,"
+compiled A.D. 439.
+
+The Irish received the Gospel gladly.  The great and the learned, in
+other nations the last to believe, among them commonly set the
+example.  With the natural disposition of the race an appropriate
+culture had concurred.  It was one which at least did not fail to
+develop the imagination, the affections, and a great part of the
+moral being, and which thus indirectly prepared ardent natures, and
+not less the heroic than the tender, to seek their rest in spiritual
+things, rather than in material or conventional.  That culture,
+without removing the barbaric, had blended it with the refined.  It
+had created among the people an appreciation of the beautiful, the
+pathetic, and the pure.  The early Irish chronicles, as well as
+songs, show how strong among them that sentiment had ever been.  The
+Borromean Tribute, for so many ages the source of relentless wars,
+had been imposed in vengeance for an insult offered to a woman; and
+a discourtesy shown to a poet had overthrown an ancient dynasty.
+The education of an Ollambh occupied twelve years; and in the third
+century, the time of Oiseen and Fionn, the military rules of the
+Feine included provisions which the chivalry of later ages might
+have been proud of.  It was a wild, but not wholly an ungentle time.
+An unprovoked affront was regarded as a grave moral offence; and
+severe punishments were ordained, not only for detraction, but for a
+word, though uttered in jest, which brought a blush on the cheek of
+a listener.  Yet an injury a hundred years old could meet no
+forgiveness, and the life of man was war!  It was not that laws were
+wanting; a code, minute in its justice, had proportioned a penalty
+to every offence, and specified the Eric which was to wipe out the
+bloodstain in case the injured party renounced his claim to right
+his own wrong.  It was not that hearts were hard--there was at least
+as much pity for others as for self.  It was that anger was
+implacable, and that where fear was unknown, the war field was what
+among us the hunting field is.
+
+The rapid growth of learning as well as piety in the three centuries
+succeeding the conversion of Ireland, prove that the country had not
+been till then without a preparation for the gift.  It had been the
+special skill of Saint Patrick to build the good which was lacked
+upon that which existed.  Even the material arts of Ireland he had
+pressed into the service of the Faith; and Irish craftsmen had
+assisted him, not only in the building of his churches, but in
+casting his church bells, and in the adornment of his chalices,
+crosiers, and ecclesiastical vestments.  Once elevated by
+Christianity, Ireland's early civilisation was a memorable thing.
+It sheltered a high virtue at home, and evangelised a great part of
+Northern Europe; and amidst many confusions it held its own till the
+true time of barbarism had set in--those two disastrous centuries
+when the Danish invasions trod down the sanctuaries, dispersed the
+libraries, and laid waste the colleges to which distant kings had
+sent their sons.
+
+Perhaps nothing human had so large an influence in the conversion of
+the Irish as the personal character of her Apostle.  Where others,
+as Palladius, had failed, he succeeded.  By nature, by grace, and by
+providential training, he had been specially fitted for his task.
+We can still see plainly even the finer traits of that character,
+while the land of his birth is a matter of dispute, and of his early
+history we know little, except that he was of noble birth, that he
+was carried to Ireland by pirates at the age of sixteen, and that
+after five years of bondage he escaped thence, to return A.D.  432,
+when about forty-five years old; belonging thus to that great age of
+the Church which was made illustrious by the most eminent of its
+Fathers, and tasked by the most critical of its trials.  In him a
+great character had been built on the foundations of a devout
+childhood, and of a youth ennobled by adversity.  Everywhere we
+trace the might and the sweetness which belonged to it, the
+versatile mind yet the simple heart, the varying tact yet the fixed
+resolve, the large design taking counsel for all, yet the minute
+solicitude for each, the fiery zeal yet the genial temper, the skill
+in using means yet the reliance on God alone, the readiness in
+action with the willingness to wait, the habitual self-possession
+yet the outbursts of an inspiration which raised him above himself,
+the abiding consciousness of authority--an authority in him, but not
+of him--and yet the ever-present humility.  Above all, there burned
+in him that boundless love, which seems the main constituent of the
+Apostolic character.  It was love for God; but it was love for man
+also, an impassioned love, and a parental compassion.  It was not
+for the spiritual weal alone of man that he thirsted.  Wrong and
+injustice to the poor he resented as an injury to God.  His vehement
+love for the poor is illustrated by his "Epistle to Coroticus,"
+reproaching him with his cruelty, as well as by his denunciations of
+slavery, which piracy had introduced into parts of Ireland.  No
+wonder that such a character should have exercised a talismanic
+power over the ardent and sensitive race among whom he laboured, a
+race "easy to be drawn, but impossible to be driven," and drawn more
+by sympathy than even by benefits.  That character can only be
+understood by one who studies, and in a right spirit, that account
+of his life which he bequeathed to us shortly before its close--the
+"Confession of Saint Patrick."  The last poem in this series
+embodies its most characteristic portions, including the visions
+which it records.
+
+The "Tripartite Life" thus ends: --"After these great miracles,
+therefore, after resuscitating the dead, after healing lepers, and
+the blind, and the deaf, and the lame, and all diseases; after
+ordaining bishops, and priests, and deacons, and people of all
+orders in the Church; after teaching the men of Erin, and after
+baptising them; after founding churches and monasteries; after
+destroying idols and images and Druidical arts, the hour of death of
+Saint Patrick approached.  He received the body of Christ from the
+Bishop Tassach, according to the counsel of the Angel Victor.  He
+resigned his spirit afterwards to Heaven, in the one hundred and
+twentieth year of his age.  His body is still here in the earth,
+with honour and reverence.  Though great his honour here, greater
+honour will be to him in the Day of Judgment, when judgment will be
+given on the fruit of his teaching, as of every great Apostle, in
+the union of the Apostles and Disciples of Jesus; in the union of
+the Nine Orders of Angels, which cannot be surpassed; in the union
+of the Divinity and Humanity of the Son of God; in the union, which
+is higher than all unions, of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and
+Holy Ghost."
+                                 A. DE VERE.
+
+
+
+THE LEGENDS OF SAINT PATRICK.
+
+
+
+THE BAPTISM OF ST. PATRICK.
+
+"How can the babe baptised be
+  Where font is none and water none?"
+Thus wept the nurse on bended knee,
+  And swayed the Infant in the sun.
+
+"The blind priest took that Infant's hand:
+  With that small hand, above the ground
+He signed the Cross.  At God's command
+  A fountain rose with brimming bound.
+
+"In that pure wave from Adam's sin
+  The blind priest cleansed the Babe with awe;
+Then, reverently, he washed therein
+  His old, unseeing face, and saw!
+
+"He saw the earth; he saw the skies,
+  And that all-wondrous Child decreed
+A pagan nation to baptise,
+  To give the Gentiles light indeed."
+
+Thus Secknall sang.  Far off and nigh
+  The clansmen shouted loud and long;
+While every mother tossed more high
+  Her babe, and glorying joined the song.
+
+
+
+THE DISBELIEF OF MILCHO,
+OR, SAINT PATRICK'S ONE FAILURE.
+
+ARGUMENT.
+
+Fame of St. Patrick goes ever before him, and men of
+  goodwill believe gladly; but Milcho, a mighty merchant,
+  and one given wholly to pride and greed, wills to
+  disbelieve.  St. Patrick sends him greeting and gifts;
+  but he, discovering that the prophet welcomed by all
+  had once been his slave, hates him the more.
+  Notwithstanding, he fears that when that prophet
+  arrives, he, too, may be forced to believe, though
+  against his will.  He resolves to set fire to his
+  castle and all his wealth, and make new fortunes in far
+  lands.  The doom of Milcho, who willed to disbelieve.
+
+When now at Imber Dea that precious bark
+Freighted with Erin's future, touched the sands
+Just where a river, through a woody vale
+Curving, with duskier current clave the sea,
+Patrick, the Island's great inheritor,
+His perilous voyage past, stept forth and knelt
+And blessed his God.  The peace of those green meads
+Cradled 'twixt purple hills and purple deep,
+Seemed as the peace of heaven.  The sun had set;
+But still those summits twinned, the "Golden Spears,"
+Laughed with his latest beam.  The hours went by:
+The brethren paced the shore or musing sat,
+But still their Patriarch knelt and still gave thanks
+For all the marvellous chances of his life
+Since those his earlier years when, slave new-trapped,
+He comforted on hills of Dalaraide
+His hungry heart with God, and, cleansed by pain,
+In exile found the spirit's native land.
+Eve deepened into night, and still he prayed:
+The clear cold stars had crowned the azure vault;
+And, risen at midnight from dark seas, the moon
+Had quenched those stars, yet Patrick still prayed on:
+Till from the river murmuring in the vale,
+Far off, and from the morning airs close by
+That shook the alders by the river's mouth,
+And from his own deep heart a voice there came,
+"Ere yet thou fling'st God's bounty on this land
+There is a debt to cancel.  Where is he,
+Thy five years' lord that scourged thee for his swine?
+Alas that wintry face!  Alas that heart
+Joyless since earliest youth!  To him reveal it!
+To him declare that God who Man became
+To raise man's fall'n estate, as though a man,
+All faculties of man unmerged, undimmed,
+Had changed to worm and died the prey of worms,
+That so the mole might see!"
+
+                              Thus Patrick mused
+Not ignorant that from low beginnings rise
+Oftenest the works of greatness; yet of this
+Unweeting, that his failure, one and sole
+Through all his more than mortal course, even now
+Before that low beginning's threshold lay,
+Betwixt it and that Promised Land beyond
+A bar of scandal stretched.  Not otherwise
+Might whatsoe'er was mortal in his strength
+Dying, put on the immortal.
+
+                              With the morn
+Deep sleep descended on him.  Waking soon,
+He rose a man of might, and in that might
+Laboured; and God His servant's toil revered;
+And gladly on that coast Erin to Christ
+Paid her firstfruits.  Three days he preached his Lord:
+The fourth embarking, cape succeeding cape
+They passed, and heard the lowing herds remote
+In hollow glens, and smelt the balmy breath
+Of gorse on golden hillsides; till at eve,
+The Imber Domnand reached, on silver sands
+Grated their keel.  Around them flocked at dawn
+Warriors with hunters mixed, and shepherd youths
+And maids with lips as red as mountain berries
+And eyes like sloes, or keener eyes, dark-fringed
+And gleaming like the blue-black spear.  They came
+With milk-pail, and with kid, and kindled fire
+And spread the genial board.  Upon that shore
+Full many knelt and gave themselves to Christ,
+Strong men, and men at midmost of their hopes
+By sickness felled; old chiefs, at life's dim close
+That oft had asked, "Beyond the grave what hope?"
+Worn sailors weary of the toilsome seas,
+And craving rest; they, too, that sex which wears
+The blended crowns of Chastity and Love;
+Wondering, they hailed the Maiden-Motherhood;
+And listening children praised the Babe Divine,
+And passed Him, each to each.
+
+                              Ere long, once more
+Their sails were spread.  Again by grassy marge
+They rowed, and sylvan glades.  The branching deer
+Like flying gleams went by them.  Oft the cry
+Of fighting clans rang out:  but oftener yet
+Clamour of rural dance, or mart confused
+With many-coloured garb and movements swift,
+Pageant sun-bright:  or on the sands a throng
+Girdled with circle glad some bard whose song
+Shook the wild clan as tempest shakes the woods.
+Still north the wanderers sailed:  at evening, mists
+Cumbered the shore and on them leaned the blast,
+And fierce rain flashed mingling with dim-lit sea.
+All night they toiled; next day at noon they kenned
+A seaward stream that shone like golden tress
+Severed and random-thrown.  That river's mouth
+Ere long attained was all with lilies white
+As April field with daisies.  Entering there
+They reached a wood, and disembarked with joy:
+There, after thanks to God, silent they sat
+In thought, and watched the ripples, dusk yet bright,
+That lived and died like things that laughed at time,
+On gliding 'neath those many-centuried boughs.
+But, midmost, Patrick slept.  Then through the trees,
+Shy as a fawn half-tamed now stole, now fled
+A boy of such bright aspect faery child
+He seemed, or babe exposed of royal race:
+At last assured beside the Saint he stood,
+And dropped on him a flower, and disappeared:
+Thus flower on flower from the great wood he brought
+And hid them in the bosom of the Saint.
+The monks forbade him, saying, "Lest thou wake
+The master from his sleep."  But Patrick woke,
+And saw the boy, and said, "Forbid him not;
+The heir of all my kingdom is this child."
+Then spake the brethren, "Wilt thou walk with us?"
+And he, "I will:" and so for his sweet face
+They called his name Benignus:  and the boy
+Thenceforth was Christ's.  Beneath his parent's roof
+At night they housed.  Nowhere that child would sleep
+Except at Patrick's feet.  Till Patrick's death
+Unchanged to him he clave, and after reigned
+The second at Ardmacha.
+
+                              Day by day
+They held their course; ere long the hills of Mourne
+Loomed through sea-mist:  Ulidian summits next
+Before them rose:  but nearer at their left
+Inland with westward channel wound the wave
+Changed to sea-lake.  Nine miles with chant and hymn
+They tracked the gold path of the sinking sun;
+Then southward ran 'twixt headland and green isle
+And landed.  Dewy pastures sunset-dazed,
+At leisure paced by mild-eyed milk-white kine
+Smiled them a welcome.  Onward moved in sight
+Swiftly, with shadow far before him cast,
+Dichu, that region's lord, a martial man
+And merry, and a speaker of the truth.
+Pirates he deemed them first and toward them faced
+With wolf-hounds twain that watched their master's eye
+To spring, or not to spring.  The imperious face
+Forbidding not, they sprang; but Patrick raised
+His hand, and stone-like crouched they chained and still:
+Then, Dichu onward striding fierce, the Saint
+Between them signed the Cross; and lo, the sword
+Froze in his hand, and Dichu stood like stone.
+The amazement past, he prayed the man of God
+To grace his house; and, side by side, a mile
+They clomb the hills.  Ascending, Patrick turned,
+His heart with prescience filled.  Beneath, there lay
+A gleaming strait; beyond, a dim vast plain
+With many an inlet pierced:  a golden marge
+Girdled the water-tongues with flag and reed;
+But, farther off, a gentle sea-mist changed
+The fair green flats to purple.  "Night comes on;"
+Thus Dichu spake, and waited.  Patrick then
+Advanced once more, and Sabhall soon was reached,
+A castle half, half barn.  There garnered lay
+Much grain, and sun-imbrowned:  and Patrick said,
+"Here where the earthly grain was stored for man
+The bread of angels man shall eat one day."
+And Patrick loved that place, and Patrick said,
+"King Dichu, give thou to the poor that grain,
+To Christ, our Lord, thy barn."  The strong man stood
+In doubt; but prayers of little orphaned babes
+Reared by his hand, went up for him that hour:
+Therefore that barn he ceded, and to Christ
+By Patrick was baptised.  Where lay the corn
+A convent later rose.  There dwelt he oft;
+And 'neath its roof more late the stranger sat,
+Exile, or kingdom-wearied king, or bard,
+That haply blind in age, yet tempest-rocked
+By memories of departed glories, drew
+With gradual influx into his old heart
+Solace of Christian hope.
+
+                              With Dichu bode
+Patrick somewhile, intent from him to learn
+The inmost of that people.  Oft they spake
+Of Milcho.  "Once his thrall, against my will
+In earthly things I served him:  for his soul
+Needs therefore must I labour.  Hard was he;
+Unlike those hearts to which God's Truth makes way
+Like message from a mother in her grave:
+Yet what I can I must.  Not heaven itself
+Can force belief; for Faith is still good will."
+Dichu laughed aloud:  "Good will!  Milcho's good will
+Neither to others, nor himself, good will
+Hath Milcho!  Fireless sits he, winter through,
+The logs beside his hearth:  and as on them
+Glimmers the rime, so glimmers on his face
+The smile.  Convert him!  Better thrice to hang him!
+Baptise him!  He will film your font with ice!
+The cold of Milcho's heart has winter-nipt
+That glen he dwells in!  From the sea it slopes
+Unfinished, savage, like some nightmare dream,
+Raked by an endless east wind of its own.
+On wolf's milk was he suckled not on woman's!
+To Milcho speed!  Of Milcho claim belief!
+Milcho will shrivel his small eye and say
+He scorns to trust himself his father's son,
+Nor deems his lands his own by right of race
+But clutched by stress of brain!  Old Milcho's God
+Is gold.  Forbear him, sir, or ere you seek him
+Make smooth your way with gold."
+
+                              Thus Dichu spake;
+And Patrick, after musings long, replied:
+"Faith is no gift that gold begets or feeds,
+Oftener by gold extinguished.  Unto God,
+Unbribed, unpurchased, yearns the soul of man;
+Yet finds perforce in God its great reward.
+Not less this Milcho deems I did him wrong,
+His slave, yet fleeing.  To requite that loss
+Gifts will I send him first by messengers
+Ere yet I see his face."
+
+                              Then Patrick sent
+His messengers to Milcho, speaking thus:
+"If ill befell thy herds through flight of mine
+Fourfold that loss requite I, lest, for hate
+Of me, thou disesteem my Master's Word.
+Likewise I sue thy friendship; and I come
+In few days' space, with gift of other gold
+Than earth concedes, the Tidings of that God
+Who made all worlds, and late His Face hath shown,
+Sun-like to man.  But thou, rejoice in hope!"
+
+
+Thus Patrick, once by man advised in part,
+Though wont to counsel with his God alone.
+
+
+Meantime full many a rumour vague had vexed
+Milcho much musing.  He had dealings large
+And distant.  Died a chief?  He sent and bought
+The widow's all; or sold on foodless shores
+For usury the leanest of his kine.
+Meantime, his dark ships and the populous quays
+With news still murmured.  First from Imber Dea
+Came whispers how a sage had landed late,
+And how when Nathi fain had barred his way,
+Nathi that spurned Palladius from the land,
+That sage with levelled eyes, and kingly front
+Had from his presence driven him with a ban
+Cur-like and craven; how on bended knee
+Sinell believed, the royal man well-loved
+Descending from the judgment-seat with joy:
+And how when fishers spurned his brethren's quest
+For needful food, that sage had raised his rod,
+And all the silver harvest of blue streams
+Lay black in nets and sand.  His wrinkled brow
+Wrinkling yet more, thus Milcho answer made:
+"Deceived are those that will to be deceived:
+This knave has heard of gold in river-beds,
+And comes a deft sand-groper; let him come!
+He'll toil ten years ere gold enough he finds
+To make a crooked torque."
+
+                              From Tara next
+The news:  "Laeghaire, the King, sits close in cloud
+Of sullen thought, or storms from court to court,
+Because the chiefest of the Druid race
+Locru, and Luchat prophesied long since
+That one day from the sea a Priest would come
+With Doctrine and a Rite, and dash to earth
+Idols, and hurl great monarchs from their thrones;
+And lo!  At Imber Boindi late there stept
+A priest from roaring waves with Creed and Rite,
+And men before him bow."  Then Milcho spake:
+"Not flesh enough from thy strong bones, Laeghaire,
+These Druids, ravens of the woods, have plucked,
+But they must pluck thine eyes!  Ah priestly race,
+I loathe ye!  'Twixt the people and their King
+Ever ye rub a sore!"  Last came a voice:
+"This day in Eire thy saying is fulfilled,
+Conn of the 'Hundred Battles,' from thy throne
+Leaping long since, and crying, 'O'er the sea
+The Prophet cometh, princes in his train,
+Bearing for regal sceptres bended staffs,
+Which from the land's high places, cliff and peak,
+Shall drag the fair flowers down!'"  Scoffing he heard:
+"Conn of the 'Hundred Battles!'  Had he sent
+His hundred thousand kernes to yonder steep
+And rolled its boulders down, and built a mole
+To fence my laden ships from spring-tide surge,
+Far kinglier pattern had he shown, and given
+More solace to the land."
+
+                              He rose and turned
+With sideway leer; and printing with vague step
+Irregular the shining sands, on strode
+Toward his cold home, alone; and saw by chance
+A little bird light-perched, that, being sick,
+Plucked from the fissured sea-cliff grains of sand;
+And, noting, said, "O bird, when beak of thine
+From base to crown hath gorged this huge sea-wall,
+Then shall that man of Creed and Rite make null
+The strong rock of my will!"  Thus Milcho spake,
+Feigning the peace not his.
+
+                              Next day it chanced
+Women he heard in converse.  Thus the first:
+"If true the news, good speed for him, my boy!
+Poor slaves by Milcho scourged on earth shall wear
+In heaven a monarch's crown!  Good speed for her
+His little sister, not reserved like us
+To bend beneath these loads."  To whom her mate:
+"Doubt not the Prophet's tidings!  Not in vain
+The Power Unknown hath shaped us!  Come He must,
+Or send, and help His people on their way.
+Good is He, or He ne'er had made these babes!"
+They passed, and Milcho said, "Through hate of me
+All men believe!"  And straightway Milcho's face
+Grew bleaker than that crab-tree stem forlorn
+That hid him, wanner than that sea-sand wet
+That whitened round his foot down-pressed.
+
+                              Time passed.
+One morn in bitter mockery Milcho mused:
+"What better laughter than when thief from thief
+Pilfers the pilfered goods?  Our Druid thief
+Two thousand years hath milked and shorn this land;
+Now comes the thief outlandish that with him
+Would share milk-pail and fleece!  O Bacrach old,
+To hear thee shout 'Impostor!'"  Straight he went
+To Bacrach's cell hid in a skirt wind-shav'n
+Of low-grown wood, and met, departing thence,
+Three sailors sea-tanned from a ship late-beached.
+Within a corner huddled, on the floor,
+The Druid sat, cowering, and cold, and mazed:
+Sudden he rose, and cried, by conquering joy
+Clothed as with youth restored:  "The God Unknown,
+That God who made the earth, hath walked the earth!
+This hour His Prophet treads the isle!  Three men
+Have seen him; and their speech is true.  To them
+That Prophet spake:  'Four hundred years ago,
+Sinless God's Son on earth for sinners died:
+Black grew the world, and graves gave up their dead.'
+Thus spake the Seer.  Four hundred years ago!
+Mark well the time!  Of Ulster's Druid race
+What man but yearly, those four hundred years,
+Trembled that tale recounting which with this
+Tallies as footprint with the foot of man?
+Four hundred years ago--that self-same day -
+Connor, the son of Nessa, Ulster's King,
+Sat throned, and judged his people.  As he sat,
+Under clear skies, behold, o'er all the earth
+Swept a great shadow from the windless east;
+And darkness hung upon the air three hours;
+Dead fell the birds, and beasts astonied fled.
+Then to his Chief of Druids, Connor spake
+Whispering; and he, his oracles explored,
+Shivering made answer, 'From a land accursed,
+O King, that shadow sweeps; therein, this hour,
+By sinful men sinless God's Son is slain.'
+Then Ulster's king, down-dashing sceptre and crown,
+Rose, clamouring, 'Sinless! shall the sinless die?'
+And madness fell on him; and down that steep
+He rushed whereon the Emanian Palace stood,
+And reached the grove, Lambraidhe, with two swords,
+The sword of battle, and the sword of state,
+And hewed and hewed, crying, 'Were I but there
+Thus they should fall who slay that Sinless One;'
+And in that madness died.  Old Erin's sons
+Beheld this thing; nor ever in the land
+Hath ceased the rumour, nor the tear for him
+Who, wroth at justice trampled, martyr died.
+And now we know that not for any dream
+He died, but for the truth:  and whensoe'er
+The Prophet of that Son of God who died
+Sinless for sinners, standeth in this place,
+I, Bacrach, oldest Druid in this Isle,
+Will rise the first, and kiss his vesture's hem."
+
+He spake; and Milcho heard, and without speech
+Departed from that house.
+
+                              A later day
+When the wild March sunset, gone almost ere come,
+By glacial shower was hustled out of life,
+Under a blighted ash tree, near his house,
+Thus mused the man:  "Believe, or Disbelieve!
+The will does both; Then idiot who would be
+For profitless belief to sell himself?
+Yet disbelief not less might work our bane!
+For, I remember, once a sickly slave
+Ill shepherded my flock:  I spake him plain;
+'When next, through fault of thine, the midnight wolf
+Worries my sheep, on yonder tree you hang:'
+The blear-eyed idiot looked into my face,
+And smiled his disbelief.  On that day week
+Two lambs lay dead.  I hanged him on a tree.
+What tree? this tree!  Why, this is passing strange!
+For, three nights since, I saw him in a dream:
+Weakling as wont he stood beside my bed,
+And, clutching at his wrenched and livid throat,
+Spake thus, 'Belief is safest.'"
+
+                              Ceased the hail
+To rattle on the ever barren boughs,
+And friendlier sound was heard.  Beside his door
+Wayworn the messengers of Patrick stood,
+And showed the gifts, and held his missive forth.
+Then learned that lost one all the truth.  That sage
+Confessed by miracles, that prophet vouched
+By warnings old, that seer by words of might
+Subduing all things to himself--that priest,
+None other was than the uncomplaining boy
+Five years his slave and swineherd!  In him rage
+Burst forth, with fear commixed, as when a beast
+Strains in the toils.  "Can I alone stand firm?"
+He mused; and next, "Shall I, in mine old age,
+Byword become--the vassal of my slave?
+Shall I not rather drive him from my door
+With wolf hounds and a curse?"  As thus he stood
+He marked the gifts, and bade men bare them in,
+And homeward signed the messengers unfed.
+
+But Milcho slept not all that night for thought,
+And, forth ere sunrise issuing, paced a moor
+Stone-roughened like the graveyard of dead hosts,
+Till noontide.  Sudden then he stopt, and thus
+Discoursed within:  "A plot from first to last,
+The fraudulent bondage, flight, and late return;
+For now I mind me of a foolish dream
+Chance-sent, yet drawn by him awry.  One night
+Methought that boy from far hills drenched in rain
+Dashed through my halls, all fire.  From hands and head,
+From hair and mouth, forth rushed a flaming fire
+White, like white light, and still that mighty flame
+Into itself took all.  With hands outstretched
+I spurned it.  On my cradled daughters twain
+It turned, and they were ashes.  Then in burst
+The south wind through the portals of the house,
+Tempest rose-sweet, and blew those ashes forth
+Wide as the realm.  At dawn I sought the knave;
+He glossed my vision thus:  'That fire is Faith -
+Faith in the God Triune, the God made Man,
+Sole light wherein I walk, and walking burn;
+And they that walk with me shall burn like me
+By Faith.  But thou that radiance wilt repel,
+Housed through ill-will, in Error's endless night.
+Not less thy little daughters shall believe
+With glory and great joy; and, when they die,
+Report of them, like ashes blown abroad,
+Shall light far lands, and health to men of Faith
+Stream from their dust.'  I drave the impostor forth:
+Perjured ere long he fled, and now returns
+To reap a harvest from his master's dream" -
+Thus mused he, while black shadow swept the moor.
+  So day by day darker was Milcho's heart,
+Till, with the endless brooding on one thought,
+Began a little flaw within that brain
+Whose strength was still his boast.  Was no friend nigh?
+Alas! what friend had he?  All men he scorned;
+Knew truly none.  In each, the best and sweetest
+Near him had ever pined, like stunted growth
+Dwarfed by some glacier nigh.  The fifth day dawned:
+And inly thus he muttered, darkly pale:
+"Five days; in three the messengers returned:
+In three--in two--the Accursed will be here,
+Or blacken yonder Sleemish with his crew
+Descending.  Then those idiots, kerne and slave -
+The mighty flame into itself takes all -
+Full swarm will fly to meet him!  Fool! fool! fool!
+The man hath snared me with those gifts he sent;
+Else had I barred the mountains:  now 'twere late,
+My people in revolt.  Whole weeks his horde
+Will throng my courts, demanding board and bed,
+With hosts by Dichu sent to flout my pang,
+And sorer make my charge.  My granaries sacked,
+My larder lean as ship six months ice-bound,
+The man I hate will rise, and open shake
+The invincible banner of his mad new Faith,
+Till all that hear him shout, like winds or waves,
+Belief; and I be left sole recusant;
+Or else perhaps that Fury who prevails
+At times o'er knee-joints of reluctant men,
+By magic imped, may crumble into dust
+By force my disbelief."
+
+                              He raised his head,
+And lo, before him lay the sea far ebbed
+Sad with a sunset all but gone:  the reeds
+Sighed in the wind, and sighed a sweeter voice
+Oft heard in childhood--now the last time heard:
+"Believe!" it whispered.  Vain the voice!  That hour,
+Stirred from the abyss, the sins of all his life
+Around him rose like night--not one, but all -
+That earliest sin which, like a dagger, pierced
+His mother's heart; that worst, when summer drouth
+Parched the brown vales, and infants thirsting died,
+While from full pail he gorged his swine with milk
+And flung the rest away.  Sin-walled he stood:
+God's Angels could not pierce that cincture dread,
+Nor he look through it.  Yet he dreamed he saw:
+His life he saw; its labours, and its gains
+Hard won, long-waited, wonder of his foes;
+The manifold conquests of a Will oft tried;
+Victory, Defeat, Retrieval; last, that scene
+Around him spread:  the wan sea and grey rocks;
+And he was 'ware that on that self-same ledge
+He, Milcho, thirty years gone by, had stood,
+While pirates pushed to sea, leaving forlorn
+On that wild shore a scared and weeping boy,
+(His price two yearling kids and half a sheep)
+Thenceforth his slave.
