Стихи - [29]

I shall be carried in the gust, command,

Forbid, beseech and waste my breath. Then I,

'Although the thing that you have hid were evil,

The speaking of it could be no great wrong,

And evil must it be, if done ’twere worse

Than mound and stone that keep all virtue in,

And loosen on us dreams that waste our life,

Shadows and shows that can but turn the brain.

But finding him still silent I stooped down

And whispering that none but he should hear,

Said: 'If a woman has put this on you,

My men, whether it please her or displease,

And though they have to cross the Loughlan waters

And take her in the middle of armed men,

Shall make her look upon her handiwork,

That she may quench the rick she has fired; and though

She may have worn silk clothes, or worn a crown,

She'll not be proud, knowing within her heart

That our sufficient portion of the world

Is that we give, although it be brief giving,

Happiness to children and to men.

Then he, driven by his thought beyond his thought,

And speaking what he would not though he would,

Sighed: 'You, even you yourself, could work the cure!

And at those words I rose and I went out

And for nine days he had food from other hands,

And for nine days my mind went whirling round

The one disastrous zodiac, muttering

That the immedicable mound's beyond

Our questioning, beyond our pity even.

But when nine days had gone I stood again

Before his chair and bending down my head

Told him, that when Orion rose, and all

The women of his household were asleep,

To go-for hope would give his limbs the power-

To an old empty woodman's house that's hidden

Close to a clump of beech trees in the wood

Westward of Tara, there to await a friend

That could, as he had told her, work his cure

And would be no harsh friend.

When night had deepened,

I groped my way through boughs, and over roots,

Till oak and hazel ceased and beech began,

And found the house, a sputtering torch within,

And stretched out sleeping on a pile of skins

Ardan, and though I called to him and tried

To shake him out of sleep, I could not rouse him.

I waited till the night was on the turn,

Then fearing that some labourer, on his way

To plough or pasture-land, might see me there,

Went out.

Among the ivy-covered rocks,

As on the blue light of a sword, a man

Who had unnatural majesty, and eyes

Like the eyes of some great kite scouring the woods,

Stood on my path. Trembling from head to foot

I gazed at him like grouse upon a kite;

But with a voice that had unnatural music,

'A weary wooing and a long, he said,

'Speaking of love through other lips and looking

Under the eyelids of another, for it was my craft

That put a passion in the sleeper there,

And when I had got my will and drawn you here,

Where I may speak to you alone, my craft

Sucked up the passion out of him again

And left mere sleep. He'll wake when the sun wakes,

Push out his vigorous limbs and rub his eyes,

And wonder what has ailed him these twelve months.

I cowered back upon the wall in terror,

But that sweet-sounding voice ran on: 'Woman,

I was your husband when you rode the air,

Danced in the whirling foam and in the dust,

In days you have not kept in memory,

Being betrayed into a cradle, and I come

That I may claim you as my wife again.

I was no longer terrified, his voice

Had half awakened some old memory,

Yet answered him: 'I am King Eochaid's wife

And with him have found every happiness

Women can find. With a most masterful voice,

That made the body seem as it were a string

Under a bow, he cried: 'What happiness

Can lovers have that know their happiness

Must end at the dumb stone? But where we build

Our sudden palaces in the still air

Pleasure itself can bring no weariness,

Nor can time waste the cheek, nor is there foot

That has grown weary of the whirling dance,

Nor an unlaughing mouth, but mine that mourns,

Among those mouths that sing their sweethearts' praise,

Your empty bed. 'How should I love, I answered,

'Were it not that when the dawn has lit my bed

And shown my husband sleeping there, I have sighed,

"Your strength and nobleness will pass away."

Or how should love be worth its pains were it not

That when he has fallen asleep within my arms,

Being wearied out, I love in man the child?

What can they know of love that do not know

She builds her nest upon a narrow ledge

Above a windy precipice? Then he:

'Seeing that when you come to the deathbed

You must return, whether you would or no,

This human life blotted from memory,

Why must I live some thirty, forty years,

Alone with all this useless happiness?

Thereon he seized me in his arms, but I

Thrust him away with both my hands and cried,

'Never will I believe there is any change

Can blot out of my memory this life

Sweetened by death, but if I could believe

That were a double hunger in my lips

For what is doubly brief.

And now the shape,

My hands were pressed to, vanished suddenly.

I staggered, but a beech tree stayed my fall,

And clinging to it I could hear the cocks

Crow upon Tara."

King Eochaid bowed his head

And thanked her for her kindness to his brother,

For that she promised, and for that refused.

Thereon the bellowing of the empounded herds