To the grandchild teasing, teasing, and pink as the bedtime daisy-bud,

Tells it over.—“When that happened, I was a boy, and I sat one day

By the river, in mid-morning, my drowsy cheek to the pleasant clay.

“Sudden opened, near and under, the believed-in cave on the green hillside!

Thick the darkness, but I saw them: the Earl Hugh’s men that never have died,

“Men gone by, ensainted, fabled, the men unnamed in the living air:

Like a taper’s flame among them, my soul and body were shaken there.

“Nine full hundred, nine and ninety, (O’Neil the thousandth when he comes back!)

All a-row, asleep in armor, by horses magical white or black:

“Mighty horses satin-shouldered, with sheen of the golden stirrups grand;

Mighty troopers drunk with battle, the bridle in every iron hand.

“Sunburn on their folded faces was fresh as childhood and fierce as death.

Think: the sunburn got in marches against the demon Elizabeth!

“Next my knee, then, rose a hero, rose up a little, not loosening rein;

Gazing steady, softly said he, and sharply said to me, over again:

“‘Is the time come?’ (That’s for vengeance: the clan is hungry and hot to start.)

‘Is the time come, is the time come?’ Thrice the sound of it stabbed my heart.

“Page or herald if he thought me, the hope that changed like a rushing sea,

Failed and ebbed, and straight outbore him, and took the terror away from me;

“Sands of sleep dragged down his eyelid, and slacked his hand on the charger good,

Surely, heavily, surely, slowly.—I ran till I reached our roof in the wood.

“Long ago. This thing the fathers had whispered of, I beheld and heard!

Though not yet my splendid dreamer the answer win to his uttered word,

“Patience: that shall be, hereafter. The chief is late, but he seeks his own,

Riding up to break the quiet in all the farm-lands of all Tyrone.

“They have hid so, they have waited; to hate that smoulders their blood is leal.

O to help them crash around him true Innishowen’s unrusted steel!

“O to help them cheer and follow O’Neil, O’Neil from his foreign grave!

O to throne thee, saddest, fairest, as once thou wert, on the warless wave!

“Drift of moss for many a summer conceals the door on the charmed hillside;

Clouds and hail of death blow over the Earl Hugh’s men that never have died.

“Nine full hundred, nine and ninety, (O’Neil the thousandth when he comes back!)

Lie a-row, asleep in armor, by horses magical white or black:

“Mighty horses satin-shouldered, with sheen of the golden stirrups grand;

Mighty troopers ripe for battle, the bridle in every ready hand.

“‘Is the time come?’ (Long the sorrow, little isle, my love, for your sake, your sake.)

‘Is the time come? Is the time come?’ Ah, hush, no more: or my heart will break.”

Pretty Kathie, closer pressing, into that face in silence peers:

There they fall, the sunset showers, the far-off, idle, eternal tears.