The Secret Rose

TO THE SECRET ROSE

Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,

     Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those

     Who sought thee at the Holy Sepulchre,

     Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir

     And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep

     Among pale eyelids heavy with the sleep

     Men have named beauty. Your great leaves enfold

     The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold

     Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes

     Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of Elder rise

     In druid vapour and make the torches dim;

     Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him

     Who met Fand walking among flaming dew,

     By a grey shore where the wind never blew,

     And lost the world and Emir for a kiss;

     And him who drove the gods out of their liss

     And till a hundred morns had flowered red

     Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead;

     And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown

     And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown

     Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods;

     And him who sold tillage and house and goods,

     And sought through lands and islands numberless years

     Until he found with laughter and with tears

     A woman of so shining loveliness

     That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,

     A little stolen tress. I too await

     The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.

     When shall the stars be blown about the sky,

     Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?

     Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,

     Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?

THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST.

A man, with thin brown hair and a pale face, half ran, half walked, along the road that wound from the south to the town of Sligo. Many called him Cumhal, the son of Cormac, and many called him the Swift, Wild Horse; and he was a gleeman, and he wore a short parti-coloured doublet, and had pointed shoes, and a bulging wallet. Also he was of the blood of the Ernaans, and his birth-place was the Field of Gold; but his eating and sleeping places where the four provinces of Eri, and his abiding place was not upon the ridge of the earth. His eyes strayed from the Abbey tower of the White Friars and the town battlements to a row of crosses which stood out against the sky upon a hill a little to the eastward of the town, and he clenched his fist, and shook it at the crosses. He knew they were not empty, for the birds were fluttering about them; and he thought how, as like as not, just such another vagabond as himself was hanged on one of them; and he muttered: 'If it were hanging or bowstringing, or stoning or beheading, it would be bad enough. But to have the birds pecking your eyes and the wolves eating your feet! I would that the red wind of the Druids had withered in his cradle the soldier of Dathi, who brought the tree of death out of barbarous lands, or that the lightning, when it smote Dathi at the foot of the mountain, had smitten him also, or that his grave had been dug by the green-haired and green-toothed merrows deep at the roots of the deep sea.'

While he spoke, he shivered from head to foot, and the sweat came out upon his face, and he knew not why, for he had looked upon many crosses. He passed over two hills and under the battlemented gate, and then round by a left-hand way to the door of the Abbey. It was studded with great nails, and when he knocked at it, he roused the lay brother who was the porter, and of him he asked a place in the guest-house. Then the lay brother took a glowing turf on a shovel, and led the way to a big and naked outhouse strewn with very dirty rushes; and lighted a rush-candle fixed between two of the stones of the wall, and set the glowing turf upon the hearth and gave him two unlighted sods and a wisp of straw, and showed him a blanket hanging from a nail, and a shelf with a loaf of bread and a jug of water, and a tub in a far corner. Then the lay brother left him and went back to his place by the door. And Cumhal the son of Cormac began to blow upon the glowing turf that he might light the two sods and the wisp of straw; but the sods and the straw would not light, for they were damp. So he took off his pointed shoes, and drew the tub out of the corner with the thought of washing the dust of the highway from his feet; but the water was so dirty that he could not see the bottom. He was very hungry, for he had not eaten all that day; so he did not waste much anger upon the tub, but took up the black loaf, and bit into it, and then spat out the bite, for the bread was hard and mouldy. Still he did not give way to his anger, for he had not drunken these many hours; having a hope of heath beer or wine at his day's end, he had left the brooks untasted, to make his supper the more delightful. Now he put the jug to his lips, but he flung it from him straightway, for the water was bitter and ill-smelling. Then he gave the jug a kick, so that it broke against the opposite wall, and he took down the blanket to wrap it about him for the night. But no sooner did he touch it than it was alive with skipping fleas. At this, beside himself with anger, he rushed to the door of the guest-house, but the lay brother, being well accustomed to such outcries, had locked it on the outside; so he emptied the tub and began to beat the door with it, till the lay brother came to the door and asked what ailed him, and why he woke him out of sleep. 'What ails me!' shouted Cumhal, 'are not the sods as wet as the sands of the Three Rosses? and are not the fleas in the blanket as many as the waves of the sea and as lively? and is not the bread as hard