+
+                              Not sole he mused that hour.
+The Demon of his House beside him stood
+Upon that iron coast, and whispered thus:
+"Masterful man art thou for wit and strength;
+Yet girl-like standst thou brooding!  Weave a snare!
+He comes for gold, this prophet.  All thou hast
+Heap in thy house; then fire it!  In far lands
+Build thee new fortunes.  Frustrate thus shall he
+Stare but on stones, his destined vassal scaped."
+
+So fell the whisper; and as one who hears
+And does, the stiff-necked man obsequious bent
+His strong will to a stronger, and returned,
+And gave command to heap within his house
+His stored up wealth--yea, all things that were his -
+Borne from his ships and granaries.  It was done.
+Then filled he his huge hall with resinous beams
+Seasoned for far sea-voyage, and the ribs
+Of ocean-sundering vessels deep in sea;
+Which ended, to his topmost tower he clomb,
+And therein sat two days, with face to south,
+Clutching a brand; and oft through clenched teeth hissed,
+Hissed long, "Because I will to disbelieve."
+  But ere the second sunset two brief hours,
+Where comfortless leaned forth that western ridge
+Long patched with whiteness by half melted snows,
+There crept a gradual shadow.  Soon the man
+Discerned its import.  There they hung--he saw them -
+That company detested; hung as when
+Storm-boding cloud on mountain hangs half way
+Scarce moving, and in fear the shepherd cries,
+"Would that the worse were come!"  So dread to him
+Those Heralds of fair Peace!  He gazed upon them
+With blood-shot eyes; a moment passed:  he stood
+Sole in his never festal hall, and flung
+His lighted brand into that pile far forth,
+And smiled that smile men feared to see, and turned,
+And issuing faced the circle of his serfs
+That wondering gathered round in thickening mass,
+Eyeing that unloved House.
+
+                              His place he chose
+Beside that blighted ash, fronting those towers
+Palled with red smoke, and muttered low, "So be it!
+Worse to be vassal to the man I hate,"
+With hueless lips.  His whole white face that hour
+Was scorched; and blistered was the dead tree's bark;
+Yet there he stood; and in that fiery light
+His life, no more triumphant, passed once more
+In underthought before him, while on spread
+The swift, contagious madness of that fire,
+And muttered thus, not knowing it, the man,
+"The mighty flame into itself takes all,"
+Mechanic iteration.  Not alone
+Stood he that hour.  The Demon of his House
+By him once more and closer than of old,
+Stood, whispering thus, "Thy game is now played out;
+Henceforth a byword art thou--rich in youth -
+Self-beggared in old age."  And as the wind
+Of that shrill whisper cut his listening soul,
+The blazing roof fell in on all his wealth,
+Hard-won, long-waited, wonder of his foes;
+And, loud as laughter from ten thousand fiends,
+Up rushed the fire.  With arms outstretched he stood;
+Stood firm; then forward with a wild beast's cry
+He dashed himself into that terrible flame,
+And vanished as a leaf.
+
+                              Upon a spur
+Of Sleemish, eastward on its northern slope,
+Stood Patrick and his brethren, travel-worn,
+When distant o'er the brown and billowy moor
+Rose the white smoke, that changed ere long to flame,
+From site unknown; for by the seaward crest
+That keep lay hidden.  Hands to forehead raised,
+Wondering they watched it.  One to other spake:
+"The huge Dalriad forest is afire
+Ere melted are the winter's snows!"  Another,
+"In vengeance o'er the ocean Creithe or Pict,
+Favoured by magic, or by mist, have crossed,
+And fired old Milcho's ships."  But Patrick leaned
+Upon his crosier, pale as the ashes wan
+Left by a burned out city.  Long he stood
+Silent, till, sudden, fiercelier soared the flame
+Reddening the edges of a cloud low hung;
+And, after pause, vibration slow and stern
+Troubling the burthened bosom of the air,
+Upon a long surge of the northern wind
+Came up--a murmur as of wintry seas
+Far borne at night.  All heard that sound; all felt it;
+One only know its import.  Patrick turned;
+"The deed is done:  the man I would have saved
+Is dead, because he willed to disbelieve."
+
+Yet Patrick grieved for Milcho, nor that hour
+Passed further north.  Three days on Sleemish hill
+He dwelt in prayer.  To Tara's royal halls
+Then turned he, and subdued the royal house
+And host to Christ, save Erin's king, Laeghaire.
+But Milcho's daughters twain to Christ were born
+In baptism, and each Emeria named:
+Like rose-trees in the garden of the Lord
+Grew they and flourished.  Dying young, one grave
+Received them at Cluanbrain.  Healing thence
+To many from their relics passed; to more
+The spirit's happier healing, Love and Faith.
+
+
+
+SAINT PATRICK AT TARA.
+
+The King is wroth with a greater wrath
+  Than the wrath of Nial or the wrath of Conn!
+From his heart to his brow the blood makes path,
+  And hangs there, a red cloud, beneath his crown.
+
+Is there any who knows not, from south to north,
+  That Laeghaire to-morrow his birthday keeps?
+No fire may be lit upon hill or hearth
+Till the King's strong fire in its kingly mirth
+  Up rushes from Tara's palace steeps!
+
+Yet Patrick has lighted his Paschal fire
+  At Slane--it is holy Saturday -
+And blessed his font 'mid the chaunting choir!
+  From hill to hill the flame makes way;
+While the king looks on it his eyes with ire
+  Flash red, like Mars, under tresses grey.
+
+The chiefs and the captains with drawn swords rose:
+  To avenge their Lord and the Realm they swore;
+  The Druids rose and their garments tore;
+"The strangers to us and our Gods are foes!"
+Then the king to Patrick a herald sent,
+  Who spake, 'Come up at noon and show
+Who lit thy fire and with what intent:
+  These things the great king Laeghaire would know."
+
+But Laeghaire had hid twelve men by the way,
+Who swore by the sun the Saint to slay.
+
+When the waters of Boyne began to bask
+  And fields to flash in the rising sun
+The Apostle Evangelist kept his Pasch,
+  And Erin her grace baptismal won:
+Her birthday it was:  his font the rock,
+He blessed the land, and he blessed his flock.
+
+Then forth to Tara he fared full lowly:
+  The Staff of Jesus was in his hand:
+Twelve priests paced after him chaunting slowly,
+  Printing their steps on the dewy land.
+It was the Resurrection morn;
+The lark sang loud o'er the springing corn;
+The dove was heard, and the hunter's horn.
+
+The murderers twelve stood by on the way;
+Yet they saw nought save the lambs at play.
+
+A trouble lurked in the monarch's eye
+When the guest he counted for dead drew nigh:
+He sat in state at his palace gate;
+  His chiefs and nobles were ranged around;
+The Druids like ravens smelt some far fate;
+  Their eyes were gloomily bent on the ground.
+Then spake Laeghaire:  "He comes--beware!
+Let none salute him, or rise from his chair!"
+
+Like some still vision men see by night,
+  Mitred, with eyes of serene command,
+Saint Patrick moved onward in ghostly white:
+  The Staff of Jesus was in his hand;
+Twelve priests paced after him unafraid,
+And the boy, Benignus, more like a maid;
+Like a maid just wedded he walked and smiled,
+To Christ new plighted, that priestly child.
+
+They entered the circle; their anthem ceased;
+  The Druids their eyes bent earthward still:
+On Patrick's brow the glory increased
+  As a sunrise brightening some sea-beat hill.
+The warriors sat silent:  strange awe they felt:
+The chief bard, Dubtach, rose and knelt:
+
+Then Patrick discoursed of the things to be
+When time gives way to eternity,
+Of kingdoms that fall, which are dreams not things,
+And the Kingdom built by the King of kings.
+Of Him he spake who reigns from the Cross;
+Of the death which is life, and the life which is loss;
+How all things were made by the Infant Lord,
+And the small hand the Magian kings adored.
+His voice sounded on like a throbbing flood
+That swells all night from some far-off wood,
+And when it ended--that wondrous strain -
+Invisible myriads breathed "Amen!"
+
+While he spake, men say that the refluent tide
+  On the shore by Colpa ceased to sink:
+They say that the white stag by Mulla's side
+  O'er the green marge bending forbore to drink:
+That the Brandon eagle forgat to soar;
+  That no leaf stirred in the wood by Lee:
+Such stupor hung the island o'er,
+  For none might guess what the end would be.
+
+Then whispered the king to a chief close by,
+"It were better for me to believe than die!"
+
+Yet the king believed not; but ordinance gave
+  That whoso would might believe that word:
+So the meek believed, and the wise, and brave,
+  And Mary's Son as their God adored.
+And the Druids, because they could answer nought,
+Bowed down to the Faith the stranger brought.
+That day on Erin God poured His Spirit:
+Yet none like the chief of the bards had merit,
+Dubtach!  He rose and believed the first,
+Ere the great light yet on the rest had burst.
+
+
+
+SAINT PATRICK AND THE TWO PRINCESSES.
+
+FEDELM "THE RED ROSE," AND ETHNA "THE FAIR."
+
+Like two sister fawns that leap,
+  Borne, as though on viewless wings,
+Down bosky glade and ferny steep
+  To quench their thirst at silver springs,
+From Cruachan palace through gorse and heather,
+Raced the Royal Maids together.
+Since childhood thus the twain had rushed
+  Each morn to Clebach's fountain-cell
+Ere earliest dawn the East had flushed
+  To bathe them in its well:
+Each morn with joy their young hearts tingled;
+  Each morn as, conquering cloud or mist,
+The first beam with the wavelet mingled,
+  Mouth to mouth they kissed!
+
+They stand by the fount with their unlooped hair -
+A hand each raises--what see they there?
+A white Form seated on Clebach stone;
+  A kinglike presence:  the monks stood nigh:
+Fronting the dawn he sat alone;
+  On the star of morning he fixed his eye:
+That crozier he grasped shone bright; but brighter
+The sunrise flashed from Saint Patrick's mitre!
+They gazed without fear.  To a kingdom dear
+  From the day of their birth those Maids had been;
+Of wrong they had heard; but it came not near;
+  They hoped they were dear to the Power unseen.
+They knelt when that Vision of Peace they saw;
+Knelt, not in fear, but in loving awe:
+The "Red Rose" bloomed like that East afar;
+The "Fair One" shone like that morning star.
+
+Then Patrick rose:  no word he said,
+  But thrice he made the sacred Sign:
+At the first, men say that the demons fled;
+  At the third flocked round them the Powers divine
+Unseen.  Like children devout and good,
+Hands crossed on their bosoms, the maidens stood.
+
+"Blessed and holy!  This land is Eire:
+Whence come ye to her, and the king our sire?"
+
+"We come from a Kingdom far off yet near
+Which the wise love well, and the wicked fear:
+We come with blessing and come with ban,
+We come from the Kingdom of God with man."
+
+"Whose is that Kingdom?  And say, therein
+  Are the chiefs all brave, and the maids all fair?
+Is it clean from reptiles, and that thing, sin?
+  Is it like this kingdom of King Laeghaire?"
+
+"The chiefs of that kingdom wage war on wrong,
+And the clash of their swords is sweet as song;
+Fair are the maids, and so pure from taint
+The flash of their eyes turns sinner to saint;
+There reptile is none, nor the ravening beast;
+There light has no shadow, no end the feast."
+
+"But say, at that feast hath the poor man place?
+  Is reverence there for the old head hoar?
+For the cripple that never might join the race?
+  For the maimed that fought, and can fight no more?"
+
+"Reverence is there for the poor and meek;
+And the great King kisses the worn, pale cheek;
+And the King's Son waits on the pilgrim guest;
+And the Queen takes the little blind child to her breast:
+There with a crown is the just man crowned;
+But the false and the vengeful are branded and bound
+In knots of serpents, and flung without pity
+From the bastions and walls of the saintly City."
+
+Then the eyes of the Maidens grew dark, as though
+  That judgment of God had before them passed:
+And the two sweet faces grew dim with woe;
+  But the rose and the radiance returned at last.
+
+"Are gardens there?  Are there streams like ours?
+  Is God white-headed, or youthful and strong?
+Hang there the rainbows o'er happy bowers?
+  Are there sun and moon and the thrush's song?"
+
+"They have gardens there without noise or strife,
+And there is the Tree of immortal Life:
+Four rivers circle that blissful bound;
+And Spirits float o'er it, and Spirits go round:
+There, set in the midst, is the golden throne;
+And the Maker of all things sits thereon:
+A rainbow o'er-hangs him; and lo! therein
+The beams are His Holy Ones washed from sin."
+
+As he spake, the hearts of the Maids beat time
+  To music in heaven of peace and love;
+And the deeper sense of that lore sublime
+  Came out from within them, and down from above;
+By degrees came down; by degrees came out:
+Who loveth, and hopeth, not long shall doubt.
+
+"Who is your God?  Is love on His brow?
+Oh how shall we love Him and find Him?  How?"
+The pure cheek flamed like the dawn-touched dew:
+There was silence:  then Patrick began anew.
+The princes who ride in your father's train
+Have courted your love, but sued in vain; -
+Look up, O Maidens; make answer free:
+What boon desire you, and what would you be?"
+
+"Pure we would be as yon wreath of foam,
+  Or the ripple which now yon sunbeams smite:
+And joy we would have, and a songful home;
+  And one to rule us, and Love's delight."
+
+"In love God fashioned whatever is,
+  The hills, and the seas, and the skiey fires;
+For love He made them, and endless blis
+  Sustains, enkindles, uplifts, inspires:
+That God is Father, and Son, and Spirit;
+And the true and spotless His peace inherit:
+And God made man, with his great sad heart,
+That hungers when held from God apart.
+Your sire is a King on earth:  but I
+Would mate you to One who is Lord on high:
+There bride is maid:  and her joy shall stand,
+For the King's Son hath laid on her head His hand."
+As he spake, the eyes of that lovely twain
+  Grew large with a tearful but glorious light,
+Like skies of summer late cleared by rain,
+  When the full-orbed moon will be soon in sight.
+
+"That Son of the King--is He fairest of men?
+  That mate whom He crowns--is she bright and blest?
+Does she chase the red deer at His side through the glen?
+  Does she charm Him with song to His noontide rest?"
+
+"That King's Son strove in a long, long war:
+His people He freed; yet they wounded Him sore;
+And still in His hands, and His feet, and His side,
+The scars of His sorrow are 'graved, deep-dyed."
+
+Then the breasts of the Maidens began to heave
+  Like harbour waves when beyond the bar
+The great waves gather, and wet winds grieve,
+  And the roll of the tempest is heard afar.
+
+"We will kiss, we will kiss those bleeding feet;
+  On the bleeding hands our tears shall fall;
+And whatever on earth is dear or sweet,
+  For that wounded heart we renounce them all.
+
+"Show us the way to His palace-gate:" -
+"That way is thorny, and steep, and straight;
+By none can His palace-gate be seen,
+Save those who have washed in the waters clean."
+
+They knelt; on their heads the wave he poured
+Thrice in the name of the Triune Lord:
+And he signed their brows with the Sign adored.
+On Fedelm the "Red Rose," on Ethna "The Fair,"
+God's dew shone bright in that morning air:
+Some say that Saint Agnes, 'twixt sister and sister,
+As the Cross touched each, bent over and kissed her.
+
+Then sang God's new-born Creatures, "Behold!
+  We see God's City from heaven draw nigh:
+But we thirst for the fountains divine and cold:
+  We must see the great King's Son, or die!
+Come, Thou that com'st!  Our wish is this,
+  That the body might die, and the soul, set free,
+Swell out, like an infant's lips, to the kiss
+  Of the Lover who filleth infinity!"
+
+"The City of God, by the water's grace,
+Ye see:  alone, they behold His Face,
+Who have washed in the baths of Death their eyes,
+And tasted His Eucharist Sacrifice."
+
+"Give us the Sacrifice!"  Each bright head
+  Bent toward it as sunflowers bend to the sun:
+They ate; and the blood from the warm cheek fled:
+  The exile was over:  the home was won:
+A starry darkness o'erflowed their brain:
+  Far waters beat on some heavenly shore:
+Like the dying away of a low, sweet strain,
+  The young life ebbed, and they breathed no more:
+In death they smiled, as though on the breast
+Of the Mother Maid they had found their rest.
+
+The rumour spread:  beside the bier
+  The King stood mute, and his chiefs and court:
+The Druids dark-robed drew surlily near,
+  And the Bards storm-hearted, and humbler sort:
+The "Staff of Jesus" Saint Patrick raised:
+  Angelic anthems above them swept:
+There were that muttered; there were that praised:
+  But none who looked on that marvel wept.
+
+For they lay on one bed, like Brides new-wed,
+  By Clebach well; and, the dirge days over,
+On their smiling faces a veil was spread,
+  And a green mound raised that bed to cover.
+Such were the ways of those ancient days -
+  To Patrick for aye that grave was given;
+And above it he built a church in their praise;
+  For in them had Eire been spoused to heaven.
+
+
+
+SAINT PATRICK AND THE CHILDREN OF FOCHLUT WOOD.
+
+ARGUMENT.
+
+Saint Patrick makes way into Fochlut wood by the sea, the
+  oldest of Erin's forests, whence there had been borne
+  unto him, then in a distant land, the Children's Wail
+  from Erin.  He meets there two young Virgins, who sing
+  a dirge of man's sorrowful condition.  Afterwards they
+  lead him to the fortress of the king, their father.
+  There are sung two songs, a song of Vengeance and a
+  song of Lament; which ended, Saint Patrick makes
+  proclamation of the Advent and of the Resurrection.
+  The king and all his chiefs believe with full
+  contentment.
+
+One day as Patrick sat upon a stone
+Judging his people, Pagan babes flocked round,
+All light and laughter, angel-like of mien,
+Sueing for bread.  He gave it, and they ate:
+Then said he, "Kneel;" and taught them prayer:  but lo!
+Sudden the stag hounds' music dinned the wind;
+They heard; they sprang; they chased it.  Patrick spake;
+"It was the cry of children that I heard
+Borne from the black wood o'er the midnight seas:
+Where are those children?  What avails though Kings
+Have bowed before my Gospel, and in awe
+Nations knelt low, unless I set mine eyes
+On Fochlut Wood?"  Thus speaking, he arose,
+And, journeying with the brethren toward the West,
+Fronted the confine of that forest old.
+
+Then entered they that darkness; and the wood
+Closed as a cavern round them.  O'er its roof
+Leaned roof of cloud, and hissing ran the wind,
+And moaned the trunks for centuries hollowed out
+Yet stalwart still.  There, rooted in the rock,
+Stood the huge growths, by us unnamed, that frowned
+Perhaps on Partholan, the parricide,
+When that first Pagan settler fugitive
+Landed, a man foredoomed.  Between the stems
+The ravening beast now glared, now fled.  Red leaves,
+The last year's phantoms, rattled here and there.
+The oldest wood that ever grew in Eire
+Was Fochlut Wood, and gloomiest.  Spirits of Ill
+Made it their palace, and its labyrinths sowed
+With poisons.  Many a cave, with horrors thronged
+Within it yawned, and many a chasm unseen
+Waited the unwary treader.  Cry of wolf
+Pierced the cold air, and gibbering ghosts were heard;
+And o'er the black marsh passed those wandering lights
+That lure lost feet.  A thousand pathways wound
+From gloom to gloom.  One only led to light:
+That path was sharp with flints.
+
+                              Then Patrick mused,
+"O life of man, how dark a wood art thou!
+Erring how many track thee till Despair,
+Sad host, receives them in his crypt-like porch
+At nightfall."  Mute he paced.  The brethren feared;
+And fearing, knelt to God.  Made strong by prayer
+Westward once more they trod that dark, sharp way
+Till deeper gloom announced the night, then slept
+Guarded by angels.  But the Saint all night
+Watched, strong in prayer.  The second day still on
+They fared, like mariners o'er strange seas borne,
+That keep in mist their soundings when the rocks
+Vex the dark strait, and breakers roar unseen.
+At last Benignus cried, "To God be praise!
+He sends us better omens.  See! the moss
+Brightens the crag!"  Ere long another spake:
+"The worst is past!  This freshness in the air
+Wafts us a welcome from the great salt sea;
+Fair spreads the fern:  green buds are on the spray,
+And violets throng the grass."
+
+                              A few steps more
+Brought them to where, with peaceful gleam, there spread
+A forest pool that mirrored yew trees twain
+With beads like blood-drops hung.  A sunset flash
+Kindled a glory in the osiers brown
+Encircling that still water.  From the reeds
+A sable bird, gold-circled, slowly rose;
+But when the towering tree-tops he outsoared,
+Eastward a great wind swept him as a leaf.
+Serenely as he rose a music soft
+Swelled from afar; but, as that storm o'ertook him,
+The music changed to one on-rushing note
+O'ertaken by a second; both, ere long,
+Blended in wail unending.  Patrick's brow,
+Listening that wail, was altered, and he spake:
+"These were the Voices that I heard when stood
+By night beside me in that southern land
+God's angel, girt for speed.  Letters he bare
+Unnumbered, full of woes.  He gave me one,
+Inscribed, 'The Wailing of the Irish Race;'
+And as I read that legend on mine ear
+Forth from a mighty wood on Erin's coast
+There rang the cry of children, 'Walk once more
+Among us; bring us help!'"  Thus Patrick spake:
+Then towards that wailing paced with forward head.
+
+Ere long they came to where a river broad,
+Swiftly amid the dense trees winding, brimmed
+The flower-enamelled marge, and onward bore
+Green branches 'mid its eddies.  On the bank
+Two virgins stood.  Whiter than earliest streak
+Of matin pearl dividing dusky clouds
+Their raiment; and, as oft in silent woods
+White beds of wind-flower lean along the earth-breeze,
+So on the river-breeze that raiment wan
+Shivered, back blown.  Slender they stood and tall,
+Their brows with violets bound; while shone, beneath,
+The dark blue of their never-tearless eyes.
+Then Patrick, "For the sake of Him who lays
+His blessing on the mourners, O ye maids,
+Reveal to me your grief--if yours late sent,
+Or sped in careless childhood."  And the maids:
+"Happy whose careless childhood 'scaped the wound:"
+Then she that seemed the saddest added thus:
+"Stranger! this forest is no roof of joy,
+Nor we the only mourners; neither fall
+Bitterer the widow's nor the orphan's tears
+Now than of old; nor sharper than long since
+That loss which maketh maiden widowhood.
+In childhood first our sorrow came.  One eve
+Within our foster-parents' low-roofed house
+The winter sunset from our bed had waned:
+I slept, and sleeping dreamed.  Beside the bed
+There stood a lovely Lady crowned with stars;
+A sword went through her heart.  Down from that sword
+Blood trickled on the bed, and on the ground.
+Sorely I wept.  The Lady spake:  'My child,
+Weep not for me, but for thy country weep;
+Her wound is deeper far than mine.  Cry loud!
+The cry of grief is Prayer.'  I woke, all tears;
+And lo! my little sister, stiff and cold,
+Sat with wide eyes upon the bed upright:
+That starry Lady with the bleeding heart
+She, too, had seen, and heard her.  Clamour vast
+Rang out; and all the wall was fiery red;
+And flame was on the sea.  A hostile clan
+Landing in mist, had fired our ships and town,
+Our clansmen absent on a foray far,
+And stricken many an old man, many a boy
+To bondage dragged.  Oh night with blood redeemed!
+Upon the third day o'er the green waves rushed
+The vengeance winged, with axe and torch, to quit
+Wrong with new wrong, and many a time since then.
+That night sad women on the sea sands toiled,
+Drawing from wreck and ruin, beam or plank
+To shield their babes.  Our foster-parents slain,
+Unheeded we, the children of the chief,
+Roamed the great forest.  There we told our dream
+To children likewise orphaned.  Sudden fear
+Smote them as though themselves had dreamed that dream,
+And back from them redoubled upon us;
+Until at last from us and them rang out -
+The dark wood heard it, and the midnight sea -
+A great and bitter cry."
+
+                              "That cry went up,
+O children, to the heart of God; and He
+Down sent it, pitying, to a far-off land,
+And on into my heart.  By that first pang
+Which left the eternal pallor in your cheeks,
+O maids, I pray you, sing once more that song
+Ye sang but late.  I heard its long last note:
+Fain would I hear the song that such death died."
+
+They sang:  not scathless those that sing such song!
+Grief, their instructress, of the Muses chief
+To hearts by grief unvanquished, to their hearts
+Had taught a melody that neither spared
+Singer nor listener.  Pale when they began,
+Paler it left them.  He not less was pale
+Who, out of trance awaking, thanked them thus:
+"Now know I of that sorrow in you fixed;
+What, and how great it is, and bless that Power
+Who called me forth from nothing for your sakes,
+And sent me to this wood.  Maidens, lead on!
+A chieftain's daughters ye; and he, your sire,
+And with him she who gave you your sweet looks
+(Sadder perchance than you in songless age)
+They, too, must hear my tidings.  Once a Prince
+Went solitary from His golden throne,
+Tracking the illimitable wastes, to find
+One wildered sheep, the meanest of the flock,
+And on His shoulders bore it to that House
+Where dwelt His Sire.  'Good Shepherd' was His Name.
+My tidings these:  heralds are we, footsore,
+That bring the heart-sore comfort."
+
+                              On they paced,
+On by the rushing river without words.
+Beside the elder sister Patrick walked,
+Benignus by the younger.  Fair her face;
+Majestic his, though young.  Her looks were sad
+And awe-struck; his, fulfilled with secret joy,
+Sent forth a gleam as when a morn-touched bay
+Through ambush shines of woodlands.  Soon they stood
+Where sea and river met, and trod a path
+Wet with salt spray, and drank the clement breeze,
+And saw the quivering of the green gold wave,
+And, far beyond, that fierce aggressor's bourn,
+Fair haunt for savage race, a purple ridge
+By rainy sunbeam gemmed from glen to glen,
+Dim waste of wandering lights.  The sun, half risen,
+Lay half sea-couched.  A neighbouring height sent forth
+Welcome of baying hounds; and, close at hand,
+They reached the chieftain's keep.
+
+                              A white-haired man
+And long since blind, there sat he in his hall,
+Untamed by age.  At times a fiery gleam
+Flashed from his sightless eyes; and oft the red
+Burned on his forehead, while with splenetic speech
+Stirred by ill news or memory stung, he banned
+Foes and false friend.  Pleased by his daughters' tale,
+At once he stretched his huge yet aimless hands
+In welcome towards his guests.  Beside him stood
+His mate of forty years by that strong arm
+From countless suitors won.  Pensive her face:
+With parted youth the confidence of youth
+Had left her.  Beauty, too, though with remorse,
+Its seat had half relinquished on a cheek
+Long time its boast, and on that willowy form,
+So yielding now, where once in strength upsoared
+The queenly presence.  Tenderest grace not less
+Haunted her life's dim twilight--meekness, love -
+That humble love, all-giving, that seeks nought,
+Self-reverent calm, and modesty in age.
+She turned an anxious eye on him she loved;
+And, bending, kissed at times that wrinkled hand,
+By years and sorrows made his wife far more
+Than in her nuptial bloom.  These two had lost
+Five sons, their hope, in war.
+
+                              That eve it chanced
+High feast was holden in the chieftain's tower
+To solemnise his birthday.  In they flocked,
+Each after each, the warriors of the clan,
+Not without pomp heraldic and fair state
+Barbaric, yet beseeming.  Unto each
+Seat was assigned for deeds or lineage old,
+And to the chiefs allied.  Where each had place
+Above him waved his banner.  Not for this
+Unhonoured were the pilgrim guests.  They sat
+Where, fed by pinewood and the seeded cone,
+The loud hearth blazed.  Bathed were the wearied feet
+By maidens of the place and nurses grey,
+And dried in linen fragrant still with flowers
+Of years when those old nurses too were fair.
+And now the board was spread, and carved the meat,
+And jests ran round, and many a tale was told,
+Some rude, but none opprobrious.  Banquet done,
+Page-led the harper entered, old, and blind:
+The noblest ranged his chair, and spread the mat;
+The loveliest raised his wine cup, one light hand
+Laid on his shoulder, while the golden hair
+Commingled with the silver.  "Sing," they cried,
+"The death of Deirdre; or that desolate sire
+That slew his son, unweeting; or that Queen
+Who from her palace pacing with fixed eyes
+Stared at those heads in dreadful circle ranged,
+The heads of traitor-friends that slew her lord
+Then mocked the friend they murdered.  Leal and true,
+The Bard who wrought that vengeance!"  Thus he sang:
+
+
+
+              THE LAY OF THE HEADS.
+
+     The Bard returns to a stricken house:
+       What shape is that he rears on high?
+     A withe of the Willow, set round with Heads:
+       They blot that evening sky.
+
+     A Widow meets him at the gates:
+       What fixes thus that Widow's eye?
+     She names the name; but she sees not the man,
+       Nor beyond him that reddening sky.
+
+     "Bard of the Brand, thou Foster-Sire
+       Of him they slew--their friend--my lord -
+     What Head is that--the first--that frowns
+       Like a traitor self-abhorred?"
+
+     "Daughter of Orgill wounded sore,
+       Thou of the fateful eye serene,
+     Fergus is he.  The feast he made
+       That snared thy Cuchullene."
+
+     "What Head is that--the next--half-hid
+       In curls full lustrous to behold?
