Poems

FERGUS

The whole day have I followed in the rocks,

And you have changed and flowed from shape to shape.

First as a raven on whose ancient wings

Scarcely a feather lingered, then you seemed

A weasel moving on from stone to stone,

And now at last you wear a human shape,

A thin gray man half lost in gathering night.

DRUID

What would you, king of the proud Red Branch kings?

FERGUS

This would I say, most wise of living souls:

Young subtle Concobar sat close by me

When I gave judgment, and his words were wise,

And what to me was burden without end,

To him seemed easy, so I laid the crown

Upon his head to cast away my care.

DRUID

What would you, king of the proud Red Branch kings?

FERGUS

I feast amid my people on the hill,

And pace the woods, and drive my chariot wheels

In the white border of the murmuring sea;

And still I feel the crown upon my head.

DRUID

What would you?

FERGUS

I would be no more a king

But learn the dreaming wisdom that is yours.

DRUID

Look on my thin gray hair and hollow cheeks

And on these hands that may not lift the sword

This body trembling like a wind-blown reed.

No woman loves me, no man seeks my help,

Because I be not of the things I dream.

FERGUS

A wild and foolish labourer is a king,

To do and do and do, and never dream.

DRUID

Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams;

Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.

FERGUS

I see my life go dripping like a stream

From change to change; I have been many things,

A green drop in the surge, a gleam of light

Upon a sword, a fir-tree on a hill,

An old slave grinding at a heavy quern,

A king sitting upon a chair of gold,

And all these things were wonderful and great;

But now I have grown nothing, being all,

And the whole world weighs down upon my heart:

Ah! Druid, Druid, how great webs of sorrow

Lay hidden in the small slate-coloured bag!