Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By Ballads and Lyrics (1892). I. The Children of LirKatharine Tynan Hinkson (18611931)
O
Herons standing knee-deep in the brackish pool,
Overhead the sunset fire and flame amasses,
And the moon to eastward rises pale and cool:
Rose and green around her, silver-gray and pearly,
Chequered with the black rooks flying home to bed;
For, to wake at daybreak, birds must couch them early,
And the day’s a long one since the dawn was red.
See the sad swans sailing: they shall have no rest:
Never a voice to greet them save the bittern’s booming
Where the ghostly sallows sway against the West.
“Sister,” saith the gray swan, “Sister, I am weary,”
Turning to the white swan wet, despairing eyes;
“O,” she saith, “my young one.” “O,” she saith, “my dearie,”
Casts her wings about him with a storm of cries.
Glamoured with her witch-spells for a thousand years;
Died their father raving—on his throne another—
Blind before the end came from the burning tears.
Long the swans have wandered over lake and river.
Gone is all the glory of the race of Lir;
Gone and long forgotten like a dream of fever:
But the swans remember the sweet days that were.
Fiachra, the black swan with the emerald breast,
Conn, the youngest, dearest, sheltered in all weathers,
Him his snow-white sister loves the tenderest.
These her mother gave her as she lay a-dying;
To her faithful keeping; faithful hath she been,
With her wings spread o’er them when the tempest’s crying,
And her songs so hopeful when the sky’s serene.
Lined with downy feathers, where the cygnets sleep,
Dreaming, if a bird dreams, till the daylight blushes,
Then they sail out swiftly on the current deep.
With the proud swan-father, tall, and strong, and stately,
And the mild swan-mother, grave with household cares,
All well-born and comely, all rejoicing greatly:
Full of honest pleasure is a life like theirs.
Sick with human longings, starved for human ties,
With their hearts all human cramped in a bird’s stature,
And the human weeping in the bird’s soft eyes.
Never shall my swans build nests in some green river,
Never fly to Southward in the autumn gray,
Rear no tender children, love no mates for ever,
Robbed alike of bird’s joys and of man’s are they.
At my father’s palace how I went in silk,
Ate the juicy deer-flesh roasted from the ember,
Drank from golden goblets my child’s draught of milk.
Once I rode a-hunting, laughed to see the hurly,
Shouted at the ball-play, on the lake did row;
You had for your beauty gauds that shone so rarely:”
“Peace!” saith Fionnuala, “that was long ago!”
How the flaming torches lit the banquet-hall,
And the fire leapt skyward in the mid-December,
And among the rushes slept our staghounds tall.
By our father’s right hand you sat, shyly gazing,
Smiling half and sighing, with your eyes aglow,
As the bards sang loudly all your beauty praising.”
“Peace!” saith Fionnuala, “that was long ago!”
One I called my brother, one, earth’s goodliest man,
Strong as forest oaks are where the wild vines clamber,
First at feast or hunting, in the battle’s van.
Angus, you were handsome, wise and true and tender,
Loved by every comrade, feared by every foe:
Low, low lies your beauty, all forgot your splendour:”
“Peace!” saith Fionnuala, “that was long ago!”
Over sands and sedges shines the evening star,
And the moon’s disc lonely high in heaven is sailing,
Silvered all the spear-heads of the rushes are,—
Housèd warm are all things as the night grows colder,
Water-fowl and sky-fowl dreamless in the nest;
But the swans go drifting, drooping wing and shoulder,
Cleaving the still water where the fishes rest.