+     They mind me of a hand that once
+       I saw amid their gold."
+
+     "'Tis Manadh.  He that by the shore
+       Held rule, and named the waves his steeds:
+     'Twas he that struck the stroke accursed -
+       Headless this day he bleeds."
+
+     "What Head is that close by--so still,
+       With half-closed lids, and lips that smile?
+     Methinks I know their voice:  methinks
+       HIS wine they quaffed erewhile!"
+
+     "'Twas he raised high that severed head:
+       Thy head he raised, my Foster-Child!
+     That was the latest stroke I struck:
+       I struck that stroke, and smiled."
+
+     "What Heads are those--that twain, so like,
+       Flushed as with blood by yon red sky?"
+     "Each unto each, HIS Head they rolled;
+       Red on that grass they lie."
+
+     "That paler twain, which face the East?"
+       "Laegar is one; the other Hilt;
+     Silent they watched the sport! they share
+       The doom, that shared the guilt."
+
+     "Bard of the Vengeance! well thou knew'st
+       Blood cries for blood!  O kind, and true,
+     How many, kith and kin, have died
+       That mocked the man they slew?"
+
+     "O Woman of the fateful eye,
+       The untrembling voice, the marble mould,
+     Seven hundred men, in house or field,
+       For the man they mocked, lie cold."
+
+     "Their wives, thou Bard? their wives? their wives?
+       Far off, or nigh, through Inisfail,
+     This hour what are they?  Stand they mute
+       Like me; or make their wail?"
+
+     "O Eimer! women weep and smile;
+       The young have hope, the young that mourn;
+     But I am old; my hope was he:
+       He that can ne'er return!
+
+     "O Conal! lay me in his grave:
+       Oh! lay me by my husband's side:
+     Oh! lay my lips to his in death;"
+       She spake, and, standing, died.
+
+     She fell at last--in death she fell -
+       She lay, a black shade, on the ground;
+     And all her women o'er her wailed
+       Like sea-birds o'er the drowned.
+
+  Thus to the blind chief sang that harper blind,
+Hymning the vengeance; and the great hall roared
+With wrath of those wild listeners.  Many a heel
+Smote the rough stone in scorn of them that died
+Not three days past, so seemed it!  Direful hands,
+Together dashed, thundered the Avenger's praise.
+At last the tide of that fierce tumult ebbed
+O'er shores of silence.  From her lowly seat
+Beside her husband's spake the gentle Queen:
+"My daughters, from your childhood ye were still
+A voice of music in your father's house -
+Not wrathful music.  Sing that song ye made
+Or found long since, and yet in forest sing,
+If haply Power Unknown may hear and help."
+She spake, and at her word her daughters sang.
+
+"Lost, lost, all lost!  O tell us what is lost?
+Behold, this too is hidden!  Let him speak,
+If any knows.  The wounded deer can turn
+And see the shaft that quivers in its flank;
+The bird looks back upon its broken wing;
+But we, the forest children, only know
+Our grief is infinite, and hath no name.
+What woman-prophet, shrouded in dark veil,
+Whispered a Hope sadder than Fear?  Long since,
+What Father lost His children in the wood?
+Some God?  And can a God forsake?  Perchance
+His face is turned to nobler worlds new-made;
+Perchance his palace owns some later bride
+That hates the dead Queen's children, and with charm
+Prevails that they are exiled from his eyes,
+The exile's winter theirs--the exile's song.
+
+"Blood, ever blood!  The sword goes raging on
+O'er hill and moor; and with it, iron-willed,
+Drags on the hand that holds it and the man
+To slake its ceaseless thirst for blood of men;
+Fire takes the little cot beside the mere,
+And leaps upon the upland village:  fire
+Up clambers to the castle on the crag;
+And whom the fire has spared the hunger kills;
+And earth draws all into her thousand graves.
+
+"Ah me! the little linnet knows the branch
+Whereon to build; the honey-pasturing bee
+Knows the wild heath, and how to shape its cell;
+Upon the poisonous berry no bird feeds;
+So well their mother, Nature, helps her own.
+Mothers forsake not;--can a Father hate?
+Who knows but that He yearns--that Sire Unseen -
+To clasp His children?  All is sweet and sane,
+All, all save man!  Sweet is the summer flower,
+The day-long sunset of the autumnal woods;
+Fair is the winter frost; in spring the heart
+Shakes to the bleating lamb.  O then what thing
+Might be the life secure of man with man,
+The infant's smile, the mother's kiss, the love
+Of lovers, and the untroubled wedded home?
+This might have been man's lot.  Who sent the woe?
+Who formed man first?  Who taught him first the ill way?
+One creature, only, sins; and he the highest!
+
+"O Higher than the highest!  Thou Whose hand
+Made us--Who shaped'st that hand Thou wilt not clasp,
+The eye Thou open'st not, the sealed-up ear!
+Be mightier than man's sin:  for lo, how man
+Seeks Thee, and ceases not:  through noontide cave
+And dark air of the dawn-unlighted peak
+To Thee how long he strains the weak, worn eye
+If haply he might see Thy vesture's hem
+On farthest winds receding!  Yea, how oft
+Against the blind and tremulous wall of cliff
+Tormented by sea surge, he leans his ear
+If haply o'er it name of Thine might creep;
+Or bends above the torrent-cloven abyss,
+If falling flood might lisp it!  Power unknown!
+He hears it not:  Thou hear'st his beating heart
+That cries to Thee for ever!  From the veil
+That shrouds Thee, from the wood, the cloud, the void,
+O, by the anguish of all lands evoked,
+Look forth!  Though, seeing Thee, man's race should die,
+One moment let him see Thee!  Let him lay
+At least his forehead on Thy foot in death!"
+
+  So sang the maidens:  but the warriors frowned;
+And thus the blind king muttered, "Bootless weed
+Is plaint where help is none!"  But wives and maids
+And the thick-crowding poor, that many a time
+Had wailed on war-fields o'er their brethren slain,
+Went down before that strain as river reeds
+Before strong wind, went down when o'er them passed
+Its last word, "Death;" and grief's infection spread
+From least to first; and weeping filled the hall.
+Then on Saint Patrick fell compassion great;
+He rose amid that concourse, and with voice
+And words now lost, alas, or all but lost,
+Such that the chief of sight amerced, beheld
+The imagined man before him crowned with light,
+Proclaimed that God who hideth not His face,
+His people's King and Father; open flung
+The portals of His realm, that inward rolled,
+With music of a million singing spheres
+Commanded all to enter.  Who was He
+Who called the worlds from nought?  His name is Love!
+In love He made those worlds.  They have not lost,
+The sun his splendour, nor the moon her light:
+THAT miracle survives.  Alas for thee!
+Thou better miracle, fair human love,
+That splendour shouldst have been of home and hearth,
+Now quenched by mortal hate!  Whence come our woes
+But from our lusts?  O desecrated law
+By God's own finger on our hearts engraved,
+How well art thou avenged!  No dream it was,
+That primal greatness, and that primal peace:
+Man in God's image at the first was made,
+A God to rule below!
+
+                              He told it all -
+Creation, and that Sin which marred its face;
+And how the great Creator, creature made,
+God--God for man incarnate--died for man:
+Dead, with His Cross he thundered on the gates
+Of Death's blind Hades.  Then, with hands outstretched
+His Holy Ones that, in their penance prison
+From hope in Him had ceased not, to the light
+Flashed from His bleeding hands and branded brow
+Through darkness soared:  they reign with Him in heaven:
+Their brethren we, the children of one Sire.
+Long time he spake.  The winds forbore their wail;
+The woods were hushed.  That wondrous tale complete,
+Not sudden fell the silence; for, as when
+A huge wave forth from ocean toiling mounts
+High-arched, in solid bulk, the beach rock-strewn,
+Burying his hoar head under echoing cliffs,
+And, after pause, refluent to sea returns
+Not all at once is stillness, countless rills
+Or devious winding down the steep, or borne
+In crystal leap from sea-shelf to sea-well,
+And sparry grot replying; gradual thus
+With lessening cadence sank that great discourse,
+While round him gazed Saint Patrick, now the old
+Regarding, now the young, and flung on each
+In turn his boundless heart, and gazing longed
+As only Apostolic heart can long
+To help the helpless.
+
+                              "Fair, O friends, the bourn
+We dwell in!  Holy King makes happy land:
+Our King is in our midst.  He gave us gifts;
+Laws that are Love, the sovereignty of Truth.
+What, sirs, ye knew Him not!  But ye by signs
+Foresaw His coming, as, when buds are red
+Ye say, 'The spring is nigh us.'  Him, unknown,
+Each loved who loved his brother!  Shepherd youths,
+Who spread the pasture green beneath your lambs
+And freshened it with snow-fed stream and mist?
+Who but that Love unseen?  Grey mariners,
+Who lulled the rough seas round your midnight nets,
+And sent the landward breeze?  Pale sufferers wan,
+Rejoice!  His are ye; yea, and His the most!
+Have ye not watched the eagle that upstirs
+Her nest, then undersails her falling brood
+And stays them on her plumes, and bears them up
+Till, taught by proof, they learn their unguessed powers
+And breast the storm?  Thus God stirs up His people;
+Thus proves by pain.  Ye too, O hearths well-loved!
+How oft your sin-stained sanctities ye mourned!
+Wives! from the cradle reigns the Bethelem Babe!
+Maidens! henceforth the Virgin Mother spreads
+Her shining veil above you!
+
+                              "Speak aloud,
+Chieftains world-famed!  I hear the ancient blood
+That leaps against your hearts!  What?  Warriors ye!
+Danger your birthright, and your pastime death!
+Behold your foes!  They stand before you plain:
+Ill passions, base ambitions, falsehood, hate:
+Wage war on these!  A King is in your host!
+His hands no roses plucked but on the Cross:
+He came not hand of man in woman's tasks
+To mesh.  In woman's hand, in childhood's hand,
+Much more in man's, He lodged His conquering sword;
+Them too His soldiers named, and vowed to war.
+Rise, clan of Kings, rise, champions of man's race,
+Heaven's sun-clad army militant on earth,
+One victory gained, the realm decreed is ours.
+The bridal bells ring out, for Low with High
+Is wed in endless nuptials.  It is past,
+The sin, the exile, and the grief.  O man,
+Take thou, renewed, thy sister-mate by hand;
+Know well thy dignity, and hers:  return,
+And meet once more Thy Maker, for He walks
+Once more within thy garden, in the cool
+Of the world's eve!"
+
+                              The words that Patrick spake
+Were words of power, not futile did they fall:
+But, probing, healed a sorrowing people's wound.
+Round him they stood, as oft in Grecian days,
+Some haughty city sieged, her penitent sons
+Thronging green Pnyx or templed Forum hushed
+Hung listening on that People's one true Voice,
+The man that ne'er had flattered, ne'er deceived,
+Nursed no false hope.  It was the time of Faith;
+Open was then man's ear, open his heart:
+Pride spurned not then that chiefest strength of man
+The power, by Truth confronted, to believe.
+Not savage was that wild, barbaric race:
+Spirit was in them.  On their knees they sank,
+With foreheads lowly bent; and when they rose
+Such sound went forth as when late anchored fleet
+Touched by dawn breeze, shakes out its canvas broad
+And sweeps into new waters.  Man with man
+Clasped hands; and each in each a something saw
+Till then unseen.  As though flesh-bound no more,
+Their souls had touched.  One Truth, the Spirit's life,
+Lived in them all, a vast and common joy.
+And yet as when, that Pentecostal morn,
+Each heard the Apostle in his native tongue,
+So now, on each, that Truth, that Joy, that Life
+Shone forth with beam diverse.  Deep peace to one
+Those tidings seemed, a still vale after storm;
+To one a sacred rule, steadying the world;
+A third exulting saw his youthful hope
+Written in stars; a fourth triumphant hailed
+The just cause, long oppressed.  Some laughed, some wept:
+But she, that aged chieftain's mournful wife
+Clasped to her boding breast his hoary head
+Loud clamouring, "Death is dead; and not for long
+That dreadful grave can part us."  Last of all,
+He too believed.  That hoary head had shaped
+Full many a crafty scheme: --behind them all
+Nature held fast her own.
+
+                              O happy night!
+Back through the gloom of centuries sin-defaced
+With what a saintly radiance thou dost shine!
+They slept not, on the loud-resounding shore
+In glory roaming.  Many a feud that night
+Lay down in holy grave, or, mockery made,
+Was quenched in its own shame.  Far shone the fires
+Crowning dark hills with gladness:  soared the song;
+And heralds sped from coast to coast to tell
+How He the Lord of all, no Power Unknown
+But like a man rejoicing in his house,
+Ruled the glad earth.  That demon-haunted wood,
+Sad Erin's saddest region, yet, men say,
+Tenderest for all its sadness, rang at last
+With hymns of men and angels.  Onward sailed
+High o'er the long, unbreaking, azure waves
+A mighty moon, full-faced, as though on winds
+Of rapture borne.  With earliest red of dawn
+Northward once more the winged war-ships rushed
+Swift as of old to that long hated shore -
+Not now with axe and torch.  His Name they bare
+Who linked in one the nations.
+
+                              On a cliff
+Where Fochlut's Wood blackened the northern sea
+A convent rose.  Therein those sisters twain
+Whose cry had summoned Patrick o'er the deep,
+Abode, no longer weepers.  Pallid still,
+In radiance now their faces shone; and sweet
+Their psalms amid the clangour of rough brine.
+Ten years in praise to God and good to men
+That happy precinct housed them.  In their morn
+Grief had for them her great work perfected;
+Their eve was bright as childhood.  When the hour
+Came for their blissful transit, from their lips
+Pealed forth ere death that great triumphant chant
+Sung by the Virgin Mother.  Ages passed;
+And, year by year, on wintry nights, THAT song
+Alone the sailors heard--a cry of joy.
+
+
+
+SAINT PATRICK AND KING LAEGHAIRE.
+
+"Thou son of Calphurn, in peace go forth!
+  This hand shall slay them whoe'er shall slay thee!
+The carles shall stand to their necks in earth
+  Till they die of thirst who mock or stay thee!
+
+"But my father, Nial, who is dead long since,
+  Permits not me to believe thy word;
+For the servants of Jesus, thy heavenly Prince,
+  Once dead, lie flat as in sleep, interred:
+But we are as men that through dark floods wade;
+We stand in our black graves undismayed;
+Our faces are turned to the race abhorred,
+And at each hand by us stand spear or sword,
+Ready to strike at the last great day,
+Ready to trample them back into clay!
+
+"This is my realm, and men call it Eire,
+  Wherein I have lived and live in hate
+Like Nial before me and Erc his sire,
+  Of the race Lagenian, ill-named the Great!"
+
+Thus spake Laeghaire, and his host rushed on,
+  A river of blood as yet unshed:  -
+At noon they fought:  and at set of sun
+  That king lay captive, that host lay dead!
+
+The Lagenian loosed him, but bade him swear
+  He would never demand of them Tribute more:
+  So Laeghaire by the dread "God-Elements" swore,
+By the moon divine and the earth and air;
+He swore by the wind and the broad sunshine
+  That circle for ever both land and sea,
+By the long-backed rivers, and mighty wine,
+  By the cloud far-seeing, by herb and tree,
+By the boon spring shower, and by autumn's fan,
+By woman's breast, and the head of man,
+By Night and the noonday Demon he swore
+He would claim the Boarian Tribute no more.
+
+But with time wrath waxed; and he brake his faith:
+Then the dread "God-Elements" wrought his death;
+For the Wind and Sun-Strength by Cassi's side
+Came down and smote on his head that he died.
+Death-sick three days on his throne he sate;
+Then died, as his father died, great in hate.
+
+They buried their king upon Tara's hill,
+In his grave upright--there stands he still:
+Upright there stands he as men that wade
+By night through a castle-moat, undismayed;
+On his head is the crown, the spear in his hand;
+And he looks to the hated Lagenian land.
+
+Such rites in the time of wrath and wrong
+  Were Eire's:  baptised, they were hers no longer:
+For Patrick had taught her his sweet new song,
+  "Though hate is strong, yet love is stronger."
+
+
+
+SAINT PATRICK AND THE IMPOSTOR;
+
+OR, MAC KYLE OF MAN.
+
+Mac Kyle, a child of death, dwells in a forest with other
+   men like unto himself, that slay whom they will.
+   Saint Patrick coming to that wood, a certain Impostor
+   devises how he may be deceived and killed; but God
+   smites the Impostor through his own snare, and he
+   dies.  Mac Kyle believes, and demanding penance is
+   baptised.  Afterwards he preaches in Manann {77} Isle,
+   and becomes a great Saint.
+
+In Uladh, near Magh Inis, lived a chief,
+Fierce man and fell.  From orphaned childhood he
+Through lawless youth to blood-stained middle age
+Had rushed as stormy morn to stormier noon,
+Working, except that still he spared the poor,
+All wrongs with iron will; a child of death.
+Thus spake he to his followers, while the woods
+Snow-cumbered creaked, their scales of icy mail
+Angered by winter winds:  "At last he comes,
+He that deceives the people with great signs,
+And for the tinkling of a little gold
+Preaches new Gods.  Where rises yonder smoke
+Beyond the pinewood, camps this Lord of Dupes:
+How say ye?  Shall he track o'er Uladh's plains,
+As o'er the land beside, his venomous way?
+Forth with your swords! and if that God he serves
+Can save him, let him prove it!"
+
+                              Dark with wrath
+Thus spake Mac Kyle; and all his men approved,
+Shouting, while downward fell the snows hard-caked Loosened by shock
+of forest-echoed hands,
+Save Garban.  Crafty he, and full of lies,
+That thing which Patrick hated.  Sideway first
+Glancing, as though some secret foe were nigh,
+He spake:  "Mac Kyle! a counsel for thine ear!
+A man of counsel I, as thou of war!
+The people love this stranger.  Patrick slain,
+Their wrath will blaze against us, and demand
+An ERIC for his head.  Let us by craft
+Unravel first HIS craft:  then safe our choice;
+We slay a traitor, or great ransom take:
+Impostors lack not gold.  Lay me as dead
+Upon a bier:  above me spread yon cloth,
+And make your wail:  and when the seer draws nigh
+Worship him, crying, 'Lo, our friend is dead!
+Kneel, prophet, kneel, and pray that God thou serv'st
+To raise him.'  If he kneels, no prophet he,
+But like the race of mortals.  Sweep the cloth
+Straight from my face; then, laughing, I will rise."
+
+Thus counselled Garban; and the counsel pleased;
+Yet pleased not God.  Upon a bier, branch-strewn,
+They laid their man, and o'er him spread a cloth;
+Then, moving towards that smoke behind the pines,
+They found the Saint and brought him to that bier,
+And made their moan--and Garban 'neath that cloth
+Smiled as he heard it--"Lo, our friend is dead!
+Great prophet kneel; and pray the God thou serv'st
+To raise him from the dead."
+
+                              The man of God
+Upon them fixed a sentence-speaking eye:
+"Yea! he is dead.  In this ye have not lied:
+Behold, this day shall Garban's covering be
+The covering of the dead.  Remove that cloth."
+
+Then drew they from his face the cloth; and lo!
+Beneath it Garban lay, a corpse stone-cold.
+
+Amazement fell upon that bandit throng,
+Contemplating that corpse, and on Mac Kyle
+Grief for his friend, remorse, and strong belief,
+A threefold power:  for she that at his birth,
+Her brief life faithful to that Law she knew,
+Had died, in region where desires are crowned
+That hour was strong in prayer.  "From God he came,"
+Thus cried they; "and we worked a work accursed,
+Tempting God's prophet."  Patrick heard, and spake;
+"Not me ye tempted, but the God I serve."
+At last Mac Kyle made answer:  "I have sinned;
+I, and this people, whom I made to sin:
+Now therefore to thy God we yield ourselves
+Liegemen henceforth, his thralls as slave to Lord,
+Or horse to master.  That which thou command'st
+That will we do."  And Patrick said, "Believe;
+Confess your sins; and be baptised to God,
+The Father, and the Son, and Holy Spirit,
+And live true life."  Then Patrick where he stood
+Above the dead, with hands uplifted preached
+To these in anguish and in terror bowed
+The tidings of great joy from Bethlehem's Crib
+To Calvary's Cross.  Sudden upon his knees,
+Heart-pierced, as though he saw that Head thorn-pierced,
+Fell that wild chief, and was baptised to God;
+And, lifting up his great strong hands, while still
+The waters streamed adown his matted locks,
+He cried, "Alas, my master, and my sire!
+I sinned a mighty sin; for in my heart
+Fixed was my purpose, soon as thou hadst knelt,
+To slay thee with my sword.  Therefore judge thou
+What ERIC I must pay to quit my sin?"
+Him Patrick answered, "God shall be thy Judge:
+Arise, and to the seaside flee, as one
+That flies his foe.  There shalt thou find a boat
+Made of one hide:  eat nought, and nothing take
+Except one cloak alone:  but in that boat
+Sit thou, and bear the sin-mark on thy brow,
+Facing the waves, oarless and rudderless;
+And bind the boat chain thrice around thy feet,
+And fling the key with strength into the main,
+Far as thou canst:  and wheresoe'er the breath
+Of God shall waft thee, there till death abide
+Working the Will Divine."  Then spake that chief,
+"I, that commanded others, can obey;
+Such lore alone is mine:  but for this man
+That sinned my sin, alas, to see him thus!"
+To whom the Saint, "For him, when thou art gone,
+My prayer shall rise.  If God will raise the dead
+He knows:  not I."
+
+                              Then rose that chief, and rushed
+Down to the shore, as one that flies his foe;
+Nor ate, nor drank, nor spake to wife or child,
+But loosed a little boat, of one hide made,
+And sat therein, and round his ankles wound
+The boat chain thrice; and flung the key far forth
+Above the ridged sea foam.  The Lord of all
+Gave ordinance to the wind, and, as a leaf
+Swift rushed that boat, oarless and rudderless,
+Over the on-shouldering, broad-backed, glaucous wave
+Slow-rising like the rising of a world,
+And purple wastes beyond, with funeral plume
+Crested, a pallid pomp.  All night the chief
+Under the roaring tempest heard the voice
+That preached the Son of Man; and when the morn
+Shone out, his coracle drew near the surge
+Reboant on Manann's Isle.  Not unbeheld
+Rose it, and fell; not unregarded danced
+A black spot on the inrolling ridge, then hung
+Suspense upon the mile-long cataract
+That, overtoppling, changed grass-green to light,
+And drowned the shores in foam.  Upon the sands
+Two white-haired Elders in the salt air knelt,
+Offering to God their early orisons,
+Coninri and Romael.  Sixty years
+These two unto a hard and stubborn race
+Had preached the Word; and gaining by their toil
+But thirty souls, had daily prayed their God
+To send ere yet they died some ampler arm,
+And reap the ill-grown harvest of their youth.
+Ten years they prayed, not doubting, and from God,
+Who hastens not, this answer had received,
+"Ye shall not die until ye see his face."
+Therefore, each morning, peered they o'er the waves,
+Long-watching.  These through breakers dragged the man,
+Their wished-for prize, half-frozen, and nigh to death,
+And bare him to their cell, and warmed and fed him,
+And heaped his couch with skins.  Deep sleep he slept
+Till evening lay upon the level sea
+With roses strewn like bridal chamber's floor;
+Within it one star shone.  Rested, he woke
+And sought the shore.  From earth, and sea, and sky,
+Then passed into his spirit the Spirit of Love;
+And there he vowed his vow, fierce chief no more,
+But soldier of the cross.
+
+                              The weeks ran on,
+And daily those grey Elders ministered
+God's teaching to that chief, demanding still,
+"Son, understandst thou?  Gird thee like a man
+To clasp, and hold, the total Faith of Christ,
+And give us leave to die."  The months fled fast:
+Ere violets bloomed, he knew the creed; and when
+Far heathery hills purpled the autumnal air,
+He sang the psalter whole.  That tale he told
+Had power, and Patrick's name.  His strenous arm
+Labouring with theirs, reaped harvest heavy and sound,
+Till wondering gazed their wearied eyes on barns
+Knee-deep in grain.  At last an eve there fell,
+When, on the shore in commune, with such might
+Discoursed that pilgrim of the things of God,
+Such insight calm, and wisdom reverence-born,
+Each on the other gazing in their hearts
+Received once more an answer from the Lord,
+"Now is your task completed:  ye shall die."
+
+Then on the red sand knelt those Elders twain
+With hands upraised, and all their hoary hair
+Tinged like the foam-wreaths by that setting sun,
+And sang their "Nunc Dimittis."  At its close
+High on the sandhills, 'mid the tall hard grass
+That sighed eternal o'er the unbounded waste
+With ceaseless yearnings like their own for death
+They found the place where first, that bark descried,
+Their sighs were changed to songs.  That spot they marked,
+And said, "Our resurrection place is here:"
+And, on the third day dying, in that place
+The man who loved them laid them, at their heads
+Planting one cross because their hearts were one
+And one their lives.  The snowy-breasted bird
+Of ocean o'er their undivided graves
+Oft flew with wailing note; but they rejoiced
+'Mid God's high realm glittering in endless youth.
+
+These two with Christ, on him, their son in Christ
+Their mantle fell; and strength to him was given.
+Long time he toiled alone; then round him flocked
+Helpers from far.  At last, by voice of all
+He gat the Island's great episcopate,
+And king-like ruled the region.  This is he,
+Mac Kyle of Uladh, bishop, and Penitent,
+Saint Patrick's missioner in Manann's Isle,
+Sinner one time, and, after sinner, Saint
+World-famous.  May his prayer for sinners plead!
+
+
+
+SAINT PATRICK AT CASHEL;
+
+OR, THE BAPTISM OF AENGUS.
+
+ARGUMENT.
+
+Saint Patrick goes to Cashel of the Rings to celebrate
+   the Feast of the Annunciation.  Aengus, who reigns
+   there, receives him with all honour.  He and his
+   people believe, and by Baptism are added unto the
+   Church.  Aengus desires to resign his sovereignty, and
+   become a monk.  The Saint suffers not this, because
+   he had discovered by two notable signs, both at the
+   baptism of Aengus and before it, that the Prince is of
+   those who are called by God to rule men.
+
+When Patrick now o'er Ulster's forest bound,
+And Connact, echoing to the western wave,
+And Leinster, fair with hill-suspended woods,
+Had raised the cross, and where the deep night ruled,
+Splendour had sent of everlasting light,
+Sole peace of warring hearts, to Munster next,
+Thomond and Desmond, Heber's portion old,
+He turned; and, fired by love that mocks at rest
+Pushed on through raging storm the whole night long,
+Intent to hold the Annunciation Feast
+At Cashel of the Kings.  The royal keep
+High-seated on its Rock, as morning broke
+Faced them at last; and at the selfsame hour
+Aengus, in his father's absence lord,
+Rising from happy sleep and heaven-sent dreams
+Went forth on duteous tasks.  With sudden start
+The prince stept back; for, o'er the fortress court
+Like grove storm-levelled lay the idols huge,
+False gods and foul that long had awed the land,
+Prone, without hand of man.  O'er-awed he gazed;
+Then on the air there rang a sound of hymns,
+And by the eastern gate Saint Patrick stood,
+The brethren round him.  On their shaggy garb
+Auroral mist, struck by the rising sun,
+Glittered, that diamond-panoplied they seemed,
+And as a heavenly vision.  At that sight
+The youth, descending with a wildered joy,
+Welcomed his guests:  and, ere an hour, the streets
+Sparkled far down like flowering meads in spring,
+So thronged the folk in holiday attire
+To see the man far-famed.  "Who spurns our gods?"
+Once they had cried in wrath:  but, year by year,
+Tidings of some deliverance great and strange,
+Some life more noble, some sublimer hope,
+Some regal race enthroned beyond the grave,
+Had reached them from afar.  The best believed,
+Great hearts for whom nor earthly love sufficed
+Nor earthly fame.  The meaner scoffed:  yet all
+Desired the man.  Delay had edged their thirst.
+
+Then Patrick, standing up among them, spake,
+And God was with him.  Not as when loose tongue
+Babbles vain rumour, or the Sophist spins
+Thought's air-hung cobwebs gay with Fancy's dews,
+Spake he, but words of might, as when a man
+Bears witness to the things which he has seen,
+And tells of that he knows:  and as the harp
+Attested is by rapture of the ear,
+And sunlight by consenting of the eye
+That, seeing, knows it sees, and neither craves
+Inferior demonstration, so his words
+Self-proved, went forth and conquered:  for man's mind,
+Created in His image who is Truth,
+Challenged by truth, with recognising voice
+Cries out "Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone,"
+And cleaves thereto.  In all that listening host
+One vast, dilating heart yearned to its God.
+Then burst the bond of years.  No haunting doubt
+They knew.  God dropped on them the robe of Truth
+Sun-like:  down fell the many-coloured weed
+Of error; and, reclothed ere yet unclothed,
+They walked a new-born earth.  The blinded Past
+Fled, vanquished.  Glorious more than strange it seemed
+That He who fashioned man should come to man,
+And raise by ruling.  They, His trumpet heard,
+In glory spurned demons misdeemed for gods:
+The great chief had returned:  the clan enthralled
+Trod down the usurping foe.
+
+                              Then rose the cry,
+"Join us to Christ!"  His strong eyes on them set,
+Patrick replied, "Know ye what thing ye seek
+Ye that would fain be house-mates with my King?
