Стихи - [25]

Вернувшейся из-за морей

И чище сердцем, чем она;

Но тех двоих — забыть бы нам!

О, неотступная мечта

Сердец влюбленных — слиться так

С любимым сердцем, как Айлин

С Байле сплелись, уйдя с земли!

Baile and Aillinn

ARGUMENT. Baile and Aillinn were lovers, but Aengus, the Master of Love, wishing them to he happy in his own land among the dead, told to each a story of the other's death, so that their hearts were broken and they died.

I hardly hear the curlew cry,

Nor the grey rush when the wind is high,

Before my thoughts begin to run

On the heir of Uladh, Buan's son,

Baile, who had the honey mouth;

And that mild woman of the south,

Aillinn, who was King Lugaidh's heir.

Their love was never drowned in care

Of this or that thing, nor grew cold

Because their bodies had grown old.

Being forbid to marry on earth,

They blossomed to immortal mirth.

About the time when Christ was born,

When the long wars for the White Horn

And the Brown Bull had not yet come,

Young Baile Honey Mouth, whom some

Called rather Baile Little-Land,

Rode out of Emain with a band

Of harpers and young men; and they

Imagined, as they struck the way

To many-pastured Muirthemne,

That all things fell out happily,

And there, for all that fools had said,

Baile and Aillinn would be wed.

They found an old man running there:

He had ragged long grass-coloured hair;

He had knees that stuck out of his hose;

He had puddle-water in his shoes;

He had half a cloak to keep him dry,

Although he had a squirrel's eye.

O wandering birds and rushy beds,

You put such folly in our heads

With all this crying in the wind,

No common love is to our mind,

And our poor Kate or Nan is less

Than any whose unhappiness

Awoke the harp-strings long ago.

Yet they that know all things but know

That all this life can give us is

A child's laughter, a woman's kiss.

Who was it put so great a scorn

In the grey reeds that night and morn

Are trodden and broken hy the herds,

And in the light bodies of birds

The north wind tumbles to and fro

And pinches among hail and snow?

That runner said: "I am from the south;

I run to Baile Honey-Mouth,

To tell him how the girl Aillinn

Rode from the country of her kin,

And old and young men rode with her:

For all that country had been astir

If anybody half as fair

Had chosen a husband anywhere

But where it could see her every day.

When they had ridden a little way

An old man caught the horse's head

With: "You must home again, and wed

With somebody in your own land.

A young man cried and kissed her hand,

"O lady, wed with one of us' ;

And when no face grew piteous

For any gentle thing she spake,

She fell and died of the heart-break."

Because a lover's heart s worn out,

Being tumbled and blown about

By its own blind imagining,

And will believe that anything

That is bad enough to be true, is true,

Baile's heart was broken in two;

And he, being laid upon green boughs,

Was carried to the goodly house

Where the Hound of Uladh sat before

The brazen pillars of his door,

His face bowed low to weep the end

Of the harper's daughter and her friend

For athough years had passed away

He always wept them on that day,

For on that day they had been betrayed;

And now that Honey-Mouth is laid

Under a cairn of sleepy stone

Before his eyes, he has tears for none,

Although he is carrying stone, but two

For whom the cairn's but heaped anew.

We hold, because our memory is

So full of that thing and of this,

That out of sight is out of mind.

But the grey rush under the wind

And the grey bird with crooked bill

Have such long memories that they still

Remember Deirdre and her man;

And when we walk with Kate or Nan

About the windy water-side,

Our hearts can hear the voices chide.

How could we be so soon content,

Who know the way that Naoise went?

And they have news of Deirdre's eyes,

Who being lovely was so wise -

Ah! wise, my heart knows well how wise.

Now had that old gaunt crafty one,

Gathering his cloak about him, mn

Where Aillinn rode with waiting-maids,

Who amid leafy lights and shades

Dreamed of the hands that would unlace

Their bodices in some dim place

When they had come to the marriage-bed,

And harpers, pacing with high head

As though their music were enough

To make the savage heart of love

Grow gentle without sorrowing,

Imagining and pondering

Heaven knows what calamity;

"Another's hurried off," cried he,

"From heat and cold and wind and wave;

They have heaped the stones above his grave

In Muirthemne, and over it

In changeless Ogham letters writ -

Baile, that was of Rury's seed.

But the gods long ago decreed

No waiting-maid should ever spread

Baile and Aillinn's marriage-bed,

For they should clip and clip again

Where wild bees hive on the Great Plain.

Therefore it is but little news

That put this hurry in my shoes."

Then seeing that he scarce had spoke

Before her love-worn heart had broke.

He ran and laughed until he came

To that high hill the herdsmen name

The Hill Seat of Laighen, because

Some god or king had made the laws

That held the land together there,

In old times among the clouds of the air.

That old man climbed; the day grew dim;

Two swans came flying up to him,

Linked by a gold chain each to each,

And with low murmuring laughing speech