Aideen’s Grave
They heaved the stones; they heaped the cairn.
Said Ossian, “In a queenly grave
We leave her, ‘mong her fields of fern
Between the cliff and wave.”
The cliff behind stands clear and bare,
And bare, above, the heathery steep
Scales the clear heaven’s expanse, to where
The Danaan Druids sleep.
And all the sands that, left and right,
The grassy isthmus-ridge confine,
In yellow bars lie bare and bright
Among the sparkling brine.
A clear pure air pervades the scene,
In loneliness and awe secure,
Meet spot to sepulchre a Queen,
Who in her life was pure.
Here far from camp and chase removed,
Apart in Nature’s quiet room,
The music that alive she loved
Shall cheer her in the tomb.
The humming of the noontide bees,
The lark’s loud carol all day long,
And, borne on evening’s salted breeze,
The clanking sea-birds’ song
Shall round her airy chamber float,
And with the whispering winds and streams,
Attune to Nature’s tenderest note
The tenor of her dreams.
And oft at tranquil eve’s decline,
When full tides lap the Old Green Plain,
The lowing Moynalty’s kine
Shall round her breathe again.
In sweet remembrance of the days
When, duteous in the lowly vale,
Unconscious of my Oscar’s gaze,
She filled the fragrant pail.
And, duteous, from the running brook,
Drew water for the bath; nor deem’d
A king did on her labor look,
And she a fairy seemed.
But when the wintry frosts begin,
And in their long-drawn, lofty flight
The wild geese with their airy din.
Distend the ear of night.
And when the fierce De Danaan ghosts,
At midnight from their peak come down.
When all around the enchanted coasts
Despairing strangers drown;
When mingling with the wreckful wail
From low Clontarf’s wave-trampled floor,
Comes booming up the burthened gale
The angry Sand Bull’s roar;
Or, angrier than the sea, the shout
Of Erin’s hosts in wrath combined
When Terror heads Oppression’s rout
And Freedom cheers behind:—
Then o’er our lady’s placid dream,
When safe from storms she sleeps, may steal
Such joy as may not misbeseem
A queen of men to feel.
Such thrill of free, defiant pride,
As rapt her in her battle car
At Gavra, when by Oscar’s side
She rode the ridge of war.
Exulting, down the shouting troops,
And through the thick confronting kings,
With hands on all their javelin loops
And shafts on all their strings;
E’er closed the inseparable crowds
No more to part for me, and show,
As bursts the sun through scattering clouds
My Oscar issuing so.
No more, dispelling battle’s gloom,
Shall son to me from fight return;
The great green rath’s ten-acred tomb
Lies heavy on his urn.
A cup of bodkin-pencilled clay
Holds Oscar; mighty heart and limb
One handful now of ashes grey:
And she has died for him.
And here, hard by her natal bower
On lone Ben-Edar’s side we strive
With lifted rock and sign of power