+Ye seek His cross!"  He paused, then added slow:
+"If ye be liegeful, sirs, decree the day,
+His baptism shall be yours."
+
+                              That eve, while shone
+The sunset on the green-touched woods, that, grazed
+By onward flight of unalighting spring,
+Caught warmth yet scarcely flamed, Aengus stood
+With Patrick in a westward-facing tower
+Which overlooked far regions town-besprent,
+And lit with winding waters.  Thus he spake:
+"My Father! what is sovereignty of man?
+Say, can I shield yon host from death, from sin,
+Taking them up into my breast, like God?
+I trow not so!  Mine be the lowliest place
+Following thy King who left his Father's throne
+To walk the lowliest!"  Patrick answered thus:
+"Best lot thou choosest, son.  If thine that lot
+Thou know'st not yet; nor I.  The Lord, thy God,
+Will teach us."
+
+                              When the day decreed had dawned
+Loud rang the bull-horn; and on every breeze
+Floated the banners, saffron, green, and blue;
+While issuing from the horizon's utmost verge
+The full-voiced People flocked.  So swarmed of old
+Some migratory nation, instinct-urged
+To fly their native wastes sad winter's realm;
+So thronged on southern slopes when, far below,
+Shone out the plains of promise.  Bright they came!
+No summer sea could wear a blithsomer sheen
+Though every dancing crest and milky plume
+Ran on with rainbows braided.  Minstrel songs
+Wafted like winds those onward hosts, or swayed
+Or stayed them; while among them heralds passed
+Lifting white wands of office.  Foremost rode
+Aileel, the younger brother of the prince:
+He ruled a milk-white horse.  Fluttered, breeze-borne
+His mantle green, while all his golden hair
+Streamed back redundant from the ring of gold
+Circling his head uncovered.  Loveliest light
+Of innocence and joy was on that face:
+Full well the young maids marked it!  Brighter yet
+Beamed he, his brother noting.  On the verge
+Of Cashel's Rock that hour Aengus stood,
+By Patrick's side.  That concourse nearer now
+He gazed upon it, crying, with clasped hands,
+"My Father, fair is sunrise, fair the sea,
+The hills, the plains, the wind-stirred wood, the maid;
+But what is like a People onward borne
+In gladness?  When I see that sight, my heart
+Expands like palace-gates wide open flung
+That say to all men, 'Enter.'"  Then the Saint
+Laid on that royal head a hand of might,
+And said, "The Will of God decrees thee King!
+Son of this People art thou:  Sire one day
+Thou shalt be!  Son and Sire in one are King.
+Shepherd for God thy flock, thou Shepherd true!"
+He spake:  that word was ratified in Heaven.
+
+  Meantime that multitude innumerable
+Had reached the Rock, and, now the winding road
+In pomp ascending, faced those fair-wrought gates
+Which, by the warders at the prince's sign
+Drawn back, to all gave entrance.  In they streamed,
+Filling the central courtway.  Patrick stood
+High stationed on a prostrate idol's base,
+In vestments of the Vigil of that Feast
+The Annunciation, which with annual boon
+Whispers, while melting snows dilate those streams
+Purer than snows, to universal earth
+That Maiden Mother's joy.  The Apostle watched
+The advancing throng, and gave them welcome thus;
+"As though into the great Triumphant Church,
+O guests of God, ye flock!  Her place is Heaven:
+Sirs! we this day are militant below:
+Not less, advance in faith.  Behold your crowns -
+Obedience and Endurance."
+
+                              There and then
+The Rite began:  his people's Chief and Head
+Beside the font Aengus stood; his face
+Sweet as a child's, yet grave as front of eld:
+For reverence he had laid his crown aside,
+And from the deep hair to the unsandalled feet
+Was raimented in white.  With mitred head
+And massive book, forward Saint Patrick leaned,
+Stayed by the gem-wrought crosier.  Prayer on prayer
+Went up to God; while gift on gift from God,
+All Angel-like, invisibly to man,
+Descended.  Thrice above that princely brow
+Patrick the cleansing waters poured, and traced
+Three times thereon the Venerable Sign,
+Naming the Name Triune.  The Rite complete,
+Awestruck that concourse downward gazed.  At last
+Lifting their eyes, they marked the prince's face
+That pale it was though bright, anguished and pale,
+While from his naked foot a blood-stream gushed
+And o'er the pavement welled.  The crosier's point,
+Weighted with weight of all that priestly form,
+Had pierced it through.  "Why suffer'dst thou so long
+The pain in silence?"  Patrick spake, heart-grieved:
+Smiling, Aengus answered, "O my Sire,
+I thought, thus called to follow Him whose feet
+Were pierced with nails, haply the blissful Rite
+Bore witness to their sorrows."
+
+                              At that word
+The large eyes of the Apostolic man
+Grew larger; and within them lived that light
+Not fed by moon or sun, a visible flash
+Of that invisible lightning which from God
+Vibrates ethereal through the world of souls,
+Vivific strength of Saints.  The mitred brow
+Uptowered sublime:  the strong, yet wrinkled hands,
+Ascending, ceased not, till the crosier's head
+Glittered above the concourse like a star.
+At last his hands disparting, down he drew
+From Heaven the Royal Blessing, speaking thus:
+"For this cause may the blessing, Sire of kings,
+Cleave to thy seed forever!  Spear and sword
+Before them fall!  In glory may the race
+Of Nafrach's sons, Aengus, and Aileel,
+Hold sway on Cashel's summit!  Be their kings
+Great-hearted men, potent to rule and guard
+Their people; just to judge them; warriors strong;
+Sage counsellors; faithful shepherds; men of God,
+That so through them the everlasting King
+May flood their land with blessing."  Thus he spake;
+And round him all that nation said, "Amen."
+
+  Thus held they feast in Cashel of the Kings
+That day till all that land was clothed with Christ:
+And when the parting came from Cashel's steep
+Patrick the People's Blessing thus forth sent:
+"The Blessing fall upon the pasture broad,
+On fruitful mead, and every corn-clad hill,
+And woodland rich with flowers that children love:
+Unnumbered be the homesteads, and the hearths:  -
+A blessing on the women, and the men,
+On youth, and maiden, and the suckling babe:
+A blessing on the fruit-bestowing tree,
+And foodful river tide.  Be true; be pure,
+Not living from below, but from above,
+As men that over-top the world.  And raise
+Here, on this rock, high place of idols once,
+A kingly church to God.  The same shall stand
+For aye, or, wrecked, from ruin rise restored,
+His witness till He cometh.  Over Eire
+The Blessing speed till time shall be no more
+From Cashel of the Kings."
+
+                              The Saint fared forth:
+The People bare him through their kingdom broad
+With banner and with song; but o'er its bound
+The women of that People followed still
+A half day's journey with lamenting voice;
+Then silent knelt, lifting their babes on high;
+And, crowned with two-fold blessing, home returned.
+
+
+
+SAINT PATRICK AND THE CHILDLESS MOTHER.
+
+ARGUMENT.
+
+Saint Patrick finds an aged Pagan woman making great
+   lamentation above a tomb which she believes to be that
+   of her son.  He kneels beside her in prayer, while
+   around them a wondrous tempest sweeps.  After a long
+   time, he declares unto her the Death of Christ, and
+   how, through that Death, the Dead are blessed.
+   Lastly, he dissuades her from her rage of grief, and
+   admonishes her to pray for her son on a tomb hard by,
+   which is his indeed.  The woman believes, and, being
+   consoled by a Sign of Heaven, departs in peace.
+
+Across his breast one hundred times each day
+Saint Patrick drew the Venerable Sign,
+And sixty times by night:  and whensoe'er
+In travel Cross was seen far off or nigh
+On lonely moor, or rock, or heathy hill,
+For Erin then was sown with Christian seed,
+He sought it, and before it knelt.  Yet once,
+While cold in winter shone the star of eve
+Upon their board, thus spake a youthful monk:
+"Three times this day, my father, didst thou pass
+The Cross of Christ unmarked.  At morn thou saw'st
+A last year's lamb that by it sheltered lay,
+At noon a dove that near it sat and mourned,
+At eve a little child that round it raced,
+Well pleased with each; yet saw'st thou not that Cross,
+Nor mad'st thou any reverence!"  At that word
+Wondering, the Saint arose, and left the meat,
+And, wondering, went to venerate that Cross.
+
+  Dark was the earth and dank ere yet he reached
+That spot; and lo! where lamb had lain, and dove
+Had mourned, and child had raced, there stood indeed
+High-raised, the Cross of Christ.  Before it long
+He prayed, and kneeling, marked that on a tomb
+That Cross was raised.  Then, inly moved by God,
+The Saint demanded, "Who, of them that walked
+The sun-warmed earth lies here in darkness hid?"
+And answer made a lamentable Voice:
+"Pagan I lived, my own soul's bane: --when dead,
+Men buried here my body."  Patrick then:
+"How stands the Cross of Christ on Pagan grave?"
+And answered thus the lamentable Voice:
+"A woman's work.  She had been absent long;
+Her son had died; near mine his grave was made;
+Half blind was she through fleeting of her tears,
+And, erring, raised the Cross upon my tomb,
+Misdeeming it for his.  Nightly she comes,
+Wailing as only Pagan mothers wail;
+So wailed my mother once, while pain tenfold
+Ran through my bodiless being.  For her sake,
+If pity dwells on earth or highest heaven,
+May it this mourner comfort!  Christian she,
+And capable of pity."
+
+                              Then the Saint
+Cried loud, "O God, Thou seest this Pagan's heart,
+That love within it dwells:  therefore not his
+That doom of Souls all hate, and self-exiled
+To whom Thy Presence were a woe twice told.
+Eternal Pity! pity Thou Thy work; -
+Sole Peace of them that love Thee, grant him peace."
+Thus Patrick prayed; and in the heaven of heavens
+God heard his servant's prayer.  Then Patrick mused
+"Now know I why I passed that Cross unmarked;
+It was not that it seemed."
+
+                              As thus he knelt,
+Behold, upon the cold and bitter wind
+Rang wail on wail; and o'er the moor there moved
+What seemed a woman's if a human form.
+That miserable phantom onward came
+With cry succeeding cry that sank or swelled
+As dipped or rose the moor.  Arrived at last,
+She heeded not the Saint, but on that grave
+Dashed herself down.  Long time that woman wailed;
+And Patrick, long, for reverence of her woe
+Forbore.  At last he spake low-toned as when
+Best listener knows not when the strain begins.
+"Daughter! the sparrow falls not to the ground
+Without his Maker.  He that made thy son
+Hath sent His Son to bear all woes of men,
+And vanquish every foe--the latest, Death."
+Then rolled that woman on the Saint an eye
+As when the last survivor of a host
+Glares on some pitying conqueror.  "Ho! the man
+That treads upon my grief!  He ne'er had sons;
+And thou, O son of mine, hast left no sons,
+Though oft I said, 'When I am old, his babes
+Shall climb my knees.'  My boast was mine in youth;
+But now mine age is made a barren stock
+And as a blighted briar."  In grief she turned;
+And as on blackening tarn gust follows gust,
+Again came wail on wail.  On strode the night:
+The jagged forehead of that forest old
+Alone was seen:  all else was gloom.  At last
+With voice, though kind, upbraiding, Patrick spake:
+"Daughter, thy grief is wilful and it errs;
+Errs like those sad and tear-bewildered eyes
+That for a Christian's take a Pagan's grave,
+And for a son's a stranger's.  Ah! poor child,
+Thy pride it was to raise, where lay thy son,
+A Cross, his memory's honour.  By thee close
+All dewed and glimmering in yon rising moon,
+Low lies a grave unhonoured, and unknown:
+No cross stands on it; yet upon its breast
+Graved shalt thou find what Christian tomb ne'er lacks,
+The Cross of Christ.  Woman, there lies thy son."
+
+  She rose; she found that other tomb; she knelt;
+And o'er it went her wandering palms, as though
+Some stone-blind mother o'er an infant's face
+Should spread an agonising hand, intent
+To choose betwixt her own and counterfeit;
+She found that cross deep-grav'n, and further sign
+Close by, to her well known.  One piercing shriek -
+Another moment, and her body lay
+Along that grave with kisses, and wild hands
+As when some forest beast tears up the ground,
+Seeking its prey there hidden.  Then once more
+Rang the wild wail above that lonely heath,
+While roared far off the vast invisible woods,
+And with them strove the blast, in eddies dire
+Whirling both branch and bough.  Through hurrying clouds
+The scared moon rushed like ship that naked glares
+One moment, lightning-lighted in the storm,
+Anon in wild waves drowned.  An hour went by:
+Still wailed that woman, and the tempest roared;
+While in the heart of ruin Patrick prayed.
+He loved that woman.  Unto Patrick dear,
+Dear as God's Church was still the single Soul,
+Dearest the suffering Soul.  He gave her time;
+He let the floods of anguish spend themselves:
+But when her wail sank low; when woods were mute,
+And where the skiey madness late had raged
+Shone the blue heaven, he spake with voice in strength
+Gentle like that which calmed the Syrian lake,
+"My sister, God hath shown me of thy wound,
+And wherefore with the blind old Pagan's cry
+Hopeless thou mourn'st.  Returned from far, thou found'st
+Thy son had Christian died, and saw'st the Cross
+On Christian graves:  and ill thy heart endured
+That tomb so dear should lack its reverence meet.
+To him thou gav'st the Cross, albeit that Cross
+Inly thou know'st not yet.  That knowledge thine,
+Thou hadst not left thy son amerced of prayer,
+And given him tears, not succour."  "Yea," she said,
+"Of this new Faith I little understand,
+Being an aged woman and in woe:
+But since my son was Christian, such am I;
+And since the Christian tomb is decked with Cross
+He shall not lack his right."
+
+                              Then Patrick spake:
+"O woman, hearken, for through me thy son
+Invokes thee.  All night long for thee, unknown,
+My hands have risen:  but thou hast raised no prayer
+For him, thy dearest; nor from founts of God,
+Though brimful, hast thou drawn for lips that thirst.
+Arise, and kneel, and hear thy loved one's cry:
+Too long he waiteth.  Blessed are the dead:
+They rest in God's high Will.  But more than peace,
+The rapturous vision of the Face of God,
+Won by the Cross of Christ--for that they thirst
+As thou, if viewless stood thy son close by,
+Wouldst thirst to see his countenance.  Eyes sin-sealed
+Not yet can see their God.  Prayer speeds the time:
+The living help the dead; all praise to Him
+Who blends His children in a league of help,
+Making all good one good.  Eternal Love!
+Not thine the will that love should cease with life,
+Or, living, cease from service, barren made,
+A stagnant gall eating the mourner's heart
+That hour when love should stretch a hand of might
+Up o'er the grave to heaven.  O great in love,
+Perfect love's work:  for well, sad heart, I know,
+Hadst thou not trained thy son in virtuous ways,
+Christian he ne'er had been."
+
+                              Those later words
+That solitary mourner understood,
+The earlier but in part, and answered thus:
+"A loftier Cross, and farther seen, shall rise
+Upon this grave new-found!  No hireling hands -
+Mine own shall raise it; yea, though thirty years
+Should sweat beneath the task."  And Patrick said:
+"What means the Cross?  That lore thou lack'st now learn."
+
+  Then that which Kings desired to know, and seers
+And prophets vigil-blind--that Crown of Truths,
+Scandal of fools, yet conqueror of the world,
+To her, that midnight mourner, he divulged,
+Record authentic:  how in sorrow and sin
+The earth had groaned; how pity, like a sword,
+Had pierced the great Paternal Heart in heaven;
+How He, the Light of Light, and God of God,
+Had man become, and died upon the Cross,
+Vanquishing thus both sorrow and sin, and risen,
+The might of death o'erthrown; and how the gates
+Of heaven rolled inwards as the Anointed King
+Resurgent and ascending through them passed
+In triumph with His Holy Dead; and how
+The just, thenceforth death-freed, the selfsame gates
+Entering, shall share the everlasting throne.
+Thus Patrick spake, and many a stately theme
+Rehearsed beside, higher than heaven, and yet
+Near as the farthest can alone be near.
+Then in that grief-worn creature's bosom old
+Contentions rose, and fiercer fires than burn
+In sultry breasts of youth:  and all her past,
+Both good and evil, woke, in sleep long sealed;
+And all the powers and forces of her soul
+Rushed every way through darkness seeking light,
+Like winds or tides.  Beside her Patrick prayed,
+And mightier than his preaching was his prayer,
+Sheltering that crisis dread.  At last beneath
+The great Life-Giver's breath that Human Soul,
+An inner world vaster than planet worlds,
+In undulation swayed, as when of old
+The Spirit of God above the waters moved
+Creative, while the blind and shapeless void
+Yearned into form, and form grew meet for life,
+And downward through the abysses Law ran forth
+With touch soul-soft, and seas from lands retired,
+And light from dark, and wondering Nature passed
+Through storm to calm, and all things found their home.
+
+Silence long time endured; at last, clear-voiced,
+Her head not turning, thus the woman spake:
+"That God who Man became--who died, and lives, -
+Say, died He for my son?"  And Patrick said,
+"Yea, for thy son He died.  Kneel, woman, kneel!
+Nor doubt, for mighty is a mother's prayer,
+That He who in the eternal light is throned,
+Lifting the roseate and the nail-pierced palm,
+Will make in heaven the Venerable Sign,
+For He it is prays in us, and that Soul
+Thou lov'st pass on to glory."
+
+                              At his word
+She knelt, and unto God, with help of God,
+Uprushed the strength of prayer, as when the cloud
+Uprushes past some beetling mountain wall
+From billowy deeps unseen.  Long time she prayed;
+While heaven and earth grew silent as that night
+When rose the Saviour.  Sudden ceased the prayer:
+And rang upon the night her jubilant cry,
+"I saw a Sign in Heaven.  Far inward rolled
+The gates; and glory flashed from God; and he
+I love his entrance won."  Then, fair and tall,
+That woman stood with hands upraised to heaven
+The dusky shadow of her youth renewed,
+And instant Patrick spake, "Give thanks to God,
+And speed thee home, and sleep; and since thy son
+No children left, take to thee orphans twain
+And rear them, in his honour, unto Christ;
+And yearly, when the death-day of thy son
+Returns, his birth-day name it; call thy friends;
+Give alms; and range the poor around thy door,
+So shall they feast, and pray.  Woman, farewell:
+All night the dark upon thy face hath lain;
+Yet shall we know each other, met in heaven."
+
+Then blithe of foot that Mother crossed the moor;
+And when she reached her door a zone of white
+Loosening along a cloud that walled the east
+Revealed the coming dawn.  That dawn ere long
+Lay, unawaking, on a face serene,
+On tearless lids, and quiet, open palms,
+On stormless couch and raiment calm that hid
+A breast if faded now, yet happier far
+Than when in prime its youthful wave first heaved
+Rocking a sleeping Infant.
+
+
+
+SAINT PATRICK AT THE FEAST OF KNOCK CAE;
+OR, THE FOUNDING OF MUNGRET.
+
+ARGUMENT.
+
+Saint Patrick, being bidden to a feast, discourses
+   on the way against the pride of the Bards, for whom
+   Fiacc pleads.  Derball, a scoffer, requires the Saint
+   to remove a mountain.  He kneels down and prays, and
+   Derball avers that the mountain moved.
+   Notwithstanding, Derball believes not, but departs.
+   The Saint declares that he saw not whether the
+   mountain moved.  He places Nessan over his convent at
+   Mungret because he had given a little wether to the
+   hungry.  Nessan's mother grudged the gift; and Saint
+   Patrick prophesies that her grave shall not be in her
+   son's church.
+
+In Limneach, {101} ere he reached it, fame there ran
+Of Patrick's words and works.  Before his foot
+Aileel had fallen, loud wailing, with his wife,
+And cried, "Our child is slain by savage beasts;
+But thou, O prophet, if that God thou serv'st
+Be God indeed, restore him!"  Patrick turned
+To Malach, praised of all men.  "Brother, kneel,
+And raise yon child."  But Malach answered, "Nay,
+Lest, tempting God, His service I should shame."
+Then Patrick, "Answer of the base is thine;
+And base shall be that house thou build'st on earth,
+Little, and low.  A man may fail in prayer:
+What then?  Thank God! the fault is ours not His,
+And ours alone the shame."  The Apostle turned
+To Ibar, and to Ailbe, bishops twain,
+And bade them raise the child.  They heard and knelt:
+And Patrick knelt between them; and these three
+Upheaved a wondrous strength of prayer; and lo!
+All pale, yet shining, rose the child, and sat,
+Lifting small hands, and preached to those around,
+And straightway they believed, and were baptized.
+
+Thus with loud rumour all the land was full,
+And some believed; some doubted; and a chief,
+Lonan, the son of Eire, that half believed,
+Willing to draw from Patrick wonder and sign,
+By messengers besought him, saying, "Come,
+For in thy reverence waits thy servant's feast
+Spread on Knock Cae."  That pleasant hill ascends
+Westward of Ara, girt by rivers twain,
+Maigue, lily-lighted, and the "Morning Star"
+Once "Samhair" named, that eastward through the woods
+Winding, upon its rapids earliest meets
+The morn, and flings it far o'er mead and plain.
+
+From Limneach therefore Patrick, while the dawn
+Still dusk, its joyous secret kept, went forth,
+O'er dustless road soon lost in dewy fields,
+And groves that, touched by wakening winds, began
+To load damp airs with scent.  That time it was
+When beech leaves lose their silken gloss, and maids
+From whitest brows depose the hawthorn white,
+Red rose in turn enthroning.  Earliest gleams
+Glimmered on leaves that shook like wings of birds:
+Saint Patrick marked them well.  He turned to Fiacc -
+"God might have changed to Pentecostal tongues
+The leaves of all the forests in the world,
+And bade them sing His love!  He wrought not thus:
+A little hint He gives us and no more.
+Alone the willing see.  Thus they sin less
+Who, if they saw, seeing would disbelieve.
+Hark to that note!  O foolish woodland choirs!
+Ye sing but idle loves; and, idler far,
+The bards sing war--war only!"
+
+                              Answered thus
+The monk bard-loving:  "Sing it!  Ay, and make
+The keys of all the tempests hang on zones
+Of those cloud-spirits!  They, too, can 'bind and loose:'
+A bard incensed hath proved a kingdom's doom!
+Such Aidan.  Upon cakes of meal his host,
+King Aileach, fed him in a fireless hall:
+The bard complained not--ay, but issuing forth,
+Sang in dark wood a keen and venomed song
+That raised on the king's countenance plague-spots three;
+Who saw him named them Scorn, Dishonour, Shame,
+And blighted those three oak trees nigh his door.
+What next?  Before a month that realm lay drowned
+In blood; and fire went o'er the opprobrious house!"
+Thus spake the youth, and blushed at his own zeal
+For bardic fame; then added, "Strange the power
+Of song!  My father, do I vainly dream
+Oft thinking that the bards, perchance the birds,
+Sing something vaster than they think or know?
+Some fire immortal lives within their strings:
+Therefore the people love them.  War divine,
+God's war on sin--true love-song best and sweetest -
+Perforce they chaunt in spirit, not wars of clans:
+Yea, one day, conscious, they shall sing that song;
+One day by river clear of south or north,
+Pagan no more, the laurelled head shall rise,
+And chaunt the Warfare of the Realm of Souls,
+The anguish and the cleansing, last the crown -
+Prelude of songs celestial!"
+
+                              Patrick smiled:
+"Still, as at first, a lover of the bards!
+Hard task was mine to win thee to the cowl!
+Dubtach, thy master, sole in Tara's hall
+Who made me reverence, mocked my quest.  He said,
+'Fiacc thou wouldst?--my Fiacc?  Few days gone by
+I sent the boy with poems to the kings;
+He loves me:  hardly will he leave the songs
+To wear thy tonsure!'  As he spake, behold,
+Thou enter'dst.  Sudden hands on Dubtach's head
+I laid, as though to gird with tonsure crown:
+Then rose thy clamour, 'Erin's chief of bards
+A tonsured man!  Me, father, take, not him!
+Far less the loss to Erin and the songs!'
+Down knelt'st thou; and, ere long, old Dubtach's floor
+Shone with thy vernal locks, like forest paths
+Made gold by leaves of autumn!"
+
+                              As he spake,
+The sun, new-risen, flashed on a breast of wood
+That answered from a thousand jubilant throats:
+Then Fiacc, with all their music in his face,
+Resumed:  "My father, upon Tara's steep
+Patient thou sat'st whole months, sifting with care
+The laws of Eire, recasting for all time,
+Ill laws from good dissevering, as that Day
+Shall sever tares from wheat.  I see thee still,
+As then we saw--thy clenched hand lost in beard
+Propping thy chin; thy forehead wrinkle-trenched
+Above that wondrous tome, the 'Senchus Mohr,'
+Like his, that Hebrew lawgiver's, who sat
+Throned on the clouded Mount, while far below
+The Tribes waited in awe.  Now answer make!
+Three bishops, and three brehons, and three kings.
+Ye toiled--who helped thee best?"  "Dubtach, the bard,"
+Patrick replied--"Yea, wise was he, and knew
+Man's heart like his own strings."  "All bards are wise,"
+Shouted the youth, "except when war they wage
+On thee, the wisest.  In their music bath
+They cleanse man's heart, not less, and thus prepare,
+Though hating thee, thy way.  The bards are wise
+For all except themselves.  Shall God not save them,
+He who would save the worst?  Such grace were hard
+Unless, death past, their souls to birds might change,
+And in the darksomest grove of Paradise
+Lament, amerced, their error, yet rejoice
+In souls that walked obedient!"  "Darksomest grove,"
+Patrick made answer; "darksome is their life;
+Darksome their pride, their love, their joys, their hopes;
+Darksome, though gleams of happier lore they have,
+Their light!  Seest thou yon forest floor, and o'er it,
+The ivy's flash--earth-light?  Such light is theirs:
+By such can no man walk."
+
+                              Thus, gay or grave,
+Conversed they, while the Brethren paced behind;
+Till now the morn crowded each cottage door
+With clustered heads.  They reached ere long in woods
+A hamlet small.  Here on the weedy thatch
+White fruit-bloom fell:  through shadow, there, went round
+The swinging mill-wheel tagged with silver fringe;
+Here rang the mallet; there was heard remote
+The one note of the love-contented bird.
+Though warm the sun, in shade the young spring morn
+Was edged with winter yet, and icy film
+Glazed the deep ruts.  The swarthy smith worked hard,
+And working sang; the wheelwright toiled close by;
+An armourer next to these:  through flaming smoke
+Glared the fierce hands that on the anvil fell
+In thunder down.  A sorcerer stood apart
+Kneading Death's messenger, that missile ball,
+The Lia Laimbhe.  To his heart he clasped it,
+And o'er it muttered spells with flatteries mixed:
+"Hail, little daughter mine!  'Twixt hand and heart
+I knead thee!  From the Red Sea came that sand
+Which, blent with viper's poison, makes thy flesh!
+Be thou no shadow wandering on the air!
+Rush through the battle gloom as red-combed snake
+Cleaves the blind waters!  On! like Witch's glance,
+Or forked flash, or shaft of summer pest,
+And woe to him that meets thee!  Mouth blood-red
+My daughter hath: --not healing be her kiss!"
+Thus he.  In shade he stood, and phrensy-fired;
+And yet he marked who watched him.  Without word
+Him Patrick passed; but spake to all the rest
+With voice so kindly reverent, "Is not this,"
+Men asked, "the preacher of the 'Tidings Good?'"
+"What tidings?  Has he found a mine?"  "He speaks
+To princes as to brothers; to the hind
+As we to princes' children!  Yea, when mute,
+Saith not his face 'Rejoice'?"
+
+                              At times the Saint
+Laid on the head of age his strong right hand,
+Gentle as touch of soft-accosting eyes;
+And once before an open door he stopped,
+Silent.  Within, all glowing like a rose,
+A mother stood for pleasure of her babes
+That--in them still the warmth of couch late left -
+Around her gambolled.  On his face, as hers,
+Their sport regarding, long time lay the smile;
+Then crept a shadow o'er it, and he spake
+In sadness:  "Woman! when a hundred years
+Have passed, with opening flower and falling snow,
+Where then will be thy children?"  Like a cloud
+Fear and great wrath fell on her.  From the wall
+She snatched a battle-axe and raised it high
+In both hands, clamouring, "Wouldst thou slay my babes?"
+He answered, "I would save them.  Woman, hear!
+Seest thou yon floating shape?  It died a worm;
+It lives, the blue-winged angel of spring meads.
+Thy children, likewise, if they serve my King,
+Death past, shall find them wings."  Then to her cheek
+The bloom returned, and splendour to her eye;
+And catching to her breast, that larger swelled,
+A child, she wept, "Oh, would that he might live
+For ever!  Prophet, speak! thy words are good!
+Their father, too, must hear thee."  Patrick said,
+"Not so; nor falls this seed on every road;"
+Then added thus:  "You child, by all the rest
+Cherished as though he were some infant God,
+Is none of thine."  She answered, "None of ours;
+A great chief sent him here for fosterage."
+Then he:  "All men on earth the children are
+Of One who keeps them here in fosterage:
+They see not yet His face; but He sees them,
+Yea, and decrees their seasons and their times:
+Like infants, they must learn Him first by touch,
+Through nature, and her gifts--by hearing next,
+The hearing of the ear, and that is Faith -
+By Vision last.  Woman, these things are hard;
+But thou to Limneach come in three days' time,
+Likewise thy husband; there, by Sangul's Well,
+Thou shalt know all."
