Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea by W.B. Yeats

A man came slowly from the setting sun, / To Emer, raddling raiment in her dun, / And said, "I am that swineherd, whom you bid / Go watch the road between the wood and tide, / But now I have no need to watch it more."

Then Emer cast the web upon the floor, / And raising arms all raddled with the dye; / Parted her lips with a loud sudden cry.

That swineherd stared upon her face and said: / "No man alive, no man among the dead, / Has won the gold his cars of battle bring."

"But if your master comes home triumphing / Why are you pale and shake from foot to crown?"

Thereon he shook the more and cast him down / Upon the web-heaped floor, and cried his word: / "With him is one sweet-throated like a bird."

"You dare me to my face," and thereupon / She smote with raddled fist, and where her son / Herded the cattle came with stumbling feet, / And cried with angry voice, "It is not meet / To idle life away, a common herd."

"I have long waited, mother, for that word: / But wherefore now?"

"There is a man to die; / You have the heaviest arm under the sky."

"Whether under its daylight or the stars / My father stands amid his battle cars."

"But you have grown to be the taller man."

"Yet somewhere under starlight or the sun / My father stands amid his battle cars."

"But he is old and sad with many wars."

"I only ask what way my journey lies.

For He who made you bitter, made you wise."

"The Red Branch camp in a great company / Between wood's rim and the horses of the sea.

Go there, and light a camp fire at wood's rim; / But tell your name and lineage to him / Whose blade compels, and wait till they have found / Some feating man that the same oath has bound."

Among those feasting kings Cuchulain dwelt, / And his young sweetheart close beside him knelt, / Stared on the mournful wonder of his eyes, / Even as Spring upon the ancient skies, / And pondered on the glory of his days; / And all around the harp-string told his praise, / And Conchubar, the Red Branch king of kings, / With his own fingers touched the brazen strings.

At last Cuchulain spake, "Some man has made / His evening fire amid the leafy shade.

I have often heard him singing to and fro, / I have often heard the sweet sound of his bow, / Seek out what man he is."

One went and came.