Usheen

Sad to remember, sick with years, The swift innumerable spears, The horsemen with their floating hair, And bowls of barley, honey, and wine, And feet of maidens dancing in tune, And the white body that lay by mine; But the tale, though words be lighter than air, Must live to be old like the wandering moon.

Caolte, and Conan, and Finn were there, When we followed a deer with our baying hounds, With Bran, Sgeolan, and Lomair, And passing the Firbolgs' burial mounds, Came to the cairn-heaped grassy hill Where passionate Maive is stony still; And found on the dove-gray edge of the sea A pearl-pale, high-born lady, who rode On a horse with bridle of findrinny; And like a sunset were her lips, A stormy sunset on doomed ships; A citron colour gloomed in her hair, But down to her feet white vesture flowed, And with the glimmering crimson glowed Of many a figured embroidery; And it was bound with a pearl-pale shell That wavered like the summer streams, As her soft bosom rose and fell.