+
+                              The Saint had reached ere long
+That festal mount.  Thousands with bannered line
+Scaled it light-hearted.  Never favourite lamb
+In ribands decked shone brighter than that hour
+The fair flank of Knock Cae.  Heath-scented airs
+Lightened the clambering toil.  At times the Saint
+Stayed on their course the crowds, and towards the Truth
+Drew them by parable, or record old,
+Oftener by question sage.  Not all believed:
+Of such was Derball.  Man of wealth and wit,
+Nor wise, nor warlike, toward the Saint he strode
+With bubble-seething brain, and head high tossed,
+And cried, "Great Seer! remove yon mountain blue,
+Cenn Abhrat, by thy prayer!  That done, to thee
+Fealty I pledge."  Saint Patrick knelt in prayer:
+Soon Derball cried, "The central ridge descends; -
+Southward, beyond it, Longa's lake shines out
+In sunlight flashing!"  At his word drew near
+The men of Erin.  Derball homeward turned,
+Mocking:  "Believe who will, believe not I!
+Me more imports it o'er my foodful fields
+To draw the Maigue's rich waters than to stare
+At moving hills."  But certain of that throng,
+Light men, obsequious unto Derball's laugh,
+Questioned of Patrick if the mountain moved.
+He answered, "On the ground mine eyes were fixed;
+Nought saw I.  Haply, through defect of mine,
+It moved not.  Derball said the mountain moved;
+Yet kept he not his pledge, but disbelieved.
+'Faith can move mountains.'  Never said my King
+That mountains moved could move reluctant faith
+In unbelieving heart."  With sad, calm voice
+He spake; and Derball's laughter frustrate died.
+
+  Meantime, high up on that thyme-scented hill
+By shadows swept, and lights, and rapturous winds,
+Lonan prepared the feast, and, with that chief,
+Mantan, a deacon.  Tables fair were spread;
+And tents with branches gay.  Beside those tents
+Stood the sweet-breathing, mournful, slow-eyed kine
+With hazel-shielded horns, and gave their milk
+Gravely to merry maidens.  Low the sun
+Had fallen, when, Patrick near the summit now,
+There burst on him a wandering troop, wild-eyed,
+With scant and quaint array.  O'er sunburnt brows
+They wore sere wreaths; their piebald vests were stained,
+And lean their looks, and sad:  some piped, some sang,
+Some tossed the juggler's ball.  "From far we came,"
+They cried; "we faint with hunger; give as food!"
+Upon them Patrick bent a pitying eye,
+And said, "Where Lonan and where Mantan toil
+Go ye, and pray them, for mine honour's sake,
+To gladden you with meat."  But Lonan said,
+And Mantan, "Nay, but when the feast is o'er,
+The fragments shall be yours."  With darkening brow
+The Saint of that denial heard, and cried,
+"He cometh from the North, even now he cometh,
+For whom the Blessing is reserved; he cometh
+Bearing a little wether at his back:"
+And, straightway, through the thicket evening-dazed
+A shepherd--by him walked his mother--pushed,
+Bearing a little wether.  Patrick said,
+"Give them to eat.  They hunger."  Gladly then
+That shepherd youth gave them the wether small:
+With both his hands outstretched, and liberal smile,
+He gave it, though, with angry eye askance
+His mother grudged it sore.  The wether theirs,
+As though earth-swallowed, vanished that wild tribe,
+Fearing that mother's eye.
+
+                              Then Patrick spake
+To Lonan, "Zealous is thy service, friend;
+Yet of thy house no king shall sit on throne,
+No bishop bless the people."  Turning then
+To Mantan, thus he spake, "Careful art thou
+Of many things; not less that church thou raisest
+Shall not be of the honoured in the land;
+And in its chancel waste the mountain kine
+Shall couch above thy grave."  To Nessan last
+Thus spake he:  "Thou that didst the hungry feed,
+The poor of Christ, that know not yet His name,
+And, helping them that cried to me for help,
+Cherish mine honour, like a palm, one day,
+Shall rise thy greatness."  Nessan's mother old
+For pardon knelt.  He blessed her hoary head,
+Yet added, mournful, "Not within the Church
+That Nessan serves shall lie his mother's grave."
+Then Nessan he baptized, and on him bound
+Ere long the deacon's grade, and placed him, later,
+Priest o'er his church at Mungret.  Centuries ten
+It stood, a convent round it as a star
+Forth sending beams of glory and of grace
+O'er woods Teutonic and the Tyrrhene Sea.
+Yet Nessan's mother in her son's great church
+Slept not; nor where the mass bell tinkled low:
+West of the church her grave, to his--her son's -
+Neighbouring, yet severed by the chancel wall.
+
+Thus from the morning star to evening star
+Went by that day.  In Erin many such
+Saint Patrick lived, using well pleased the chance,
+Or great or small, since all things come from God:
+And well the people loved him, being one
+Who sat amid their marriage feasts, and saw,
+Where sin was not, in all things beauty and love.
+But, ere he passed from Munster, longing fell
+On Patrick's heart to view in all its breadth
+Her river-flood, and bless its western waves;
+Therefore, forth journeying, to that hill he went,
+Highest among the wave-girt, heathy hills,
+That still sustains his name, and saw the flood
+At widest stretched, and that green Isle {111} hard by,
+And northern Thomond.  From its coasts her sons
+Rushed countless forth in skiff and coracle
+Smiting blue wave to white, till Sheenan's sound
+Ceased, in their clamour lost.  That hour from God
+Power fell on Patrick; and in spirit he saw,
+Invisible to flesh, the western coasts,
+And the ocean way, and, far beyond, that land
+The Future's heritage, and prophesied
+Of Brendan who ere long in wicker boat
+Should over-ride the mountains of the deep,
+Shielded by God, and tread--no fable then -
+Fabled Hesperia.  Last of all he saw
+More near, thy hermit home, Senanus;--'Hail,
+Isle of blue ocean and the river's mouth!
+The People's Lamp, their Counsel's Head, is thine!"
+That hour shone out through cloud the westering sun
+And paved the wave with fire:  that hour not less
+Strong in his God, westward his face he set,
+Westward and north, and spread his arms abroad,
+And drew the blessing down, and flung it far:
+"A blessing on the warriors, and the clans,
+A blessing on high field, and golden vales,
+On sea-like plain and on the showery ridge,
+On river-ripple, cliff, and murmuring deep,
+On seaward peaks, harbours, and towns, and ports;
+A blessing on the sand beneath the ships:
+On all descend the Blessing!"  Thus he prayed,
+Great-hearted; and from all the populous hills
+And waters came the People's vast "Amen!"
+
+
+
+SAINT PATRICK AND KING EOCHAID.
+
+ARGUMENT.
+
+King Eochaid submits himself to the Christian Law because
+   Saint Patrick has delivered his son from bonds, yet
+   only after making a pact that he is not, like the
+   meaner sort, to be baptized.  In this stubbornness he
+   persists, though otherwise a kindly king; and after
+   many years, he dies.  Saint Patrick had refused to
+   see his living face; yet after death he prays by the
+   death-bed.  Life returns to the dead; and sitting up,
+   like one sore amazed, he demands baptism.  The Saint
+   baptizes him, and offers him a choice either to reign
+   over all Erin for fifteen years, or to die.  Eochaid
+   chooses to die, and so departs.
+
+Eochaid, son of Crimther, reigned, a King
+Northward in Clochar.  Dearer to his heart
+Than kingdom or than people or than life
+Was he, the boy long wished for.  Dear was she,
+Keine, his daughter.  Babyhood's white star,
+Beauteous in childhood, now in maiden dawn
+She witched the world with beauty.  From her eyes
+A light went forth like morning o'er the sea;
+Sweeter her voice than wind on harp; her smile
+Could stay men's breath.  With winged feet she trod
+The yearning earth that, if it could, like waves
+Had swelled to meet their pressure.  Ah, the pang!
+Beauty, the immortal promise, like a cheat
+If unwed glides into the shadow land,
+Childless and twice defeated.  Beauty wed
+To mate unworthy, suffers worse eclipse -
+"Ill choice between two ills!" thus spleenfull cried
+Eochaid; but not his the pensive grief:
+He would have kept his daughter in his house
+For ever; yet, since better might not be,
+Himself he chose her out a mate, and frowned,
+And said, "The dog must have her."  But the maid
+Wished not for marriage.  Tender was her heart;
+Yet though her twentieth year had o'er her flown,
+And though her tears had dewed a mother's grave,
+In her there lurked, not flower of womanhood,
+But flower of angel texture.  All around
+To her was love.  The crown of earthly love
+Seemed but its crown of mockery.  Love Divine -
+For that she yearned, and yet she knew it not;
+Knew less that love she feared.
+
+                              She walked in woods
+While all the green leaves, drenched by sunset's gold,
+Upon a shower-bespangled sycamore
+Shivered, and birds among them choir on choir
+Chanted her praise--or spring's.  "Ill sung," she laughed,
+"My dainty minstrels!  Grant to me your wings,
+And I for them will teach you song of mine:
+Listen!"  A carol from her lip there gushed
+That, ere its time, might well have called the spring
+From winter's coldest cave.  It ceased; she turned.
+Beside her Patrick stood.  His hand he raised
+To bless her.  Awed, though glad, upon her knees
+The maiden sank.  His eye, as if through air,
+Saw through that stainless soul, and, crystal-shrined
+Therein, its inmate, Truth.  That other Truth
+Instant to her he preached--the Truth Divine--
+(For whence is caution needful, save from sin?)
+And those two Truths, each gazing upon each,
+Embraced like sisters, thenceforth one.  For her
+No arduous thing was Faith, ere yet she heard
+In heart believing:  and, as when a babe
+Marks some bright shape, if near or far, it knows not,
+And stretches forth a witless hand to clasp
+Phantom or form, even so with wild surmise
+And guesses erring first, and questions apt,
+She chased the flying light, and round it closed
+At last, and found it substance.  "This is He."
+Then cried she, "This, whom every maid should love,
+Conqueror self-sacrificed of sin and death:
+How shall we find, how please Him, how be nigh?"
+Patrick made answer:  "They that do His will
+Are nigh Him."  And the virgin:  "Of the nigh,
+Say, who is nighest?"  Thus, that winged heart
+Rushed to its rest.  He answered:  "Nighest they
+Who offer most to Him in sacrifice,
+As when the wedded leaves her father's house
+And cleaveth to her husband.  Nighest they
+Who neither father's house nor husband's house
+Desire, but live with Him in endless prayer,
+And tend Him in His poor."  Aloud she cried,
+"The nearest to the Highest, that is love; -
+I choose that bridal lot!"  He answered, "Child,
+The choice is God's.  For each, that lot is best
+To which He calls us."  Lifting then pure hands,
+Thus wept the maiden:  "Call me, Virgin-born!
+Will not the Mother-Maid permit a maid
+To sit beside those nail-pierced feet, and wipe,
+With hair untouched by wreaths of mortal love,
+The dolorous blood-stains from them?  Stranger guest,
+Come to my father's tower!  Against my will,
+Against his own, in bridal bonds he binds me:
+My suit he might resist:  he cannot thine!"
+
+  She spake; and by her Patrick paced with feet
+To hers accordant.  Soon they reached that fort:
+Central within a circling rath earth-built
+It stood; the western tower of stone; the rest,
+Not high, but spreading wide, of wood compact;
+For thither many a forest hill had sent
+His wind-swept daughter brood, relinquishing
+Converse with cloud and beam and rain forever
+To echo back the revels of a Prince.
+Mosaic was the work, beam laced with beam
+In quaint device:  high up, o'er many a door
+Shone blazon rich of vermeil, or of green,
+Or shield of bronze, glittering with veined boss,
+Chalcedony or agate, or whate'er
+The wave-lipped marge of Neagh's broad lake might boast,
+Or ocean's shore, northward from Brandon's Head
+To where the myriad-pillared cliffs hang forth
+Their stony organs o'er the lonely main.
+And trembles yet the pilgrim, noting at eve
+The pride Fomorian, and that Giant Way {116}
+Trending toward eastern Alba.  From his throne
+Above the semicirque of grassy seats
+Whereon by Brehons and by Ollambs girt
+Daily be judged his people, rose the king
+And bade the stranger welcome.
+
+                              Day to day
+And night to night succeeded.  In fit time,
+For Patrick, sometimes sudden, oft was slow,
+He spoke his Master's message.  At the close,
+As though in trance, the warriors circling stood
+With hands outstretched; the Druids downward frowned,
+Silent; and like a strong man awed for once,
+Eochaid round him stared.  A little while,
+And from him passed the amazement.  Buoyant once more,
+And bright like trees fresher for thunder-shower,
+With all his wonted aspect, bold and keen,
+He answered:  "O my prophet, words, words, words!
+We too have Prophets.  Better thrice our Bards;
+Yet, being no better these than trumpet's blast,
+The trumpet more I prize.  Had words been work,
+Myself in youth had led the loud-voiced clan!
+Deeds I preferred.  What profit e'er had I
+From windy marvels?  Once with me in war
+A seer there camped that, bending back his head,
+Fit rites performed, and upward gazing, blew
+With rounded lips into the heaven of heavens
+Druidic breath.  That heaven was changed to cloud,
+Cloud that on borne to Claire's hated bound
+Down fell, a rain of blood!  To me what gain?
+Within three weeks my son was trapped and snared
+By Aodh of Hy Brinin, king whose hosts
+Number my warriors fourfold.  Three long years
+Beyond those purple mountains in the west
+Hostage he lies."  Lightly Eochaid spake,
+And turned:  but shaken chin betrayed that grief
+Which lived beneath his lightness.
+
+                              Sudden thronged
+High on the neighbouring hills a jubilant troop,
+Their banners waving, while the midway vale
+With harp and horn resounded.  Patrick spake:
+"Rejoice! thy son returns! not sole he comes,
+But in his hand a princess, fair and good,
+A kingdom for her dowry.  Aodh's realm,
+By me late left, welcomed MY King with joy:
+All fire the mountains shone.  'The God I serve,'
+Thus spake I, Aodh pointing to those fires,
+'In mountains of rejoicing hath no joy
+While sad beyond them sits a childless man,
+His only son thy captive.  Captive groaned
+Creation; Bethlehem's Babe set free the slave.
+For His sake loose thy thrall!'  A sweeter voice
+Pleaded with mine, his daughter's 'mid her tears.
+'Aodh,' I said, 'these two each other love!
+What think'st thou?  He who shaped the linnet's nest,
+Indifferent unto Him are human loves?
+Arise! thy work make perfect!  Righteous deeds
+Are easier whole than half.'  In thought awhile
+Old Aodh sat; then to his daughter turned,
+And thus, imperious even in kindness, spake:
+'Well fought the youth ere captured, like the son
+Of kings, and worthy to be sire of kings:
+Wed him this hour:  and in three days, at eve,
+Restore him to his father!'  King, this hour
+Thou know'st if Christ's strong Faith be empty words,
+Or truth, and armed with power."
+
+                              That night was passed
+In feasting and in revel, high and low
+Rich with a common gladness.  Many a torch
+Flared in the hand of servitors hill-sent,
+That standing, each behind a guest, retained
+Beneath that roof clouded by banquet steam
+Their mountain wildness.  Here, the splendour glanced
+On goblet jewel-chased and dark with wine,
+Swift circling; there, on walls with antlers spread,
+And rich with yew-wood carvings, flower or bud,
+Or clustered grape pendent in russet gleam
+As though from nature's hand.  A hall hard by
+Echoed the harp that now nor kindled rage,
+Nor grief condoled, nor sealed with slumber's balm
+Tempestuous spirits, triumphs three of song,
+But raised to rapture, mirth.  Far shone that hall
+Glowing with hangings steeped in every tinct
+The boast of Erin's dyeing-vats, now plain,
+Now pranked with bird or beast or fish, whate'er
+Fast-flying shuttle from the craftsman's thought
+Catching, on bore through glimmering warp and woof,
+A marvellous work; now traced by broiderer's hand
+With legends of Ferdiadh and of Meave,
+Even to the golden fringe.  The warriors paced
+Exulting.  Oft they showed their merit's prize,
+Poniard or cup, tribute ordained of tribes
+From age to age, Eochaid's right, on them
+With equal right devolving.  Slow they moved
+In mantle now of crimson, now of blue,
+Clasped with huge torque of silver or of gold
+Just where across the snowy shirt there strayed
+Tendril of purple thread.  With jewelled fronts
+Beauteous in pride 'mid light of winsome smiles,
+Over the rushes green with slender foot
+In silver slipper hid, the ladies passed,
+Answering with eyes not lips the whispered praise,
+Or loud the bride extolling--"When was seen
+Such sweetness and such grace?"
+
+                              Meantime the king
+Conversed with Patrick.  Vexed he heard announced
+His daughter's high resolve:  but still his looks
+Went wandering to his son.  "My boy!  Behold him!
+His valour and his gifts are all from me:
+My first-born!"  From the dancing throng apart
+His daughter stood the while, serene and pale,
+Down-gazing on that lily in her hand
+With face of one who notes not shapes around,
+But dreams some happy dream.  The king drew nigh,
+And on her golden head the sceptre staff
+Leaning, but not to hurt her, thus began:
+"Your prophets of the day, I trust them not!
+If sent from God, why came they not long since?
+Our Druids came before them, and, belike,
+Shall after them abide!  With these new seers
+I count not Patrick.  Things that Patrick says
+I ofttimes thought.  His lineage too is old -
+Wide-browed, grey-eyed, with downward lessening face,
+Not like your baser breeds, with questing eyes
+And jaw of dog.  But for thy Heavenly Spouse,
+I like not Him!  At least, wed Cormac first!
+If rude his ways, yet noble is his name,
+And being but poor the man will bide with me:
+He's brave, and likeliest soon in fight may fall!
+When Cormac dies, wed next--" a music clash
+Forth bursting drowned his words.
+
+                              Three days passed by:
+To Patrick, then preparing to depart,
+Thus spake Eochaid in the ears of all:
+"Herald Heaven-missioned of the Tidings Good!
+Those tidings I have pondered.  They are true:
+I for that truth's sake, and in honour bound
+By reason of my son set free, resolve
+The same, upon conditions, to believe,
+And suffer all my people to believe,
+Just terms exacted.  Briefly these they are:
+First, after death, I claim admittance frank
+Into thy Heavenly Kingdom:  next, till death
+For me exemption from that Baptism Rite,
+Imposed on kerne and hind.  Experience-taught,
+I love not rigid bond and written pledge:
+'Tis well to brand your mark on sheep or lamb:
+Kings are of lion breed; and of my house
+'Tis known there never yet was king baptized.
+This pact concluded, preach within my realm
+Thy Faith; and wed my daughter to thy God.
+Not scholarly am I to know what joy
+A maid can find in psalm, and cell, and spouse
+Unseen:  yet ever thus my sentence stood,
+'Choose each his way.'  My son restored, her loss
+To me is loss the less."  Thus spake the king.
+
+Then Patrick, on whose face the princess bent
+The supplication softly strong of eyes
+Like planets seen through mist, Eochaid's heart
+Knowing, which miracle had hardened more,
+Made answer, "King, a man of jests art thou,
+Claiming free range in heaven, and yet its gate
+Thyself close barring!  In thy daughter's prayers
+Belike thou trustest, that where others creep
+Thou shalt its golden bastions over-fly.
+Far otherwise than in that way thou ween'st,
+That daughter's prayers shall speed thee.  With thy word
+I close, that word to frustrate.  God be with thee!
+Thou living, I return not.  Fare thee well."
+
+  Thus speaking, by the hand he took the maid,
+And led her through the concourse.  At her feet
+The poor fell low, kissing her garment's hem,
+And many brought their gifts, and all their prayers,
+And old men wept.  A maiden train snow-garbed,
+Her steps attending, whitened plain and field,
+As when at times dark glebe, new-turned, is changed
+To white by flock of ocean birds alit,
+Or inland blown by storm, or hunger-urged
+To filch the late-sown grain.  Her convent home
+Ere long received her.  There Ethembria ruled,
+Green Erin's earliest nun.  Of princely race,
+She in past years before the font of Christ
+Had knelt at Patrick's feet.  Once more she sought him:
+Over the lovely, lovelier change had passed,
+As when on childish girlhood, 'mid a shower
+Of lilies earthward wafted, maidenhood
+In peacefuller state assumes her spotless throne;
+So, from that maiden, vestal now had risen:  -
+Lowlier she seemed, more tender, soft, and grave,
+Yet loftier; hushed in quiet more divine,
+Yet wonder-awed.  Again she knelt, and o'er
+The bending queenly head, till then unbent,
+He flung that veil which woman bars from man
+To make her more than woman.  Nigh to death
+The Saint forgat not her.  With her remained
+Keine; but Patrick dwelt far off at Saul.
+
+  Years came and went:  yet neither chance nor change,
+Nor war, nor peace, nor warnings from the priests,
+Nor whispers 'mid the omen-mongering crowd,
+Might from Eochaid charm his wayward will,
+Nor reasonings of the wise that still preferred
+Safe port to victory's pride.  He reasoned too,
+For confident in his reasonings was the king,
+Reckoning on pointed fingers every link
+That clenched his mail of proof.  "On Patrick's word
+Ye tell me Baptism is the gate of Heaven:
+Attend, Sirs!  I have Patrick's word no less
+That I shall enter Heaven.  What need I more?
+If, Death, truth-speaker, shows that Patrick lied,
+Plain is my right against him!  Heaven not won,
+Patrick bare hence my daughter through a fraud:
+He must restore her fourfold--daughters four,
+As fair and good.  If not, the prophet's pledge
+For honour's sake his Master must redeem,
+And unbaptized receive me.  Dupes are ye!
+Doomed 'mid the common flock, with branded fleece
+Bleating to enter Heaven!"
+
+                              The years went by;
+And weakness came.  No more his small light form
+To reverent eyes seemed taller than it was:
+No more the shepherd watched him from the hill
+Heading his hounds, and hoped to catch his smile,
+Yet feared his questions keen.  The end drew near.
+Some wept, some railed; restless the warriors tramped;
+The Druids conned their late discountenanced spells;
+The bard his lying harpstrings spurned, so long
+Healing, unhelpful now.  But far away,
+Within that lonely convent tower from her
+Who prayed for ever, mightier rose the prayer.
+
+Within the palace, now by usage old
+To all flung open, all were sore amazed,
+All save the king.  The leech beside the bed
+Sobbed where he stood, yet sware, "The fit will pass:
+Ten years the King may live."  Eochaid frowned:
+"Shall I, to patch thy fame, live ten years more,
+My death-time come?  My seventy years are sped:
+My sire and grandsire died at sixty-nine.
+Like Aodh, shall I lengthen out my days
+Toothless, nor fit to vindicate my clan,
+Some losel's song?  The kingdom is my son's!
+Strike from my little milk-white horse the shoes,
+And loose him where the freshets make the mead
+Greenest in springtide.  He must die ere long;
+And not to him did Patrick open Heaven.
+Praise be to Patrick's God!  May He my sins,
+Known and unknown, forgive!"
+
+                              Backward he sank
+Upon his bed, and lay with eyes half closed,
+Murmuring at times one prayer, five words or six;
+And twice or thrice he spake of trivial things;
+Then like an infant slumbered till the sun,
+Sinking beneath a great cloud's fiery skirt,
+Smote his old eyelids.  Waking, in his ears
+The ripening cornfields whispered 'neath the breeze,
+For wide were all the casements that the soul
+By death delivered hindrance none might find
+(Careful of this the king); and thus he spake:
+"Nought ever raised my heart to God like fields
+Of harvest, waving wide from hill to hill,
+All bread-full for my people.  Hale me forth:
+When I have looked once more upon that sight
+My blessing I will give them, and depart."
+
+Then in the fields they laid him, and he spake.
+"May He that to my people sends the bread,
+Send grace to all who eat it!"  With that word
+His hands down-falling, back once more he sank,
+And lay as dead; yet, sudden, rising not,
+Nor moving, nor his eyes unclosing, said,
+"My body in the tomb of ancient kings
+Inter not till beside it Patrick stands
+And looks upon my brow."  He spake, then sighed
+A little sigh, and died.
+
+                              Three days, as when
+Black thunder cloud clings fast to mountain brows,
+So to the nation clung the grief:  three days
+The lamentation sounded on the hills
+And rang around the pale blue meres, and rose
+Shrill from the bleeding heart of vale and glen,
+And rocky isle, and ocean's moaning shore;
+While by the bier the yellow tapers stood,
+And on the right side knelt Eochaid's son,
+Behind him all the chieftains cloaked in black;
+And on his left his daughter knelt, the nun,
+Behind her all her sisterhood, white-veiled,
+Like tombstones after snowstorm.  Far away,
+At "Saul of Patrick," dwelt the Saint when first
+The king had sickened.  Message sent he none
+Though knowing all; and when the end was nigh,
+And heralds now besought him day by day,
+He made no answer till o'er eastern seas
+Advanced the third fair morning.  Then he rose,
+And took the Staff of Jesus, and at eve
+Beside the dead king standing, on his brow
+Fixed a sad eye.  Aloud the people wept;
+The kneeling warriors eyed their lord askance;
+The nuns intoned their hymn.  Above that hymn
+A cry rang out:  it was the daughter's prayer;
+And after that was silence.  By the dead
+Still stood the Saint, nor e'er removed his gaze.
+Then--seen of all--behold, the dead king's hands
+Rose slowly, as the weed on wave upheaved
+Without its will; and all the strengthless shape
+In cerements wrapped, as though by mastering voice
+From the white void evoked and realm of death,
+Without its will, a gradual bulk half rose,
+The hoar head gazing forth.  Upon the face
+Had passed a change, the greatest earth may know;
+For what the majesty of death began
+The majesties of worlds unseen, and life
+Resurgent ere its time, had perfected,
+All accidents of flesh and sorrowful years
+Cancelled and quelled.  Yet horror from his eyes
+Looked out as though some vision once endured
+Must cling to them for ever.  Patrick spake:
+"Soul from the dead sent back once more to earth
+What seek'st thou from God's Church?"  He answer made,
+"Baptism."  Then Patrick o'er him poured the might
+Of healing waters in the Name Triune,
+The Father, and the Son, and Holy Spirit;
+And from his eyes the horror passed, and light
+Went from them, as the light of eyes that rest
+On the everlasting glory, while he spake:
+"Tempest of darkness drave me past the gates
+Celestial, and, a moment's space, within
+I heard the hymning of the hosts of God
+That feed for ever on the Bread of Life
+As feed the nations on the harvest wheat.
+Tempest of darkness drave me to the gates
+Of Anguish:  then a cry came up from earth,
+Cry like my daughter's when her mother died,
+That stayed the on-rushing whirlwind; yet mine eyes
+Perforce looked in, and, many a thousand years,
+Branded upon them lay that woful sight
+Now washed from them for ever."  Patrick spake:
+"This day a twofold choice I give thee, son;
+For fifteen years the rule o'er Erin's land,
+Rule absolute, Ard-Righ o'er lesser kings;
+Or instant else to die, and hear once more
+That hymn celestial, and that Vision see
+They see who sing that anthem."  Light from God
+Over that late dead countenance streamed amain,
+Like to his daughter's now--more beauteous thrice -
+Yet awful, more than beauteous.  "Rule o'er earth,
+Rule without end, were nought to that great hymn
+Heard but a single moment.  I would die."
+
+Then Patrick, on him gazing, answered, "Die!"
+And died the king once more, and no man wept;
+But on her childless breast the nun sustained
+Softly her father's head.
+
+                              That night discourse
+Through hall and court circled in whispers low.
+First one, "Was that indeed our king?  But where
+The sword-scar and the wrinkles?"  "Where," rejoined,
+Wide-eyed, the next, "his little cranks and girds
+The wisdom, and the whim?"  Then Patrick spake:
+"Sirs, till this day ye never saw your king;
+The man ye doted on was but his mask,
+His picture--yea, his phantom.  Ye have seen
+At last the man himself."  That night nigh sped,
+While slowly o'er the darkling woods went down,
+Warned by the cold breath of the up-creeping morn
+Invisible yet nigh, the August moon,
+Two vestals, gliding past like moonlight gleams,
+Conversed:  one said, "His daughter's prayer prevailed!"
+The second, "Who may know the ways of God?
+For this, may many a heart one day rejoice
+In hope!  For this, the gift to many a man
+Exceed the promise; Faith's invisible germ
+Quickened with parting breath; and Baptism given,
+It may be, by an angel's hand unseen!"
+
+
+
+SAINT PATRICK AND THE FOUNDING OF ARMAGH CATHEDRAL.
+
+ARGUMENT.
+
+Saint Patrick repairs to Ardmacha, there to found the
+   chief church of Erin.  For that purpose he demands of
+   Daire, the king, a certain woody hill.  The king
+   refuses it, and afterwards treats him with alternate
+   scorn and reverence; while the Saint, in each event
+   alike, makes the same answer, "Deo Gratias."  At last
+   the king concedes to him the hill; and on the
+   summit of it Saint Patrick finds a little white fawn
+   asleep.  The men of Erin would have slain that fawn;
+   but the Saint carries it on his shoulder, and restores
+   it to its dam.  Where the fawn lay, he places the
+   altar of his cathedral.
