The Grey Rock

Poets with whom I learned my trade,     Companions of the Cheshire Cheese,     Heres an old story Ive re-made,     Imagining twould better please     Your ears than stories now in fashion,     Though you may think I waste my breath     Pretending that there can be passion     That has more life in it than death,     And though at bottling of your wine     The bow-legged Goban had no say;     The morals yours because its mine.     When cups went round at close of day,     Is not that how good stories run?     Somewhere within some hollow hill,     If books speak truth in Slievenamon,     But let that be, the gods were still     And sleepy, having had their meal,     And smoky torches made a glare     On painted pillars, on a deal     Of fiddles and of flutes hung there     By the ancient holy hands that brought them     From murmuring Murias, on cups,     Old Goban hammered them and wrought them,     And put his pattern round their tops     To hold the wine they buy of him.     But from the juice that made them wise     All those had lifted up the dim     Imaginations of their eyes,     For one that was like woman made     Before their sleepy eyelids ran     And trembling with her passion said,     Come out and dig for a dead man,     Whos burrowing somewhere in the ground,     And mock him to his face and then     Hollo him on with horse and hound,     For he is the worst of all dead men.     We should be dazed and terror struck,     If we but saw in dreams that room,     Those wine-drenched eyes, and curse our luck     That emptied all our days to come.     I knew a woman none could please,     Because she dreamed when but a child     Of men and women made like these;     And after, when her blood ran wild,     Had ravelled her own story out,     And said, In two or in three years     I need must marry some poor lout,     And having said it burst in tears.     Since, tavern comrades, you have died,     Maybe your images have stood,     Mere bone and muscle thrown aside,     Before that roomful or as good.     You had to face your ends when young,     Twas wine or women, or some curse,     But never made a poorer song     That you might have a heavier purse,     Nor gave loud service to a cause     That you might have a troop of friends.     You kept the Muses sterner laws,     And unrepenting faced your ends,     And therefore earned the right, and yet     Dowson and Johnson most I praise,     To troop with those the worlds forgot,     And copy their proud steady gaze.     The Danish troop was driven out     Between the dawn and dusk, she said;     Although the event was long in doubt,     Although the King of Irelands dead     And half the kings, before sundown     All was accomplished.                                             When this day     Murrough, the King of Irelands son,     Foot after foot was giving way,     He and his best troops back to back     Had perished there, but the Danes ran,     Stricken with panic from the attack,     The shouting of an unseen man;     And being thankful Murrough found,     Led by a footsole dipped in blood     That had made prints upon the ground,     Where by old thorn trees that man stood;     And though when he gazed here and there,     He had but gazed on thorn trees, spoke,     Who is the friend that seems but air     And yet could give so fine a stroke?     Thereon a young man met his eye,     Who said, Because she held me in     Her love, and would not have me die,     Rock-nurtured Aoife took a pin,     And pushing it into my shirt,     Promised that for a pins sake,     No man should see to do me hurt;     But there its gone; I will not take     The fortune that had been my shame     Seeing, Kings son, what wounds you have.     Twas roundly spoke, but when night came     He had betrayed me to his grave,     For he and the Kings son were dead.     Id promised him two hundred years,     And when for all Id done or said,     And these immortal eyes shed tears,     He claimed his countrys need was most,     Id saved his life, yet for the sake     Of a new friend he has turned a ghost.     What does he care if my heart break?     I call for spade and horse and hound     That we may harry him. Thereon     She cast herself upon the ground     And rent her clothes and made her moan:     Why are they faithless when their might     Is from the holy shades that rove     The grey rock and the windy light?     Why should the faithfullest heart most love     The bitter sweetness of false faces?     Why must the lasting love what passes,     Why are the gods by men betrayed!     But thereon every god stood up     With a slow smile and without sound,     And stretching forth his arm and cup     To where she moaned upon the ground,     Suddenly drenched her to the skin;     And she with Gobans wine adrip,     No more remembering what had been,     Stared at the gods with laughing lip.     I have kept my faith, though faith was tried,     To that rock-born, rock-wandering foot,     And the worlds altered since you died,     And I am in no good repute     With the loud host before the sea,     That think sword strokes were better meant     Than lovers music, let that be,     So that the wandering foots content.