Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: V VOICE OF FINTAN again, out of the First Century, T ET my lips finish what my lips began.— """ Then to the two beclouded in black boughs The third across the water cried "Speak once! Though the earth shake beneath you like a sieve With wheels of Connachar, answer me this : Naois, could she understand his hate Whose arm requiteth—far as runs the wind— By me, that blow away the gaze and smile From women's faces; O could Deirdrehaveguess'd— Mourning all night the fading of her kingdoms Fled like a song—what means, a banished man ; That he and I must hound thee to the death ; That thou shalt never see the deep-set eaves, The lofty thatch familiar with the doves, On thy sad mother Usnach's house again ; But drift out like some sea-bird, far, far, hence, Far from the red isle of the roes and berries, Far from sun-galleries and pleasant duns And swards of lovers,—branded, nationless; That none of all thy famous friends, with thee Wrestlers on Eman in the summer evenings, Shall think thee noble now; and that at last I must upheave thy heart's tough plank to crack it- Knowing all this, would this fool follow thee ? " Then spoke Naois, keeping back his wrath, " Strange is it one so old should threat with Death! Are not both thou and I, are not we all, By Death drawn from the wickets of the womb— Seal'd with the thumb of Death when we are born? As for friends lost (though I believe thee not), A man is nourished by his enemies No less than by his friends. But as for her, Because no man shall deem me noble still,— Because I like a sea-gull of the isles May be driven forth—branded and nationless,— Because I shall no more, perhaps, behold The deep-set eaves on that all-sacred house,— Because the gather"d battle of the powers Controlling fortune, breaks upon...