+
+At Cluain Cain, in Ross, unbent yet old,
+Dwelt Patrick long.  Its sweet and flowery sward
+He to the rock had delved, with fixed resolve
+To build thereon Christ's chiefest church in Eire.
+Then by him stood God's angel, speaking thus:
+"Not here, but northward."  He replied, "O, would
+This spot might favour find with God!  Behold!
+Fair is it, and as meet to clasp a church
+As is a true heart in a virgin breast
+To clasp the Faith of Christ.  The hinds around
+Name it 'the beauteous meadow.'"  "Fair it is,"
+The angel answered, "nor shall lack its crown.
+Another's is its beauty.  Here, one day
+A pilgrim from the Britons sent shall build,
+And, later, what he builds shall pass to thine;
+But thou to Macha get thee."
+
+                              Patrick then,
+Obedient as that Patriarch Sire who faced
+At God's command the desert, northward went
+In holy silence.  Soon to him was lost
+That green and purple meadow-sea, embayed
+'Twixt two descending woody promontories,
+Its outlet girt with isles of rock, its shores
+Cream-white with meadow-sweet.  Not once he turned,
+Climbing the uplands rough, or crossing streams
+Swoll'n by the melted snows.  The Brethren paced
+Behind; Benignus first, his psalmist; next
+Secknall, his bishop; next his brehon Erc;
+Mochta, his priest; and Sinell of the Bells;
+Rodan, his shepherd; Essa, Bite, and Tassach,
+Workers of might in iron and in stone,
+God-taught to build the churches of the Faith
+With wisdom and with heart-delighting craft;
+Mac Cairthen last, the giant meek that oft
+On shoulders broad bare Patrick through the floods:
+His rest was nigh.  That hour they crossed a stream;
+'Twas deep, and, 'neath his load, the giant sighed.
+Saint Patrick said, "Thou wert not wont to sigh!"
+He answered, "Old I grow.  Of them my mates
+How many hast thou left in churches housed
+Wherein they rule and rest!"  The Saint replied,
+"Thee also will I leave within a church
+For rule and rest; not to mine own too near
+For rarely then should we be seen apart,
+Nor yet remote, lest we should meet no more."
+At Clochar soon he placed him.  There, long years
+Mac Cairthen sat, its bishop.
+
+                              As they went,
+Oft through the woodlands rang the battle-shout;
+And twice there rose above the distant hill
+The smoke of hamlet fired.  Yet, none the less,
+Spring-touched, the blackbird sang; the cowslip changed
+Green lawn to green and golden; and grey rock
+And river's marge with primroses were starred;
+Here shook the windflower; there the blue-bells gleamed,
+As though a patch of sky had fallen on earth.
+
+Then to Benignus spake the Saint:  "My son,
+If grief were lawful in a world redeemed
+The blood-stains on a land so strong in faith,
+So slack in love, might cloud the holiest brow,
+Yea, his whose head lay on the breast of Christ.
+Clan wars with clan:  no injury is forgiven;
+Like to the joy in stag-hunts is the war:
+Alas! for such what hope!"  Benignus answered
+"O Father, cease not for this race to hope,
+Lest they should hope no longer!  Hope they have;
+Still say they, 'God will snare us in the end
+Though wild.'"  And Patrick, "Spirits twain are theirs:
+The stranger, and the poor, at every door
+They meet, and bid him in.  The youngest child
+Officious is in service; maids prepare
+The bath; men brim the wine-cup.  Then, forth borne,
+Cities they fire and rich in spoil depart,
+Greed mixed with rage--an industry of blood!"
+He spake, and thus the younger made reply:
+"Father, the stranger is the brother-man
+To them; the poor is neighbour.  Septs remote
+To them are alien worlds.  They know not yet
+That rival clans are men."
+
+                              "That know they shall,"
+Patrick made answer, "when a race far off
+Tramples their race to clay!  God sends abroad
+His plague of war that men on earth may know
+Brother from foe, and anguish work remorse."
+He spake, and after musings added thus:
+"Base of God's kingdom is Humility -
+I have not spared to thunder o'er their pride;
+Great kings have I rebuked and signs sent forth,
+And banned for their sake fruitful plain, and bay;
+Yet still the widow's cry is on the air,
+The orphan's wail!"  Benignus answered mild,
+"O Father, not alone with sign and ban
+Hast thou rebuked their madness.  Oftener far
+Thy sweetness hath reproved them.  Once in woods
+Northward of Tara as we tracked our way
+Round us there gathered slaves who felled the pines
+For ship-masts.  Scarred their hands, and red with blood,
+Because their master, Trian, thus had sworn,
+'Let no man sharpen axe!'  Upon those hands
+Gazing, they wept soon as thy voice they heard,
+Because that voice was soft.  Thou heard'st their tale;
+Straight to that chieftain's castle went'st thou up,
+And bound'st him with thy fast, beside his gate
+Sitting in silence till his heart should melt;
+And since he willed it not to melt, he died.
+Then, in her arms two babes, came forth the queen
+Black-robed, and freed her slaves, and gave them hire;
+And, we returning after many years,
+Filled was that wood with homesteads; plots of corn
+Rustled around them; here were orchards; there
+In trench or tank they steeped the bright blue flax;
+The saw-mill turned to use the wanton brook;
+Murmured the bee-hive; murmured household wheel;
+Soft eyes looked o'er it through the dusk; at work
+The labourers carolled; matrons glad and maids
+Bare us the pail head-steadied, children flowers:
+Last, from her castle paced the queen, and led
+In either hand her sons whom thou hadst blest,
+Thenceforth to stand thy priests.  The land believed;
+And not through ban, or word, sharp-edged or soft,
+But silence and thy fast the ill custom died."
+
+He answered, "Christ, in Christ-like life expressed,
+This, this, not words, subdues a land to Christ;
+And in this best Apostolate all have part.
+Ah me! that flower thou hold'st is strong to preach
+Creative Love, because itself is lovely;
+But we, the heralds of Redeeming Love,
+Because we are unlovely in our lives,
+Preach to deaf ears!  Yet theirs, theirs too, the sin."
+Benignus made reply:  "The race is old;
+Not less their hearts are young.  Have patience with them!
+For see, in spring the grave old oaks push forth
+Impatient sprays, wine-red:  their strength matured,
+These sober down to verdure."  Patrick paused,
+Then, brooding, spake, as one who thinks, not speaks:
+"A priest there walked with me ten years and more;
+Warrior in youth was he.  One day we heard
+The shock of warring clans--I hear it still:
+Within him, as in darkening vase you note
+The ascending wine, I watched the passion mount:  -
+Sudden he dashed him down into the fight,
+Nor e'er to Christ returned."  Benignus answered;
+"I saw above a dusky forest roof
+The glad spring run, leaving a track sea-green:
+Not straight she ran; and yet she reached her goal:
+Later I saw above green copse of thorn
+The glad spring run, leaving a track foam-white:
+Not straight she ran; yet soon she conquered all!
+O Father, is it sinful to be glad
+Here amid sin and sorrow?  Joy is strong,
+Strongest in spring-tide!  Mourners I have known
+That, homeward wending from the new-dug grave,
+Against their will, where sang the happy birds
+Have felt the aggressive gladness stir their hearts,
+And smiled amid their tears."  So babbled he,
+Shamed at his spring-tide raptures.
+
+                              As they went,
+Far on their left there stretched a mighty land
+Of forest-girdled hills, mother of streams:
+Beyond it sank the day; while round the west
+Like giants thronged the great cloud-phantoms towered.
+Advancing, din they heard, and found in woods
+A hamlet and a field by war unscathed,
+And boys on all sides running.  Placid sat
+The village Elders; neither lacked that hour
+The harp that gently tranquillises age,
+Yet wakes young hearts with musical unrest,
+Forerunner oft of love's unrest.  Ere long
+The measure changed to livelier:  maid with maid
+Danced 'mid the dancing shadows of the trees,
+And youth with youth; till now, the strangers near,
+Those Elders welcomed them with act benign;
+And soon was slain the fatted kid, and soon
+The lamb; nor any asked till hunger's rage
+Was quelled, "Who art thou?"  Patrick made reply,
+"A Priest of God."  Then prayed they, "Offer thou
+To Him our sacrifice!  Belike 'tis He
+Who saves from war this hamlet hid in woods:
+Unblest be he who finds it!"  Thus they spake,
+The matrons, not the youths.  In friendly talk
+The hours went by with laughter winged and tale;
+But when the moon, on rolling through the heavens,
+Showered through the leaves a dew of sprinkled light
+O'er the dark ground, the maidens garments brought
+Woven in their quiet homes when nights were long,
+Red cloak and kirtle green, and laid them soft,
+Still with the wearers' blameless beauty warm,
+For coverlet upon the warm dry grass,
+Honouring the stranger guests.  For these they deemed
+Their low-roofed cots too mean.  Glad-hearted rose
+The Christian hymn, not timid:  far it rang
+Above the woods.  Ere long, their blissful rites
+Fulfilled, the wanderers laid them down and slept.
+
+At midnight by the side of Patrick stood
+Victor, God's Angel, saying, "Lo! thy work
+Hath favour found and thou ere long shalt die:
+Thus therefore saith the Lord, 'So long as sea
+Girdeth this isle, so long thy name shall hang
+In splendour o'er it, like the stars of God.'"
+Then Patrick said, "A boon!  I crave a boon!"
+The angel answered, "Speak;" and Patrick said,
+"Let them that with me toiled, or in the years
+To come shall toil, building o'er all this land
+The Fortress-Temple and great House of Christ,
+Equalled with me my name in Erin share."
+And Victor answered, "Half thy prayer is thine;
+With thee shall they partake.  Not less, thy name
+Higher than theirs shall rise, and wider spread,
+Since thus more plainly shall His glory shine
+Whose glory is His justice."
+
+                              With the morn
+Those pilgrims rose, and, prime entoned and lauds,
+Poured out their blessing on that woodland clan
+Which, round them pressing, kissed them, robe and knee;
+Then on they journeyed till at set of sun
+Shone out the roofs of Macha, and that tower
+Where Daire dwelt, its lord.
+
+                              Saint Patrick sent
+To Daire embassage, vouchsafing prayer
+As sire might pray of son; "Give thou yon hill
+To Christ, that we may build His church thereon."
+And Daire answered with a brow of storms
+Bent forward darkly, and long, sneering lips,
+"Your master is a mighty man, we know.
+Garban, that lied to God, he slew through prayer,
+And banned full many a lake, and many a plain,
+For trespass there committed!  Let it be!
+A Chief of souls he is!  No signs we work,
+Rulers earth-born:  yet somewhat are we here -
+Depart!  By others answer we will send."
+
+  So Daire sent to Patrick men of might,
+Fierce men, the battle's nurslings.  Thus they spake:
+"High region for high heads!  If build ye must,
+Build on the plain:  the hill is Daire's right:
+Church site he grants you, and the field around."
+And Patrick, glancing from his Office Book,
+Made answer, "Deo Gratias," and no more.
+
+Upon that plain he built a little church
+Ere long, a convent likewise, girt with mound
+Banked from the meadow loam, and deftly set
+With stone, and fence, and woody palisade,
+That neither warring clans, far heard by day,
+Might hurt his cloistered charge, nor wolves by night,
+Howling in woods; and there he served the Lord.
+
+But Daire scorned the Saint, and grudged his gift,
+Though small; and half in spleen, and half in greed,
+Sent down two stately coursers all night long
+To graze the deep sweet pasture round the church:
+Ill deed: --and so, for guerdon of that sin,
+Dead lay the coursers twain at the break of dawn.
+
+Then fled the servants back, and told their lord,
+Fearing for negligence rebuke and scath,
+"Thy Christian slew the coursers!" and the king
+Gave word to slay or bind him.  But from God
+A sickness fell on Daire nigh to death
+That day and night.  When morning brake, the queen,
+A woman leal with kind barbaric heart,
+Her bosom from the sick man's head withdrew
+A moment while he slept; and, round her gazing,
+Closed with both hands upon a liegeman's arm,
+And sped him to the Saint for pardon and peace.
+Then Patrick, dipping in the inviolate fount
+A chalice, blessed the water, with command
+"Sprinkle the stately coursers and the king; "
+And straightway as from death the king arose,
+And rose from death the coursers.
+
+                              Daire then,
+His tall frame boastful with that life renewed,
+Took with him men, and down the stone-paved hill
+Rode from his tower, and through the woodlands green,
+And bare with him an offering of those days,
+A brazen cauldron vast.  Embossed it shone
+With sculptured shapes.  On one side hunters rode:
+Low stretched their steeds:  the dogs pulled down the stag
+Unseen, except the branching horns that rose
+Like hands in protest.  Feasters, on the other,
+Raised high the cup pledging the safe return.
+This offering Daire brought, and, entering, spake:
+"A gift for guerdon and for grace, O Priest!"
+And Patrick, upward glancing from his book,
+Made answer, "Deo Gratias!" and no more.
+
+King Daire, homeward riding with knit brow
+Muttered, "Churl's welcome for a kingly boon!"
+And, drinking late that night the stormy breath
+Of others' anger blent with his, commanded,
+"Ride forth at morn and bring me back my gift!
+Spurn it he shall not, though he prize it not."
+They heard him, and obeyed.  At noon the king
+Demanded thus, "What answer made the Saint?"
+They said, "His eyes he raised not from his book,
+But answered, 'Deo Gratias!' and no more."
+
+Then Daire stamped his foot, like war-horse stung
+By gadfly:  musing next, and mute he sat
+A space, and lastly roared great laughter peals
+Till roared in mockery back the raftered roof,
+And clashed his hands together shouting thus:
+"A gift, and 'Deo Gratias!'--gift withdrawn,
+And 'Deo Gratias!'  Sooth, the word is good!
+Madman is this, or man of God?  We'll know!"
+So from his frowning fortress once again
+Adown the resonant road o'er street and bridge
+Rode Daire, at his right the queen in fear,
+With dumbly pleading countenance; close behind,
+With tangled locks and loose-hung battle-axe
+Ran the wild kerne; and loud the bull-horn blew.
+The convent reached, King Daire from his horse
+Flung his great limbs, and at the doorway towered
+In gazing stern:  the queen beside him stood,
+Her lustrous violet eyes all lost in tears:
+One hand on Daire's garment lay like light
+Wandering on dusky ripple; one, upraised,
+Held in the high-necked horse that champed the bit,
+His head near hers.  Within, the man of God,
+Sole-sitting, read his office book unmoved,
+And ending fixed his keen eye on the king,
+Not rising from his seat.
+
+                              Then fell from God
+Insight on Daire, and aloud he cried,
+"A kingly man, of mind unmovable
+Art thou; and as the rock beneath my tower
+Shakes not in storm so shakes not heart of thine:
+Such men are of the height and not the plain:
+Therefore that hill to thee I grant unsought
+Which whilome I refused.  Possession take
+This day, lest hostile demon warp my mood;
+And build thereon thy church.  The same shall stand
+Strong mother-church of all thy great clan Christ!"
+
+Thus Daire spake; and Patrick, at his word
+Rising, gave thanks to God, and to the king
+High blessing heard in heaven; and making sign
+Went forth, attended by his priestly train,
+Benignus first, his dearest, then the rest.
+In circuit thrice they girt that hill, and sang
+Anthem first heard when unto God was vowed
+That House which David offered in his heart
+His son in act, and hymn of holy Church
+Hailing that city like a bride attired,
+From heaven to earth descending.  With them sang
+An angel choir above them borne.  The birds
+Forbore their songs, listening that angel strain,
+Ethereal music and by men unheard
+Except the Elect.  The king in reverence paced
+Behind, his liegemen next, a mass confused
+With saffron standard gay and spears upheld
+Flashing through thickets green.  These kept not line,
+For Alp was still recounting battles old,
+Aodh of wizards sang, and Ir of love;
+While bald-pate Conan, sharpening from his eye
+The sneering light, shot from his plastic mouth
+Shrill taunt and biting gibe.  The younger sort
+Eyed the dense copse and launched full many a shaft
+Through it at flying beast.  From ledge to ledge
+Clomb Angus, keen of sight, with hand o'er brow,
+Forth gazing on some far blue ridge of war
+With nostril wide outblown, and snorting cried,
+"Would I were there!"
+
+                              Meantime, the man of God
+Had reached the fair crown of that sacred hill,
+A circle girt with woodland branching low,
+And roofed with heaven.  Beyond its tonsure fringe,
+Birch trees and oaks, there pushed a thorn milk-white,
+And close beside it slept in shade a fawn
+Whiter.  The startled dam had left its side,
+And through the dark stems fled like flying gleam.
+Minded they were, the kernes, to kill that fawn,
+And all the priests stood silent; but the Saint
+Put forth his hand, and o'er her signed the Cross,
+And, stooping, on his shoulder placed her firm,
+And bade the brethren mark with stones her lair
+Dewless and dusk:  then, singing as he went
+"Like as the hart desires the water brooks,"
+He walked, that hill descending.  Light from God
+O'ershone his face.  Meantime the awakened fawn
+Now rolled her dark eye on the silver head
+Close by, now turning licked the wrinkled hand,
+Unfearing.  Soon, with little whimpering sob,
+The doe drew near and paced at Patrick's side.
+At last they reached a little field low down
+Beneath that hill:  there Patrick laid the fawn.
+
+King Daire questioned Patrick of that deed,
+Incensed; and scornful asked, "Shall mitred man
+Play thus the shepherd and the forester?"
+And Patrick answered, "Aged men, O king,
+Forget their reasons oft.  Benignus seek,
+If haply God has shown him for what cause
+I wrought this thing."  Then Daire turned him back
+And faced Benignus; and with lifted hand,
+Pure as a maid's, and dimpled like a child's,
+Picturing his thoughts on air, the little monk
+Thus glossed that deed.  "Great mystery, king, is Love:
+Poets its worthiness have sung in lays
+Unread by ruder ones like me; and yet
+Thus much the simplest and the rudest know,
+Dear is the fawn to her that gave it birth,
+And to the sceptred monarch dear the child
+That mounts his knee.  Nor here the marvel ends;
+For, like yon star, the great Paternal Heart
+Through all the unmeted, unimagined years,
+While yet Creation uncreated hung,
+A thought, a dawn-streak on the verge extreme
+Of lonely Godhead's inner Universe,
+Panted and pants with splendour of its love,
+The Eternal Sire rejoicing in the Son
+And Both in Him Who still from Both proceeds,
+Bond of their love.  Moreover, king, that Son
+Who, Virgin-born, raised from the ruinous gulf
+Our world, and made it footstool to God's throne,
+The same is Love, and died for Love, and reigns:
+Loveless, His Church were but a corse stone-cold;
+Loveless, her creed were but a winter leaf
+Network of barren thoughts, the cerement wan
+Of Faith extinct.  Therefore our Saint revered
+The love and anguish of that mother doe,
+And inly vowed that where her offspring couched
+Christ's chiefest church should stand, from age to age
+Confession plain 'mid raging of the clans
+That God is Love;--His worship void and vain
+Disjoined from Love that, rising to the heights
+Even to the depths descends."
+
+                              Conversing thus,
+Macha they reached.  Ere long where lay the fawn
+Stood God's new altar; and, ere many years,
+Far o'er the woodlands rose the church high-towered,
+Preaching God's peace to still a troubled world.
+The Saint who built it found not there his grave
+Though wished for; him God buried otherwhere,
+Fulfilling thus the counsels of His Will:
+But old, and grey, when many a winter's frost
+To spring had yielded, bent by wounds and woes
+Upon that church's altar looked once more
+King Daire; at its font was joined to Christ;
+And, midway 'twixt that altar and that font,
+Rejoined his beauteous mate a later day.
+
+
+
+THE ARRAIGNMENT OF SAINT PATRICK.
+
+ARGUMENT.
+
+Secknall, the poet, brings, in sport, three heavy charges
+   against Saint Patrick, who, supposing them to be
+   serious, defends himself against them.  Lastly
+   Secknall sings a hymn written in praise of a Saint.
+   Saint Patrick commends it, affirming that for once
+   Fame has dispensed her honours honestly.  Upon this,
+   Secknall recites the first stave, till then craftily
+   reserved, which offers the whole homage of that hymn
+   to Patrick, who, though the humblest of men, has thus
+   arrogated to himself the saintly Crown.  There is
+   laughter among the brethren.
+
+When Patrick now was old and nigh to death
+Undimmed was still his eye; his tread was strong;
+And there was ever laughter in his heart,
+And music in his laughter.  In a wood
+Nigh to Ardmacha dwelt he with his monks;
+And there, like birds that cannot stay their songs
+Love-touched in Spring, or grateful for their nests,
+They to the woodsmen preached of Christ, their King,
+To swineherds, and to hinds that tended sheep,
+Yea, and to pilgrim guests from distant clans;
+His shepherd-worshipped birth when breath of kine
+Went o'er the Infant; all His wondrous works
+Or words from mount, or field, or anchored boat,
+And Christendom upreared for weal of men
+And Angel-wonder.  Daily preached the monks
+And daily built their convent.  Wildly sweet
+The season, prime of unripe spring, when March
+Distils from cup half gelid yet some drops
+Of finer relish than the hand of May
+Pours from her full-brimmed beaker.  Frost, though gone,
+Had left its glad vibration on the air;
+Laughed the blue heavens as though they ne'er had frowned,
+Through leafless oak-boughs; limes of kindlier grace
+And swifter to believe Spring's "tidings good"
+Took the sweet lights upon a breast bud-swoll'n,
+And crimson as the redbreast's; while, as when
+Clear rings a flute-note through sea-murmurs harsh,
+At intervals ran out a streak of green
+Across the dim-hued forest.
+
+                              From their wood
+The strong arms of the monks had hewn them space
+For all their convent needed; farmyard stored
+With stacks that all the winter long had clutched
+Their hoarded harvest sunshine; pasture green
+Whitened with sheep; fair garden fenceless still
+With household herbs new-sprouting:  but, as oft
+Some conquered race, forth sallying in its spleen
+When serves the occasion, wins a province back,
+Or flouts at least the foe, so here once more
+Wild flowers, a clan unvanquished, raised their heads
+'Mid sprouting wheat; and where from craggy height
+Pushed the grey ledge, the woodland host recoiled
+As though in Parthian flight; while many a bird,
+Barbaric from the inviolate forest launched
+Wild warbled scorn on all that life reclaimed,
+Mute garth-still orchard.  Child of distant hills,
+A proud stream, swollen by midnight rains, down leaped
+From rock to rock.  It spurned the precinct now
+With airy dews silvering the bramble green
+And redd'ning more the beech-stock.
+
+                              'Twas the hour
+Of rest, and every monk was glad at heart,
+For each had wrought with might.  With hands upheld,
+Mochta, the priest, had thundered against sin,
+Wrath-roused, as when some prince too late returned
+Stares at his sea-side village all in flames,
+The slave-thronged ship escaped.  The bishop, Erc,
+Had reconciled old feuds by Brehon Law
+Where Brehon Law was lawful.  Boys wild-eyed
+Had from Benignus learned the church's song,
+Boys brightened now, yet tempered, by that age
+Gracious to stripling as to maid, that brings
+Valour to one and modesty to both
+Where youth is loyal to the Virgin-born.
+The giant meek, Mac Cairthen, on bent neck
+Had carried beam on beam, while Criemther felled
+The oaks, and from the anvil Laeban dashed
+The sparks in showers.  A little way removed,
+Beneath a pine three vestals sat close-veiled:
+A song these childless sang of Bethlehem's Child,
+Low-toned, and worked their Altar-cloth, a Lamb
+All white on golden blazon; near it bled
+The bird that with her own blood feeds her young:
+Red drops affused her holy breast.  These three
+Were daughters of three kings.  The best and fairest,
+King Daire's daughter, Erenait by name,
+Had loved Benignus in her Pagan years.
+He knew it not:  full sweet to her his voice
+Chaunting in choir.  One day through grief of love
+The maiden lay as dead:  Benignus shook
+Dews from the font above her, and she woke
+With heart emancipate that outsoared the lark
+Lost in blue heavens.  She loved the Spouse of Souls.
+It was as though some child that, dreaming, wept
+Its childish playthings lost, awaked by bells,
+Bride-bells, had found herself a queen new wed
+Unto her country's lord.
+
+                              While monk with monk
+Conversed, the son of Patrick's sister sat,
+Secknall by name, beside the window sole
+And marked where Patrick from his hill of prayer
+Approached, descending slowly.  At the sight
+He, maker blithe of songs, and wild as hawk
+Albeit a Saint, whose wont it was at times
+Or shy, or strange, or shunning flattery's taint,
+To attempt with mockery those whom most he loved,
+Whispered a brother, "Speak to Patrick thus:
+'When all men praised thee, Secknall made reply
+"A blessed man were Patrick save for this,
+Alms deeds he preaches not."'"  The brother went:
+Ere long among them entered Patrick, wroth,
+Or, likelier, feigning wrath: --"What man is he
+Who saith I preach not alms deeds?"  Secknall rose:
+"I said it, Father, and the charge is true."
+Then Patrick answered, "Out of Charity
+I preach not Charity.  This people, won
+To Christ, ere long will prove a race of Saints;
+To give will be its passion, not to gain:
+Its heart is generous; but its hand is slack
+In all save war:  herein there lurks a snare:
+The priest will fatten, and the beggar feast:
+But the lean land will yield nor chief nor prince
+Hire of two horses yoked to chariot beam."
+Then Secknall spake, "O Father, dead it lies
+Mine earlier charge against thee.  Hear my next,
+Since in our Order's equal Brotherhood
+Censure uncensured is the right of all.
+You press to the earth your converts! gold you spurn;
+Yet bind upon them heavier load than when
+Conqueror his captive tasks.  Have shepherds three
+Bowed them to Christ?  'Build up a church,' you cry;
+So one must draw the sand, and one the stone
+And one the lime.  Honouring the seven great Gifts,
+You raise in one small valley churches seven.
+Who serveth you fares hard!"  The Saint replied,
+"Second as first!  I came not to this land
+To crave scant service, nor with shallow plough
+Cleave I this glebe.  The priest that soweth much
+For here the land is fruitful, much shall reap:
+Who soweth little nought but weeds shall bind
+And poppies of oblivion."  Secknall next:
+"Yet man to man will whisper, and the face
+Of all this people darken like a sea
+When pipes the coming storm."  He answered, "Son,
+I know this people better.  Fierce they are
+In anger; neither flies their thought direct;
+For some, though true to Nature, lie to men,
+And others, true to men, are false to God:
+Yet as the prince's is the poor man's heart;
+Burthen for God sustained no burden is
+To him; and those who most have given to Christ
+Largeliest His fulness share."
+
+                              Secknall replied,
+"Low lies my second charge; a third remains,
+Which, as a shaft from seasoned bow, not green,
+Shall pierce the marl.  With convents still you sow
+The land:  in other countries sparse and small
+They swell to cities here.  A hundred monks
+On one late barren mountain dig and pray:
+A hundred nuns gladden one woodland lawn,
+Or sing in one small island.  Well--'tis well!
+Yet, balance lost and measure, nought is well.
+The Angelic Life more common will become
+Than life of mortal men."  The Saint replied,
+"No shaft from homicidal yew-tree bow
+Is thine, but winged of thistle-down!  Now hear!
+Measure is good; but measure's law with scale
+Changeth; nor doth the part reflect the whole.
+Each nation hath its gift, and each to all
+Not equal ministers.  If all were eye,
+Where then were ear?  If all were ear or hand,
+Where then were eye?  The nation is the part;
+The Church the whole"--But Criemther where he stood,
+Old warrior, shouted like a chief war-waked,
+"This land is Eire!  No nation lives like her!
+A part!  Who portions Eire?"  The Saint, with smile
+Resumed:  "The whole that from the part receives,
+Repaying still that part, till man's whole race
+Grow to the fulness of Mankind redeemed.
+What gift hath God in eminence given to Eire?
+Singly, her race is feeble; strong when knit:
+Nought knits them truly save a heavenly aim.
+I knit them as an army unto God,
+Give them God's War!  Yon star is militant!
+Its splendour 'gainst the dark must fight or die:
+So wars that Faith I preach against the world;
+And nations fitted least for this world's gain
+Can speed Faith's triumph best.  Three hundred years,
+Well used, should make of Eire a northern Rome.
+Criemther! her destiny is this, or nought;
+Secknall! the highest only can she reach;
+Alone the Apostle's crown is hers:  for this,
+A Rule I give her, strong, yet strong in Love;
+Monastic households build I far and wide;
+Monastic clans I plant among her clans,
+With abbots for their chiefs.  The same shall live,
+Long as God's love o'errules them."
+
+                              Secknall then
+Knelt, reverent; yet his eye had in it mirth,
+And round the full bloom of the red rich mouth,
+No whit ascetic, ran a dim half smile.
+"Father, my charges three have futile fallen,
+And thrice, like some great warrior of the bards,
+Your conquering wheels above me you have driven.
+Brought low, I make confession.  Once, in woods
+Wandering, we heard a sound, now loud, now low,
+As he that treads the sand-hills hears the sea
+High murmuring while he climbs the seaward slope,
+Low, as he drops to landward.  'Twas a throng
+Awed, yet tumultuous, wild-eyed, wondering, fierce,
+That, standing round a harper, stave on stave
+Acclaimed as each had ending.  'War, still war!'
