This eBook was prepared by Les Bowler.

CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.

The Legends
of
Saint Patrick

BY
AUBREY DE VERE, LL.D.

CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
LONDON, PARIS & MELBOURNE.
1892

INTRODUCTION.

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 Feinè 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 baptiséd 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 faëry 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, Lambraidhè, 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 Accursèd 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.