+Thou saidst; 'the bards but sing of War and Death!
+Ah! if they sang that Death which conquered Death,
+Then, like a tide, this people, music-drawn,
+Would mount the shores of Christ!  Bards love not us,
+Prescient that power, that power wielded elsewhere
+By priest, but here by them, shall pass to us:
+Yet we love them for good one day their gift.'
+Then didst thou turn on me an eye of might
+Such as on Malach, when thou had'st him raise
+By miracle of prayer that babe boar-slain,
+And said'st, 'Go, fell thy pine, and frame thy harp,
+And in the hearing of this people sing
+Some Saint, the friend of Christ.'  Too long the attempt
+Shame-faced, I shunned; at last, like him of old,
+That better brother who refused, yet went,
+I made my hymn.  'Tis called 'A Child of Life.'"
+Then Patrick, "Welcome is the praise of Saints:
+Sing thou thy hymn."
+
+                              From kneeling Secknall rose
+And stood, and singing, raised his hand as when
+Her cymbal by the Red Sea Miriam raised
+While silent stood God's hosts, and silent lay
+Those host-entombing waters.  Shook, like hers,
+His slight form wavering 'mid the gusts of song.
+He sang the Saint of God, create from nought
+To work God's Will.  As others gaze on earth,
+Her vales, her plains, her green meads ocean-girt,
+So gazed the Saint for ever upon God
+Who girds all worlds--saw intermediate nought -
+And on Him watched the sunshine and the storm,
+And learned His Countenance, and from It alone,
+Drew in upon his heart its day and night.
+That contemplation was for him no dream:
+It hurled him on his mission.  As a sword
+He lodged his soul within the Hand Divine
+And wrought, keen-edged, God's counsel.  Next to God
+Next, and how near, he loved the souls of men:
+Yea, men to him were Souls; the unspiritual herd
+He saw as magic-bound, or chained to beast,
+And groaned to free them.  For their sakes, unfearing,
+He faced the ravening waves, and iron rocks,
+Hunger, and poniard's edge, and poisoned cup,
+And faced the face of kings, and faced the host
+Of demons raging for their realm o'erthrown.
+This was the Man of Love.  Self-love cast out,
+The love made spiritual of a thousand hearts
+Met in his single heart, and kindled there
+A sun-like image of Love Divine.  Within
+That Spirit-shadowed heart was Christ conceived
+Hourly through faith, hourly through Love was born;
+Sole secret this of fruitfulness to Christ.
+Who heard him heard with his a lordlier Voice,
+Strong as that Voice which said, "Let there be light,"
+And light o'erflowed their beings.  He from each
+His secret won; to each God's secret told:
+He touched them, and they lived.  In each, the flesh
+Subdued to soul, the affections, vassals proud
+By conscience ruled, and conscience lit by Christ,
+The whole man stood, planet full-orbed of powers
+In equipoise, Image restored of God.
+A nation of such men his portion was;
+That nation's Patriarch he.  No wrangler loud;
+No sophist; lesser victories knew he none:
+No triumph his of sect, or camp, or court;
+The Saint his great soul flung upon the world,
+And took the people with him like a wind
+Missioned from God that with it wafts in spring
+Some winged race, a multitudinous night,
+Into new sun-bright climes.
+
+                              As Secknall sang,
+Nearer the Brethren drew.  On Patrick's right
+Benignus stood; old Mochta on his left,
+Slow-eyed, with solemn smile and sweet; next Erc,
+Whose ever-listening countenance that hour
+Beyond its wont was listening; Criemther near
+The workman Saint, his many-wounded hands
+Together clasped:  forward each mighty arm
+On shoulders propped of Essa and of Bite,
+Leaned the meek giant Cairthen:  twelve in all
+Clustering they stood and in them was one soul.
+When Secknall ceased, in silence still they hung
+Each upon each, glad-hearted since the meed
+Of all their toils shone out before them plain,
+Gold gates of heaven--a nation entering in.
+A light was on their faces, and without
+Spread a great light, for sunset now had fallen
+A Pentecostal fire upon the woods,
+Or else a rain of angels streamed o'er earth.
+In marvel gazed the twelve:  yea, clans far off
+Stared from their hills, deeming the site aflame.
+That glory passed away, discourse arose
+On Secknall's hymn.  Its radiance from his face
+Had, like the sunset's, vanished as he spake.
+"Father, what sayst thou?"  Patrick made reply,
+"My son, the hymn is good; for Truth is gold;
+And Fame, obsequious often to base heads,
+For once is loyal, and its crown hath laid
+Where honour's debt was due."  Then Secknall raised
+In triumph both his hands, and chaunted loud
+That hymn's first stave, earlier through craft withheld,
+Stave that to Patrick's name, and his alone,
+Offered that hymn's whole incense!  Ceasing, he stood
+Low-bowed, with hands upon his bosom crossed.
+Great laughter from the brethren came, their Chief
+Thus trapped, though late--he meekest man of men -
+To claim the saintly crown.  First young, then old,
+Later the old, and sore against their will,
+That laughter raised.  Last from the giant chest
+Of Cairthen forth it rolled its solemn bass,
+Like sea-sound swallowing lighter sounds hard by.
+But Patrick laughed not:  o'er his face there passed
+Shade lost in light; and thus he spake, "O friends
+That which I have to do I know in part:
+God grant I work my work.  That which I am
+He knows Who made me.  Saints He hath, good store:
+Their names are written in His Book of Life;
+Kneel down, my sons, and pray that if thus long
+I seem to stand, I fall not at the end."
+
+Then in a circle kneeling prayed the twelve.
+But when they rose, Secknall with serious brow
+Advanced, and knelt, and kissed Saint Patrick's foot,
+And said, "O Father, at thy hest that hymn
+I made, long labouring, and thy crown it stands:
+Thou, therefore, grant me gifts, for strong thy prayer."
+
+And Patrick said, "The house wherein thy hymn
+Is sung at morn or eve shall lack not bread:
+And if men sing it in a house new-built,
+Where none hath dwelt, nor bridegroom yet, nor bride,
+Nor hath the cry of babe been heard therein,
+Upon that house the watching of the Saints
+Of Eire, and Patrick's watching, shall be fixed
+Even as the stars."  And Secknall said, "What more?"
+
+Then Patrick added, "They that night and morn
+Down-lying and up-rising, sing that hymn,
+They too that softly whisper it, nigh death,
+If pure of heart, and liegeful unto Christ,
+Shall see God's face; and, since the hymn is long,
+Its grace shall rest for children and the poor
+Full measure on the last three lines; and thou
+Of this dear company shalt die the first,
+And first of Eire's Apostles."  Then his cheek
+Secknall laid down once more on Patrick's foot,
+And answered, "Deo Gratias."
+
+                              Thus in mirth,
+And solemn talk, and prayer, that brother band
+In the golden age of Faith with great free heart
+Gave thanks to God that blissful eventide,
+A thousand and four hundred years and more
+Gone by.  But now clear rang the compline bell,
+And two by two they wended towards their church
+Across a space for cloister set apart,
+Yet still with wood-flowers sweet, and scent beside
+Of sod that evening turned.  The night came on;
+A dim ethereal twilight o'er the hills
+Deepened to dewy gloom.  Against the sky
+Stood ridge and rock unmarked amid the day:
+A few stars o'er them shone.  As bower on bower
+Let go the waning light, so bird on bird
+Let go its song.  Two songsters still remained,
+Each feebler than a fountain soon to cease,
+And claimed somewhile across the dusking dell
+Rivals unseen in sleepy argument,
+Each, the last word: --a pause; and then, once more,
+An unexpected note: --a longer pause;
+And then, past hope, one other note, the last.
+A moment more the brethren stood in prayer:
+The rising moon upon the church-roof new
+Glimmered; and o'er it sang an angel choir,
+"Venite Sancti."  Entering, soon were said
+The psalm, "He giveth sleep," and hymn, "Laetare;"
+And in his solitary cell each monk
+Lay down, rejoicing in the love of God.
+
+The happy years went by.  When Patrick now
+And all his company were housed with God
+That hymn, at morning sung, and noon, and eve,
+Even as it lulled the waves of warring clans
+So lulled with music lives of toil-worn men
+And charmed their ebbing breath.  One time it chanced
+When in his convent Kevin with his monks
+Had sung it thrice, the board prepared, a guest,
+Foot-sore and hungered, murmured, "Wherefore thrice?"
+And Kevin answered, "Speak not thus, my son,
+For while we sang it, visible to all,
+Saint Patrick was among us.  At his right
+Benignus stood, and, all around, the Twelve,
+God's light upon their brows; while Secknall knelt
+Demanding meed of song.  Moreover, son,
+This self-same day and hour, twelve months gone by,
+Patrick, our Patriarch, died; and happy Feast
+Is that he holds, by two short days alone
+Severed from his of Hebrew Patriarchs last,
+And Chief.  The Holy House at Nazareth
+He ruled benign, God's Warder with white hairs;
+And still his feast, that silver star of March,
+When snows afflict the hill and frost the moor,
+With temperate beam gladdens the vernal Church -
+All praise to God who draws that Twain so near."
+
+
+
+THE STRIVING OF SAINT PATRICK ON MOUNT CRUACHAN.
+
+ARGUMENT.
+
+Saint Patrick, seeing that now Erin believes, desires
+   that the whole land should stand fast in belief till
+   Christ returns to judge the world.  For this end he
+   resolves to offer prayer on Mount Cruachan; but
+   Victor, the Angel who has attended him in all his
+   labours, restrains him from that prayer as being too
+   great.  Notwithstanding, the Saint prays three times
+   on the mountain, and three times all the demons of
+   Erin contend against him, and twice Victor, the Angel,
+   rebukes his prayers.  In the end Saint Patrick
+   scatters the demons with ignominy, and God's Angel
+   bids him know that his prayer hath conquered through
+   constancy.
+
+From realm to realm had Patrick trod the Isle;
+And evermore God's work beneath his hand,
+Since God had blessed that hand, ran out full-sphered,
+And brighter than a new-created star.
+The Island race, in feud of clan with clan
+Barbaric, gracious else and high of heart,
+Nor worshippers of self, nor dulled through sense,
+Beholding, not alone his wondrous works;
+But, wondrous more, the sweetness of his strength
+And how he neither shrank from flood nor fire,
+And how he couched him on the wintry rocks,
+And how he sang great hymns to One who heard,
+And how he cared for poor men and the sick,
+And for the souls invisible of men,
+To him made way--not simple hinds alone,
+But chiefly wisest heads, for wisdom then
+Prime wisdom saw in Faith; and, mixt with these,
+Chieftains and sceptred kings.  Nigh Tara, first,
+Scorning the king's command, had Patrick lit
+His Paschal fire, and heavenward as it soared,
+The royal fire and all the Beltaine fires
+Shamed by its beam had withered round the Isle
+Like fires on little hearths whereon the sun
+Looks in his greatness.  Later, to that plain
+Central 'mid Eire, "of Adoration" named,
+Down-trampled for two thousand years and more
+By erring feet of men, the Saint had sped
+In Apostolic might, and kenned far off
+Ill-pleased, the nation's idol lifting high
+His head, and those twelve vassal gods around
+All mailed in gold and shining as the sun,
+A pomp impure.  Ill-pleased the Saint had seen them,
+And raised the Staff of Jesus with a ban:
+Then he, that demon named of men Crom-dubh,
+With all his vassal gods, into the earth
+That knew her Maker, to their necks had sunk
+While round the island rang three times the cry
+Of fiends tormented.
+
+                              Not for this as yet
+Had Patrick perfected his strength:  as yet
+The depths he had not trodden; nor had God
+Drawn forth His total forces in the man
+Hidden long since and sealed.  For this cause he,
+Who still his own heart in triumphant hour
+Suspected most, remembering Milchoe's fate,
+With fear lest aught of human mar God's work,
+And likewise from his handling of the Gael
+Knowing not less their weakness than their strength,
+Paused on his conquering way, and lonely sat
+In cloud of thought.  The great Lent Fast had come:
+Its first three days went by; the fourth, he rose,
+And meeting his disciples that drew nigh
+Vouchsafed this greeting only:  "Bide ye here
+Till I return," and straightway set his face
+Alone to that great hill "of eagles" named
+Huge Cruachan, that o'er the western deep
+Hung through sea-mist, with shadowing crag on crag,
+High-ridged, and dateless forest long since dead.
+
+That forest reached, the angel of the Lord
+Beside him, as he entered, stood and spake:
+"The gifts thy soul demands, demand them not;
+For they are mighty and immeasurable,
+And over great for granting."  And the Saint:
+"This mountain Cruachan I will not leave
+Alive till all be granted, to the last."
+
+Then knelt he on the shrouded mountain's base,
+And was in prayer; and, wrestling with the Lord,
+Demanded wondrous things immeasurable,
+Not easy to be granted, for the land;
+Nor brooked repulse; and when repulse there came,
+Repulse that quells the weak and crowns the strong,
+Forth from its gloom like lightning on him flashed
+Intelligential gleam and insight winged
+That plainlier showed him all his people's heart,
+And all the wound thereof:  and as in depth
+Knowledge descended, so in height his prayer
+Rose, and far spread; nor roused alone those Powers
+Regioned with God; for as the strength of fire
+When flames some palace pile, or city vast,
+Wakens a tempest round it dragging in
+Wild blast, and from the aggression mightier grows,
+So wakened Patrick's prayer the demon race,
+And drew their legions in upon his soul
+From near and far.  First came the Accursed encamped
+On Connact's cloudy hills and watery moors;
+Old Umbhall's Heads, Iorras, and Arran Isle,
+And where Tyrawley clasps that sea-girt wood
+Fochlut, whence earliest rang the Children's Cry,
+To demons trump of doom.  In stormy rack
+They came, and hung above the invested Mount
+Expectant.  But, their mutterings heeding not,
+When Patrick still in puissance rose of prayer,
+O'er all their armies round the realm dispersed
+There ran prescience of fate; and, north and south,
+From all the mountain-girdled coasts--for still
+Best site attracts worst Spirit--on they came,
+From Aileach's shore and Uladh's hoary cliffs,
+Which held the aeries of that eagle race
+More late in Alba throned, "Lords of the Isles" -
+High chiefs whose bards, in strong transmitted line,
+Filled with the name of Fionn, and thine, Oiseen,
+The blue glens of that never-vanquished land -
+From those purpureal mountains that o'ergaze
+Rock-bowered Loch Lene broidered with sanguine bead,
+They came, and many a ridge o'er sea-lake stretched
+That, autumn-robed in purple and in gold,
+Pontific vestment, guard the memories still
+Of monks who reared thereon their mystic cells,
+Finian and Kieran, Fiacre, and Enda's self
+Of hermits sire, and that sea-facing Saint
+Brendan, who, in his wicker boat of skins
+Before that Genoese a thousand years
+Found a new world; and many more that now
+Under wind-wasted Cross of Clonmacnoise
+Await the day of Christ.
+
+                              So rushed they on
+From all sides, and, close met, in circling storm
+Besieged the enclouded steep of Cruachan,
+That scarce the difference knew 'twixt night and day
+More than the sunless pole.  Him sought they, him
+Whom infinitely near they might approach,
+Not touch, while firm his faith--their Foe that dragged,
+Sole-kneeling on that wood-girt mountain's base,
+With both hands forth their realm's foundation stone.
+Thus ruin filled the mountain:  day by day
+The forest torment deepened; louder roared
+The great aisles of the devastated woods;
+Black cave replied to cave; and oaks, whole ranks,
+Colossal growth of immemorial years,
+Sown ere Milesius landed, or that race
+He vanquished, or that earliest Scythian tribe,
+Fell in long line, like deep-mined castle wall,
+At either side God's warrior.  Slowly died
+At last, far echoed in remote ravines,
+The thunder:  then crept forth a little voice
+That shrilly whispered to him thus in scorn:
+"Two thousand years yon race hath walked in blood
+Neck-deep; and shall it serve thy Lord of Peace?"
+That whisper ceased.  Again from all sides burst
+Tenfold the storm; and as it waxed, the Saint
+Waxed in strong heart; and, kneeling with stretched hands,
+Made for himself a panoply of prayer,
+And wound it round his bosom twice and thrice,
+And made a sword of comminating psalm,
+And smote at them that mocked him.  Day by day,
+Till now the second Sunday's vesper bell
+Gladdened the little churches round the isle,
+That conflict raged:  then, maddening in their ire,
+Sudden the Princedoms of the Dark, that rode
+This way and that way through the tempest, brake
+Their sceptres, and with one great cry it fell:
+At once o'er all was silence:  sunset lit
+The world, that shone as though with face upturned
+It gazed on heavens by angel faces thronged
+And answered light with light.  A single bird
+Carolled; and from the forest skirt down fell,
+Gem-like, the last drops of the exhausted storm.
+
+Then bowed the Saint his forehead to the ground
+Thanking his God; and there in sacred trance,
+Which was not sleep, abode not hours alone
+But silent nights and days; and, 'mid that trance,
+God fed his heart with unseen Sacraments,
+Immortal food.  Awaking, Patrick felt
+Yearnings for nearer commune with his God,
+Though great its cost; and gat him on his feet,
+And, mile by mile, ascended through the woods
+Till stunted were its growths; and still he clomb
+Printing with sandalled foot the dewy steep:
+But when above the mountain rose the moon
+Brightening each mist, while sank the prone morass
+In double night, he came upon a stone
+Tomb-shaped, that flecked that steep:  a little stream
+Dropped by it from the summits to the woods:
+Thereon he knelt; and was once more in prayer.
+
+Nor prayed unnoticed by that race abhorred.
+No sooner had his knees the mountain touched
+Than through their realm vibration went; and straight
+His prayer detecting back they trooped in clouds
+And o'er him closed, blotting with bat-like wing
+And inky pall, the moon.  Then thunder pealed
+Once more, nor ceased from pealing.  Over all
+Night ruled, except when blue and forked flash
+Revealed the on-circling waterspout or plunge
+Of rain beneath the blown cloud's ravelled hem,
+Or, huge on high, that lion-coloured steep
+Which, like a lion, roared into the night
+Answering the roaring from sea-caves far down.
+Dire was the strife.  That hour the Mountain old,
+An anarch throned 'mid ruins flung himself
+In madness forth on all his winds and floods,
+An omnipresent wrath!  For God reserved,
+Too long the prey of demons he had been;
+Possession foul and fell.  Now nigh expelled
+Those demons rent their victim freed.  Aloft,
+They burst the rocky barrier of the tarn
+That downward dashed its countless cataracts,
+Drowning far vales.  On either side the Saint
+A torrent rushed--mightiest of all these twain -
+Peeling the softer substance from the hills
+Their flesh, till glared, deep-trenched, the mountain's bones;
+And as those torrents widened, rocks down rolled
+Showering upon that unsubverted head
+Sharp spray ice-cold.  Before him closed the flood,
+And closed behind, till all was raging flood,
+All but that tomb-like stone whereon he knelt.
+
+Unshaken there he knelt with hands outstretched,
+God's Athlete!  For a mighty prize he strove,
+Nor slacked, nor any whit his forehead bowed:
+Fixed was his eye and keen; the whole white face
+Keen as that eye itself, though--shapeless yet -
+The infernal horde to ear not eye addressed
+Their battle.  Back he drave them, rank on rank,
+Routed, with psalm, and malison, and ban,
+As from a sling flung forth.  Revolt's blind spawn
+He named them; one time Spirits, now linked with brute,
+Yea, bestial more and baser:  and as a ship
+Mounts with the mounting of the wave, so he
+O'er all the insurgent tempest of their wrath
+Rising rode on triumphant.  Days went by,
+Then came a lull; and lo! a whisper shrill,
+Once heard before, again its poison cold
+Distilled:  "Albeit to Christ this land should bow,
+Some conqueror's foot one day would quell her Faith."
+It ceased.  Tenfold once more the storm burst forth:
+Once more the ecstatic passion of his prayer
+Met it, and, breasting, overbore, until
+Sudden the Princedoms of the dark that rode
+This way and that way through the whirlwind, dashed
+Their vanquished crowns of darkness to the ground
+With one long cry.  Then silence came; and lo!
+The white dawn of the fourth fair Day of God
+O'erflowed the world.  Slowly the Saint upraised
+His wearied eyes.  Upon the mountain lawns
+Lay happy lights; and birds sang; and a stream
+That any five-years' child might overleap,
+Beside him lapsed crystalline between banks
+With violets all empurpled, and smooth marge
+Green as that spray which earliest sucks the spring.
+
+Then Patrick raised to God his orison
+On that fair mount, and planted in the grass
+His crozier staff, and slept; and in his sleep
+God fed his heart with unseen Sacraments,
+Manna of might divine.  Three days he slept;
+The fourth he woke.  Upon his heart there rushed
+Yearning for closer converse with his God
+Though great its cost; and on his feet he gat,
+And high, and higher yet, that mountain scaled,
+And reached at noon the summit.  Far below
+Basking the island lay, through rainbow shower
+Gleaming in part, with shadowy moor, and ridge
+Blue in the distance looming.  Westward stretched
+A galaxy of isles, and, these beyond,
+Infinite sea with sacred light ablaze,
+And high o'erhead there hung a cloudless heaven.
+
+Upon that summit kneeling, face to sea
+The Saint, with hands held forth and thanks returned,
+Claimed as his stately heritage that realm
+From north to south:  but instant as his lip
+Printed with earliest pulse of Christian prayer
+That clear aerial clime Pagan till then;
+The Host Accursed, sagacious of his act,
+Rushed back from all the isle and round him met
+With anger seven times heated, since their hour,
+And this they knew, was come.  Nor thunder din
+And challenge through the ear alone, sufficed
+That hour their rage malign that, craving sore
+Material bulk to rend his bulk--their foe's -
+Through fleshly strength of that their murder-lust
+Flamed forth in fleshly form phantoms night-black
+Though bodiless yet to bodied mass as nigh
+As Spirits can reach.  More thick than vultures winged
+To fields with carnage piled, the Accursed thronged
+Making thick night which neither earth nor sky
+Could pierce, from sense expunged.  In phalanx now,
+Anon in breaking legion, or in globe,
+With clang of iron pinion on they rushed
+And spectral dart high-held.  Nor quailed the Saint,
+Contending for his people on that Mount,
+Nor spared God's foes; for as old minster towers
+Besieged by midnight storm send forth reply
+In storm outrolled of bells, so sent he forth
+Defiance from fierce lip, vindictive chaunt,
+And blight and ban, and maledictive rite
+Potent on face of Spirits impure to raise
+These plague-spots three, Defeat, Madness, Despair;
+Nor stinted flail of taunt--"When first my bark
+Threatened your coasts, as now upon the hills
+Hung ye in cloud; as now, I raised this Cross;
+Ye fled before it and again shall fly!"
+So hurled he back their squadrons.  Day by day
+The hurricanes of war shook earth and heaven:
+Till now, on Holy Saturday, that hour
+Returned which maketh glad the Church of God
+When over Christendom in widowed fanes
+Two days by penance stripped, and dumb as though
+Some Antichrist had trodd'n them down, once more
+Swells forth amid the new-lit paschal lights
+The "Gloria in Excelsis:" sudden then
+That mighty conflict ceased, save one low voice
+Twice heard before, now edged with bitterer scoff,
+"That race thou lov'st, though fierce in wrath, is soft:
+Plenty and peace will melt their Faith one day:"
+Then with that whisper dying, died the night:
+Then forth from darkness issued earth and sky:
+Then fled the phantoms far o'er ocean's wave,
+Thence to return not till the day of doom.
+
+But he, their conqueror wept, upon that height
+Standing; nor of his victory had he joy,
+Nor of that jubilant isle restored to light,
+Nor of that heaven relit; so worked that scoff
+Winged from the abyss; and ever thus the man
+With darkness communed and that poison cold:
+"If Faith indeed should flood the land with peace,
+And peace with gold, and gold eat out her heart
+Once true, till Faith one day through Faith's reward
+Or die, or live diseased, the shame of Faith,
+Then blacker were this land and more accursed
+Than lands that knew no Christ."  And musing thus
+The whole heart of the man was turned to tears,
+A fount of bale and chalice brimmed with death -
+For oft a thought chance-born more racks than truth
+Proven and sure--and, weeping, still he wept
+Till drenched was all his sad monastic cowl
+As sea-weed on the dripping shelf storm-cast
+Latest, and tremulous still.
+
+                              As thus he wept
+Sudden beside him on that summit broad,
+Ran out a golden beam like sunset path
+Gilding the sea:  and, turning, by his side
+Victor, God's angel, stood with lustrous brow
+Fresh from that Face no man can see and live.
+He, putting forth his hand, with living coal
+Snatched from God's altar, made that dripping cowl
+Dry as an Autumn sheaf.  The angel spake:
+"Rejoice, for they are fled that hate thy land,
+And those are nigh that love it."  Then the Saint
+Upraised his head; and lo! in snowy sheen
+Cresting high rock, and ridge, and airy peak,
+Innumerable the Sons of God all round
+Vested the invisible mountain with white light,
+As when the foam-white birds of ocean throng
+Sea-rock so close that none that rock may see.
+In trance the Living Creatures stood, with wings
+That pointing crossed upon their breasts; nor seemed
+As new arrived but native to that site
+Though veiled till now from mortal vision.  Song
+They sang to soothe the vexed heart of the Saint -
+Love-song of Heaven:  and slowly as it died
+Their splendours waned; and through that vanishing light
+Earth, sea, and heaven returned.
+
+                              To Patrick then,
+Thus Victor spake:  "Depart from Cruachan,
+Since God hath given thee wondrous gifts, immense,
+And through thy prayer routed that rebel host."
+And Patrick, "Till the last of all my prayers
+Be granted, I depart not though I die:  -
+One said, 'Too fierce that race to bend to faith.'"
+Then spake God's angel, mild of voice, and kind:
+"Not all are fierce that fiercest seem, for oft
+Fierceness is blindfold love, or love ajar.
+Souls thou wouldst have:  for every hair late wet
+In this thy tearful cowl and habit drenched
+God gives thee myriads seven of Souls redeemed
+From sin and doom; and Souls, beside, as many
+As o'er yon sea in legioned flight might hang
+Far as thine eye can range.  But get thee down
+From Cruachan, for mighty is thy prayer."
+And Patrick made reply:  "Not great thy boon!
+Watch have I kept, and wearied are mine eyes
+And dim; nor see they far o'er yonder deep."
+And Victor:  "Have thou Souls from coast to coast
+In cloud full-stretched; but, get thee down:  this Mount
+God's Altar is, and puissance adds to prayer."
+And Patrick:  "On this Mountain wept have I;
+And therefore giftless will I not depart:
+One said, 'Although that People should believe
+Yet conqueror's heel one day would quell their Faith.'"
+To whom the angel, mild of voice, and kind:
+"Conquerors are they that subjugate the soul:
+This also God concedes thee; conquering foe
+Trampling this land, shall tread not out her Faith
+Nor sap by fraud, so long as thou in heaven
+Look'st on God's Face; nay, by that Faith subdued,
+That foe shall serve and live.  But get thee down
+And worship in the vale."  Then Patrick said,
+"Live they that list!  Full sorely wept have I,
+Nor will I hence depart unsatisfied:
+One said; 'Grown soft, that race their Faith will shame;'
+Say therefore what the Lord thy God will grant,
+Nor stint His hand; since never scanter grace
+Fell yet on head of nation-taming man
+Than thou to me hast portioned till this hour."
+
+Then answer made the angel, soft of voice:
+"Not all men stumble when a Nation falls;
+There are that stand upright.  God gives thee this:
+They that are faithful to thy Faith, that walk
+Thy way, and keep thy covenant with God,
+And daily sing thy hymn, when comes the Judge
+With Sign blood-red facing Jehosaphat,
+And fear lays prone the many-mountained world,
+The same shall 'scape the doom."  And Patrick said,
+"That hymn is long, and hard for simple folk,
+And hard for children."  And the angel thus:
+"At least from 'Christum Illum' let them sing,
+And keep thy Faith:  when comes the Judge, the pains
+Shall take not hold of such.  Is that enough?"
+And Patrick answered, "That is not enough."
+Then Victor:  "Likewise this thy God accords:
+The Dreadful Coming and the Day of Doom
+Thy land shall see not; for before that day
+Seven years, a great wave arched from out the deep,
+Ablution pure, shall sweep the isle and take
+Her children to its peace.  Is that enough?"
+And Patrick answered, "That is not enough."
+
+Then spake once more that courteous angel kind:
+"What boon demand'st then?"  And the Saint, "No less
+Than this.  Though every nation, ere that day
+Recreant from creed and Christ, old troth forsworn,
+Should flee the sacred scandal of the Cross
+Through pride, as once the Apostles fled through fear,
+This Nation of my love, a priestly house,
+Beside that Cross shall stand, fate-firm, like him
+That stood beside Christ's Mother."  Straightway, as one
+Who ends debate, the angel answered stern:
+"That boon thou claimest is too great to grant:
+Depart thou from this mountain, Cruachan,
+In peace; and find that Nation which thou lov'st,
+That like thy body is, and thou her head,
+For foes are round her set in valley and plain,
+And instant is the battle."  Then the Saint:
+"The battle for my People is not there,
+With them, low down, but here upon this height
+From them apart, with God.  This Mount of God
+Dowerless and bare I quit not till I die;
+And dying, I will leave a Man Elect
+To keep its keys, and pray my prayer, and name
+Dying in turn, his heir, successive line,
+Even till the Day of Doom."
+
+                              Then heavenward sped
+Victor, God's angel, and the Man of God
+Turned to his offering; and all day he stood
+Offering in heart that Offering Undefiled
+Which Abel offered, and Melchisedek,
+And Abraham, Patriarch of the faithful race,
+In type, and which in fulness of the times
+The Victim-Priest offered on Calvary,
+And, bloodless, offers still in Heaven and Earth,
+Whose impetration makes the whole Church one.
+Thus offering stood the man till eve, and still
+Offered; and as he offered, far in front
+Along the aerial summit once again
+Ran out that beam like fiery pillar prone
+Or sea-path sunset-paved; and by his side
+That angel stood.  Then Patrick, turning not
+His eyes in prayer upon the West close held
+Demanded, "From the Maker of all worlds
+What answer bring'st thou?"  Victor made reply:
+"Down knelt in Heaven the Angelic Orders Nine,
+And all the Prophets and the Apostles knelt,
+And all the Creatures of the hand of God
+Visible, and invisible, down knelt,
+While thou thy mighty Mass, though altarless,
+Offeredst in spirit, and thine Offering joined;
+And all God's Saints on earth, or roused from sleep
+Or on the wayside pausing, knelt, the cause
+Not knowing; likewise yearned the Souls to God
+In that fire-clime benign that clears from sin;
+And lo! the Lord thy God hath heard thy prayer,
+Since fortitude in prayer--and this thou know'st," -
+Smiling the Bright One spake, "is that which lays
+Man's hand upon God's sceptre.  That thou sought'st
+Shall lack not consummation.  Many a race
+Shrivelling in sunshine of its prosperous years,
+Shall cease from faith, and, shamed though shameless, sink
+Back to its native clay; but over thine
+God shall extend the shadow of His Hand,
+And through the night of centuries teach to her
+In woe that song which, when the nations wake,
+Shall sound their glad deliverance:  nor alone
+This nation, from the blind dividual dust
+Of instincts brute, thoughts driftless, warring wills
+By thee evoked and shapen by thy hands
+To God's fair image which confers alone
+Manhood on nations, shall to God stand true;
+But nations far in undiscovered seas,
+Her stately progeny, while ages fleet
+Shall wear the kingly ermine of her Faith,
+Fleece uncorrupted of the Immaculate Lamb,
+For ever:  lands remote shall raise to God
+HER fanes; and eagle-nurturing isles hold fast
+HER hermit cells:  thy nation shall not walk
+Accordant with the Gentiles of this world,
+But as a race elect sustain the Crown
+Or bear the Cross:  and when the end is come,
+When in God's Mount the Twelve great Thrones are set,
+And round it roll the Rivers Four of fire,
+And in their circuit meet the Peoples Three
+Of Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, fulfilled that day
+Shall be the Saviour's word, what time He stretched
+Thy crozier-staff forth from His glory-cloud
+And sware to thee, 'When they that with Me walked
+Sit with Me on their everlasting thrones
+Judging the Twelve Tribes of Mine Israel,
+Thy People thou shalt judge in righteousness.'
+
+Thou therefore kneel, and bless thy Land of Eire."
+
+Then Patrick knelt, and blessed the land, and said,
+"Praise be to God who hears the sinner's prayer."
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE.
+
+THE CONFESSION OF SAINT PATRICK.
+
+ARGUMENT.
+
+Before his death, Saint Patrick makes confession to his
+   brethren concerning his life; of his love for that
+   land which had been his House of Bondage; of his
+   ceaseless prayer in youth:  of his sojourn at Tours,
+   where St. Martin had made abode, at Auxerres with
+   St. Germanus, and at Lerins with the Contemplatives:
+   of that mystic mountain where the Redeemer Himself
+   lodged the Crozier Staff in his hand; of Pope
+   Celestine who gave him his Mission; of his Visions; of
+   his Labours.  His last charge to the sons of Erin is
+   that they should walk in Truth; that they should put
+   from them the spirit of Revenge; and that they should
+   hold fast to the Faith of Christ.
+
+At Saul then, by the inland-spreading sea,
+There where began my labour, comes the end:
+I, blind and witless, willed it otherwise:
+God willed it thus.  When prescience came of death
+I said, "My Resurrection place I choose" -
+O fool, for ne'er since boyhood choice was mine
+Save choice to subject will of mine to God -
+"At great Ardmacha."   Thitherward I turned;
+But in my pathway, with forbidding hand,
+Victor, God's angel stood.  "Not so," he said,
+"For in Ardmacha stands thy princedom fixed,
+Age after age, thy teaching, and thy law,
+But not thy grave.  Return thou to that shore
+Thy place of small beginnings, and thereon
+Lessen in body and mind, and grow in spirit:
+Then sing to God thy little hymn and die."
+
+Yea, Lord, my mouth would praise Thee ere I die,
+The Father, and the Son, and Holy Spirit
+Who knittest in His Church the just to Christ:
+Help me, my sons--mine orphans soon to be -
+Help me to praise Him; ye that round me sit
+On those grey rocks; ye that have faithful been,
+Honouring, despite dishonour of my sins,
+His servant:  I would praise Him yet once more,
+Though mine the stammerer's voice, or as a child's;
+For it is written, "Stammerers shall speak plain
+Sounding Thy Gospel."  "They whom Christ hath sent
+Are Christ's Epistle, borne to ends of earth,
+Writ by His Spirit, and plain to souls elect:"
+Lord, am not I of Thine Apostolate?
+
+Yea, by abjection Thine, by suffering Thine!
+Till I was humbled I was as a stone
+In deep mire sunk.  Then, stretched from heaven, Thy hand
+Slid under me in might, and lifted me,
+And fixed me in Thy Temple where Thou wouldst.
+Wonder, ye great ones, wonder, ye the wise!
+On me, the last and least, this charge was laid
+This crown, that I in humbleness and truth
+Should walk this nation's Servant till I die.
+
+Therefore, a youth of sixteen years, or less,
+With others of my land by pirates seized
+I stood on Erin's shore.  Our bonds were just;
+Our God we had forsaken, and His Law,
+And mocked His priests.  Tending a stern man's swine
+I trod those Dalaraida hills that face
+Eastward to Alba.  Six long years went by;
+But--sent from God--Memory, and Faith, and Fear
+Moved on my spirit as winds upon the sea,
+And the Spirit of Prayer came down.  Full many a day
+Climbing the mountain tops, one hundred times
+I flung upon the storm my cry to God.
+Nor frost, nor rain might harm me, for His love
+Burned in my heart.  Through love I made my fast;
+And in my fasts one night I heard this voice,
+"Thou fastest well:  soon shalt thou see thy Land."
+Later, once more thus spake it:  "Southward fly,
+Thy ship awaits thee."  Many a day I fled,
+And found the black ship dropping down the tide,
+And entered with those Gentiles by Thy grace
+Vanquished, though first they spurned me, and was free.
+It was Thy leading, Lord; the Hand was Thine!
+For now when, perils past, I walked secure,
+Kind greetings round me, and the Christian Rite,
+There rose a clamorous yearning in my heart,
+And memories of that land so far, so fair,
+And lost in such a gloom.  And through that gloom
+The eyes of little children shone on me,
+So ready to believe!  Such children oft
+Ran by me naked in and out the waves,
+Or danced in circles upon Erin's shores,
+Like creatures never fallen!  Thought of such
+Passed into thought of others.  From my youth
+Both men and women, maidens most, to me
+As children seemed; and O the pity then
+To mark how oft they wept, how seldom knew
+Whence came the wound that galled them!  As I walked,
+Each wind that passed me whispered, "Lo, that race
+Which trod thee down!  Requite with good their ill!
+Thou know'st their tongue; old man to thee, and youth,
+For counsel came, and lambs would lick thy foot;
+And now the whole land is a sheep astray
+That bleats to God."
+
+                              Alone one night I mused,
+Burthened with thought of that vocation vast.
+O'er-spent I sank asleep.  In visions then,
+Satan my soul plagued with temptation dire.
+Methought, beneath a cliff I lay, and lo!
+Thick-legioned demons o'er me dragged a rock,
+That falling, seemed a mountain.  Near, more near,
+O'er me it blackened.  Sudden from my heart
+This thought leaped forth:  "Elias!  Him invoke!"
+That name invoked, vanished the rock; and I,
+On mountains stood watching the rising sun,
+As stood Elias once on Carmel's crest,
+Gazing on heaven unbarred, and that white cloud,
+A thirsting land's salvation.
+
+                              Might Divine!
+Thou taught'st me thus my weakness; and I vowed
+To seek Thy strength.  I turned my face to Tours,
+There where in years gone by Thy soldier-priest
+Martin had ruled, my kinsman in the flesh.
+Dead was the lion; but his lair was warm:
+In it I laid me, and a conquering glow
+Rushed up into my heart.  I heard discourse
+Of Martin still, his valour in the Lord,
+His rugged warrior zeal, his passionate love
+For Hilary, his vigils, and his fasts,
+And all his pitiless warfare on the Powers
+Of darkness; and one day, in secrecy,
+With Ninian, missioned then to Alba's shore,
+I peered into his branch-enwoven cell,
+Half-way between the river and the rocks,
+From Tours a mile and more.
+
+                              So passed eight years
+Till strengthened was my heart by discipline:
+Then spake a priest, "Brother, thy will is good,
+Yet rude thou art of learning as a beast;
+Fare thee to great Germanus of Auxerres,
+Who lightens half the West!"  I heard, and went,
+And to that Saint was subject fourteen years.
+He from my mind removed the veil; "Lift up,"
+He said, "thine eyes!" and like a mountain land
+The Queenly Science stood before me plain,
+From rocky buttress up to peak of snow:
+The great Commandments first, Edicts, and Laws
+That bastion up man's life: --then high o'er these
+The forest huge of Doctrine, one, yet many,
+Forth stretching in innumerable aisles,
+At the end of each, the self-same glittering star:  -
+Lastly, the Life God-hidden.  Day by day,
+With him for guide, that first and second realm
+I tracked, and learned to shun the abyss flower-veiled,
+And scale heaven-threatening heights.  This, too, he taught,
+Himself long time a ruler and a prince,
+The regimen of States from chaos won
+To order, and to Christ.  Prudence I learned,
+And sageness in the government of men,
+By me sore needed soon.  O stately man,
+In all things great, in action and in thought,
+And plain as great!  To Britain called, the Saint
+Trod down that great Pelagian Blasphemy,
+Chief portent of the age.  But better far
+He loved his cell.  There sat he vigil-worn,
+In cowl and dusky tunic hued like earth
+Whence issued man and unto which returns;
+I marvelled at his wrinkled brows, and hands
+Still tracing, enter or depart who would,
+From morn to night his parchments.
+
+                              There, once more,
+O God, Thine eye was on me, or my hand
+Once more had missed the prize.  Temptation now
+Whispered in softness, "Wisdom's home is here:
+Here bide untroubled."  Almost I had fallen;
+But, by my side, in visions of the night,
+God's angel, Victor, stood as one that hastes,
+On travel sped.  Unnumbered missives lay
+Clasped in his hands.  One stretched he forth, inscribed
+"The wail of Erin's Children."  As I read
+The cry of babes, from Erin's western coast
+And Fochlut's forest, and the wintry sea,
+Shrilled o'er me, clamouring, "Holy youth, return!
+Walk then among us!"  I could read no more.
+
+  Thenceforth rose up renewed mine old desire:
+My kinsfolk mocked me.  "What! past woes too scant!
+Slave of four masters, and the best a churl!
+Thy Gospel they will trample under foot,
+And rend thee!  Late to them Palladius preached:
+They drave him as a leper from their shores."
+I stood in agony of staggering mind
+And warring wills.  Then, lo! at dead of night
+I heard a mystic voice, till then unheard,
+I knew not if within me or close by
+That swelled in passionate pleading; nor the words
+Grasped I, so great they seemed and wonderful,
+Till sank that tempest to a whisper: --"He
+Who died for thee is He that in thee groans."
+Then fell, methought, scales from mine inner eyes:
+Then saw I--terrible that sight, yet sweet -
+Within me saw a Man that in me prayed
+With groans unutterable.  That Man was girt
+For mission far.  My heart recalled that word,
+"The Spirit helpeth our infirmities;
+That which we lack we know not, but the Spirit
+Himself for us doth intercession make
+With groanings which may never be revealed."
+That hour my vow was vowed; and he approved,
+My master and my guide.  "But go," he said,
+"First to that island in the Tyrrhene Sea,
+Where live the high Contemplatives to God:
+There learn perfection; there that Inner Life
+Win thou, God's strength amid the world's loud storm:
+Nor fear lest God should frown on such delay,
+For Heavenly Wisdom is compassionate:
+Slowly before man's weakness moves it on;
+Softly:  so moved of old the Wise Men's Star,
+Which curbed its lightning ardours and forbore
+Honouring the pensive tread of hoary Eld,
+Honouring the burthened slave, the camel line
+Long-linked, with level head and foot that fell
+As though in sleep, printing the silent sands."
+Thus, smiling, spake Germanus, large in lore.
+
+So in that island-Eden I sojourned,
+Lerins, and saw where Vincent lived, and his,
+Life fountained from on high.  That life was Love;
+For all their mighty knowledge food became
+Of Love Divine, and took, by Love absorbed,
+Shape from his flame-like body.  Hard their beds;
+Ceaseless their prayers.  They tilled a sterile soil;
+Beneath their hands it blossomed like the rose:
+O'er thymy hollows blew the nectared airs;
+Blue ocean flashed through olives.  They had fled
+From praise of men; yet cities far away
+Rapt those meek saints to fill the bishop's throne.
+I saw the light of God on faces calm
+That blended with man's meditative might
+Simplicity of childhood, and, with both
+The sweetness of that flower-like sex which wears
+Through love's Obedience twofold crowns of Love.
+O blissful time!  In that bright island bloomed
+The third high region on the Hills of God,
+Above the rock, above the wood, the cloud:  -
+There laughs the luminous air, there bursts anew
+Spring bud in summer on suspended lawns;
+There the bell tinkles while once more the lamb
+Trips by the sun-fed runnel:  there green vales
+Lie lost in purple heavens.
+
+                              Transfigured Life!
+This was thy glory, that, without a sigh,
+Who loved thee yet could leave thee!  Thus it fell:
+One morning I was on the sea, and lo!
+An isle to Lerins near, but fairer yet,
+Till then unseen!  A grassy vale sea-lulled
+Wound inward, breathing balm, with fruited trees,
+And stream through lilies gliding.  By a door
+There stood a man in prime, and others sat
+Not far, some grey; and one, a weed of years,
+Lay like a withered wreath.  An old man spake:
+"See what thou seest, and scan the mystery well!
+The man who stands so stately in his prime
+Is of this company the eldest born.
+The Saviour in His earthly sojourn, Risen,
+Perchance, or ere His Passion, who can tell,
+Stood up at this man's door; and this man rose,
+And let Him in, and made for Him a feast;
+And Jesus said, 'Tarry, till I return.'
+Moreover, others are there on this isle,
+Both men and maids, who saw the Son of Man,
+And took Him in, and shine in endless youth;
+But we, the rest, in course of nature fade,
+For we believe, yet saw not God, nor touched."
+Then spake I, "Here till death my home I make,
+Where Jesus trod."  And answered he in prime,
+"Not so; the Master hath for thee thy task.
+Parting, thus spake He:  'Here for Mine Elect
+Abide thou.  Bid him bear this crozier staff;
+My blessing rests thereon:  the same shall drive
+The foes of God before him.'"  Answer thus
+I made, "That crozier staff I will not touch
+Until I take it from that nail-pierced Hand."
+From these I turned, and clomb a mountain high,
+Hermon by name; and there--was this, my God,
+In visions of the Lord, or in the flesh? -
+I spake with Him, the Lord of Life, Who died;
+He from the glory stretched the Hand nail-pierced,
+And placed in mine that crozier staff, and said:
+"Upon that day when they that with Me walked
+Sit with Me on their everlasting Thrones,
+Judging the Twelve Tribes of Mine Israel,
+Thy People thou shalt judge in righteousness."
+
+Forthwith to Rome I fled; there knelt I down
+Above the bones of Peter and of Paul,
+And saw the mitred embassies from far,
+And saw Celestine with his head high held
+As though it bore the Blessed Sacrament;
+Chief Shepherd of the Saviour's flock on earth.
+Tall was the man, and swift; white-haired; with eye
+Starlike and voice a trumpet clear that pealed
+God's Benediction o'er the city and globe;
+Yea, and whene'er his palm he lifted, still
+Blessing before it ran.  Upon my head
+He laid both hands, and "Win," he said, "to Christ
+One realm the more!"  Moreover, to my charge
+Relics he gave, unnumbered, without price;
+And when those relics lost had been, and found,
+And at his feet I wept, he chided not;
+But, smiling, said, "Thy glorious task fulfilled,
+House them in thy new country's stateliest church
+By cresset girt of ever-burning lamps,
+And never-ceasing anthems."
+
+                              Northward then
+Returned I, missioned.  Yet once more, but once,
+That old temptation proved me.  When they sat,
+The Elders, making inquest of my life,
+Sudden a certain brother rose, and spake,
+"Shall this man be a Bishop, who hath sinned?"
+My dearest friend was he.  To him alone
+One time had I divulged a sin by me
+Through ignorance wrought when fifteen years of age;
+And after thirty years, behold, once more,
+That sin had found me out!  He knew my mission:
+When in mine absence slander sought my name,
+Mine honour he had cleared.  Yet now--yet now -
+That hour the iron passed into my soul:
+Yea, well nigh all was lost.  I wept, "Not one,
+No heart of man there is that knows my heart,
+Or in its anguish shares."
+
+                              Yet, O my God!
+I blame him not:  from Thee that penance came:
+Not for man's love should Thine Apostle strive,
+Thyself alone his great and sole reward.
+Thou laid'st that hour a fiery hand of love
+Upon a faithless heart; and it survived.
+
+At dead of night a Vision gave me peace.
+Slowly from out the breast of darkness shone
+Strange characters, a writing unrevealed:
+And slowly thence and infinitely sad,
+A Voice:  "Ill-pleased, this day have we beheld
+The face of the Elect without a name."
+It said not, "Thou hast grieved," but "We have grieved;"
+With import plain, "O thou of little faith!
+Am I not nearer to thee than thy friends?
+Am I not inlier with thee than thyself?"
+Then I remembered, "He that touches you
+Doth touch the very apple of mine eye."
+Serene I slept.  At morn I rose and ran
+Down to the shore, and found a boat, and sailed.
+
+That hour true life's beginning was, O Lord,
+Because the work Thou gav'st into my hands
+Prospered between them.  Yea, and from the work
+The Power forth issued.  Strength in me was none,
+Nor insight, till the occasion:  then Thy sword
+Flamed in my grasp, and beams were in mine eyes
+That showed the way before me, and nought else.
+Thou mad'st me know Thy Will.  As taper's light
+Veers with a wind man feels not, o'er my heart
+Hovered thenceforth some Pentecostal flame
+That bent before that Will.  Thy Truth, not mine,
+Lightened this People's mind; Thy Love inflamed
+Their hearts; Thy Hope upbore them as on wings.
+Valiant that race, and simple, and to them
+Not hard the godlike venture of belief:
+Conscience was theirs:  tortuous too oft in life
+Their thoughts, when passionate most, then most were true,
+Heart-true.  With naked hand firmly they clasped
+The naked Truth:  in them Belief was Act.
+A tribe from Thy far East they called themselves:
+Their clans were Patriarch households, rude through war:
+Old Pagan Rome had known them not; their Isle
+Virgin to Christ had come.  Oh how unlike
+Her sons to those old Roman Senators,
+Scorn of Germanus oft, who breathed the air
+Fouled by dead Faiths successively blown out,
+Or Grecian sophist with his world of words,
+That, knowing all, knew nothing!  Praise to Thee,
+Lord of the night-time as the day, Who keep'st
+Reserved in blind barbaric innocence,
+Pure breed, when boastful lights corrupt the wise,
+With healthier fruit to bless a later age.
+
+  I to that people all things made myself
+For Christ's sake, building still that good they lacked
+On good already theirs.  In courts of kings
+I stood:  before mine eye their eye went down,
+For Thou wert with me.  Gentle with the meek,
+I suffered not the proud to mock my face:
+Thus by the anchors twain of Love and Fear,
+Since Love, not perfected, gains strength from Fear,
+I bound to thee This nation.  Parables
+I spake in; parables in act I wrought
+Because the people's mind was in the sense.
+At Imbher Dea they scoffed Thy word:  I raised
+Thy staff, and smote with barrenness that flood:
+Then learned they that the world was Thine, not ruled
+By Sun or Moon, their famed "God-Elements:"
+Yea, like Thy Fig-tree cursed, that river banned
+Witnessed Thy Love's stern pureness.  From the grass
+The little three-leaved herb, I stooped and plucked,
+And preached the Trinity.  Thy Staff I raised,
+And bade--not ravening beast--but reptiles foul
+Flee to the abyss like that blind herd of old;
+Then spake I:  "Be not babes, but understand:
+Thus in your spirit lift the Cross of Christ:
+Banish base lusts; so God shall with you walk
+As once with man in Eden."  With like aim
+Convents I reared for holy maids, then sought
+The marriage feast, and cried, "If God thus draws
+Close to Himself those virgin hearts, and yet
+Blesses the bridal troth, and infant's font,
+How white a thing should be the Christian home!"
+Marvelling, they learned what heritage their God
+Possessed in them! how wide a realm, how fair.
+
+Lord, save in one thing only, I was weak -
+I loved this people with a mother's love,
+For their sake sanctified my spirit to thee
+In vigil, fast, and meditation long,
+On mountain and on moor.  Thus, Lord, I wrought,
+Trusting that so Thy lineaments divine,
+Deeplier upon my spirit graved, might pass
+Thence on that hidden burthen which my heart
+Still from its substance feeding, with great pangs
+Strove to bring forth to Thee.  O loyal race!
+Me too they loved.  They waited me all night
+On lonely roads; and, as I preached, the day
+To those high listeners seemed a little hour.
+Have I not seen ten thousand brows at once
+Flash in the broad light of some Truth new risen,
+And felt like him, that Saint who cried, flame-girt,
+"At last do I begin to be a Christian?"
+Have I not seen old foes embrace?  Seen him,
+That white-haired man who dashed him on the ground,
+Crying aloud, "My buried son, forgive!
+Thy sire hath touched the hand that shed thy blood?"
+Fierce chiefs knelt down in penance!  Lord! how oft
+Shook I their tear-drop sparkles from my gown!
+'Twas the forgiveness taught them all the debt,
+Great-hearted penitents!  How many a youth
+Contemned the praise of men!  How many a maid -
+O not in narrowness, but Love's sweet pride
+And love-born shyness--jealous for a mate
+Himself not jealous--spurned terrestrial love,
+Glorying in heavenly Love's fair oneness!  Race
+High-dowered!  God's Truth seemed some remembered thing
+To them; God's Kingdom smiled, their native haunt
+Prophesied then their daughters and their sons:
+Each man before the face of each upraised
+His hand on high, and said, "The Lord hath risen!"
+Then, like a stream from ice released, forth fled
+And wafted far the tidings, flung them wide,
+Shouted them loud from rocky ridge o'er bands
+Marching far down to war!  The sower sowed
+With happier hope; the reaper bending sang,
+"Thus shall God's Angels reap the field of God
+When we are ripe for heaven."  Lovers new-wed
+Drank of that water changed to wine, thenceforth
+Breathing on earth heaven's sweetness.  Unto such
+More late, whate'er of brightness time or will
+Infirm had dimmed, shone back from infant brows
+By baptism lit.  Each age its garland found:
+Fair shone on trustful childhood faith divine:
+Eld, once a weight of wrinkles now upsoared
+In venerable lordship of white hairs,
+Seer-like and sage.  Healed was a nation's wound:
+All men believed who willed not disbelief;
+And sat in that oppugnancy steel-mailed:
+They cried, "Before thy priests our bards shall bow,
+And all our clans put on thy great Clan Christ!"
+
+  For your sake, O my brethren, and my sons
+These things have I recorded.  Something I wrought:
+Strive ye in loftier labours; strive, and win:
+Your victory shall be mine:  my crown are ye.
+My part is ended now.  I lived for Truth:
+I to this people gave that truth I knew;
+My witnesses ye are I grudged it not:
+Freely did I receive, freely I gave;
+Baptising, or confirming, or ordaining,
+I sold not things divine.  Of mine own store
+Ofttimes the hire of fifteen men I paid
+For guard where bandits lurked.  When prince or chief
+Laid on God's altar ring, or torque, or gold,
+I sent them back.  Too fortunate, too beloved,
+I said, "Can he Apostle be who bears
+Such scanty marks of Christ's Apostolate,
+Hunger, and thirst, and scorn of men?"  For this,
+Those pains they spared I spared not to myself,
+The body's daily death.  I make not boast:
+What boast have I?  If God His servant raised,
+He knoweth--not ye--how oft I fell; how low;
+How oft in faithless longings yearned my heart
+For faces of His Saints in mine own land,
+Remembered fields far off.  This, too, He knoweth,
+How perilous is the path of great attempts,
+How oft pride meets us on the storm-vexed height,
+Pride, or some sting its scourge.  My hope is He:
+His hand, my help so long, will loose me never:
+And, thanks to God, the sheltering grave is near.
+
+  How still this eve!  The morn was racked with storm:
+'Tis past; the skylark sings; the tide at flood
+Sighs a soft joy:  alone those lines of weed
+Report the wrath foregone.  Yon watery plain
+Far shines, a mingled sea of glass and fire,
+Even as that Beatific Sea outspread
+Before the Throne of God.  'Tis Paschal Tide; -
+O sorrowful, O blissful Paschal Tide!
+Fain would I die on Holy Saturday;
+For then, as now, the storm is past--the woe;
+And, somewhere 'mid the shades of Olivet
+Lies sealed the sacred cave of that Repose
+Watched by the Holy Women.  Earth, that sing'st,
+Since first He made thee, thy Creator's praise,
+Sing, sing, thy Saviour's!  Myriad-minded sea,
+How that bright secret thrills thy rippling lips
+Which shake, yet speak not!  Thou that mad'st the worlds,
+Man, too, Thou mad'st; within Thy Hands the life
+Of each was shapen, and new-wov'n ran out,
+New-willed each moment.  What makes up that life?
+Love infinite, and nothing else save love!
+Help ere need came, deliverance ere defeat;
+At every step an angel to sustain us,
+An angel to retrieve!  My years are gone:
+Sweet were they with a sweetness felt but half
+Till now;--not half discerned.  Those blessed years
+I would re-live, deferring thus so long
+The Vision of Thy Face, if thus with gaze
+Cast backward I might SEE that guiding hand
+Step after step, and kiss it.
+
+                              Happy isle!
+Be true; for God hath graved on thee His Name:
+God, with a wondrous ring, hath wedded thee;
+God on a throne divine hath 'stablished thee:  -
+Light of a darkling world!  Lamp of the North!
+My race, my realm, my great inheritance,
+To lesser nations leave inferior crowns;
+Speak ye the thing that is; be just, be kind;
+Live ye God's Truth, and in its strength be free!
+
+This day to Him, the Faithful and the True,
+For Whom I toiled, my spirit I commend.
+That which I am, He knoweth:  I know not now:
+But I shall know ere long.  If I have loved Him
+I seek but this for guerdon of my love
+With holier love to love Him to the end:
+If I have vanquished others to His love
+Would God that this might be their meed and mine
+In witness for His love to pour our blood
+A glad stream forth, though vultures or wild beasts
+Rent our unburied bones!  Thou setting sun,
+That sink'st to rise, that time shall come at last
+When in thy splendours thou shalt rise no more;
+And, darkening with the darkening of thy face,
+Who worshipped thee with thee shall cease; but those
+Who worshipped Christ shall shine with Christ abroad,
+Eternal beam, and Sun of Righteousness,
+In endless glory.  For His sake alone
+I, bondsman in this land, re-sought this land.
+All ye who name my name in later times,
+Say to this People, since vindictive rage
+Tempts them too often, that their Patriarch gave
+Pattern of pardon ere in words he preached
+That God who pardons.  Wrongs if they endure
+In after years, with fire of pardoning love
+Sin-slaying, bid them crown the head that erred:
+For bread denied let them give Sacraments,
+For darkness light, and for the House of Bondage
+The glorious freedom of the sons of God:
+This is my last Confession ere I die.
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+
+
+{10a} Cotton MSS., Nero, E.'; Codex Salisburiensis; and a MS. in the
+Monastery of St. Vaast.
+
+{10b} The Book of Armagh, preserved at Trinity College, Dublin,
+contains a Life of St. Patrick, with his writings, and consists in
+chief part of a description of all the books of the New Testament,
+including the Epistle of Paul to the Laodiceans.  Traces found here
+and there of the name of the copyist and of the archbishop for whom
+the copy was made, fix its date almost to a year as 807 or 811-812.
+
+{77} The Isle of Man.
+
+{101} Now Limerick.
+
+{111} Foynes.
+
+{116} The Giant's Causeway.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE LEGENDS OF SAINT PATRICK ***
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