The Old Age of Queen Maeve by W.B. Yeats

Maeve the great queen was pacing to and fro, / Between the walls covered with beaten bronze, / In her high house at Cruachan; the long hearth, / Flickering with ash and hazel, but half showed / Where the tired horse-boys lay upon the rushes, / Or on the benches underneath the walls, / In comfortable sleep; all living slept / But that great queen, who more than half the night / Had paced from door to fire and fire to door.

Though now in her old age, in her young age / She had been beautiful in that old way / That's all but gone; for the proud heart is gone / And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all / But soft beauty and indolent desire.

She could have called over the rim of the world / Whatever woman's lover had hit her fancy, / And yet had been great bodied and great limbed, / Fashioned to be the mother of strong children; / And she'd had lucky eyes and a high heart, / And wisdom that caught fire like the dried flax, / At need, and made her beautiful and fierce, / Sudden and laughing.

O unquiet heart, / Why do you praise another, praising her, / As if there were no tale but your own tale / Worth knitting to a measure of sweet sound?

Have I not bid you tell of that great queen / Who has been buried some two thousand years?

When night was at its deepest, a wild goose / Cried from the porter's lodge, and with long clamour / Shook the ale horns and shields upon their hooks; / But the horse-boys slept on, as though some power / Had filled the house with Druid heaviness; / And wondering who of the many changing Sidhe / Had come as in the old times to counsel her, / Maeve walked, yet with slow footfall being old, / To that small chamber by the outer gate.

The porter slept although he sat upright / With still and stony limbs and open eyes.

Maeve waited, and when that ear-piercing noise / Broke from his parted lips and broke again, / She laid a hand on either of his shoulders, / And shook him wide awake, and bid him say / Who of the wandering many-changing ones / Had troubled his sleep. But all he had to say / Was that, the air being heavy and the dogs / More still than they had been for a good month, / He had fallen asleep, and, though he had dreamed nothing, / He could remember when he had had fine dreams.

It was before the time of the great war / Over the White-Horned Bull, and the Brown Bull.

She turned away; he turned again to sleep / That no god troubled now, and, wondering / What matters were afoot among the Sidhe, / Maeve walked through that great hall, and with a sigh / Lifted the curtain of her sleeping room, / Remembering that she too had seemed divine / To many thousand eyes, and to her own / One that the generations had long waited / That work too difficult for mortal hands / Might be accomplished. Bunching the curtain up / She saw her husband Ailell sleeping there, / And thought of days when he'd had a straight body, / And of that famous Fergus, Nessa's husband, / Who had been the lover of her middle life.

Suddenly Ailell spoke out of his sleep, / And not with his own voice or a man's voice, / But with the burning, live, unshaken voice / Of those that it may be can never age.

He said, 'High Queen of Cruachan and Mag Ai / A king of the Great Plain would speak with you. ' / And with glad voice Maeve answered him, 'What King / Of the far wandering shadows has come to me?

As in the old days when they would come and go / About my threshold to counsel and to help. ' / The parted lips replied, 'I seek your help, / For I am Aengus and I am crossed in love.'

'How may a mortal whose life gutters out / Help them that wander with hand clasping hand / By rivers where nor rain nor hail has dimmed / Their haughty images, that cannot fade / Although their beauty's like a hollow dream.'

'I come from the undimmed rivers to bid you call / The children of the Maines out of sleep, / And set them digging into Anbual's hill.

We shadows, while they uproot his earthy house, / Will overthrow his shadows and carry off / Caer, his blue eyed daughter that I love.

I helped your fathers when they built these walls / And I would have your help in my great need, / Queen of high Cruachan.'

'I obey your will / With speedy feet and a most thankful heart: / For you have been, O Aengus of the birds, / Our giver of good counsel and good luck. ' / And with a groan, as if the mortal breath / Could but awaken sadly upon lips / That happier breath had moved, her husband turned / Face downward, tossing in a troubled sleep; / But Maeve, and not with a slow feeble foot, / Came to the threshold of the painted house, / Where her grandchildren slept, and cried aloud, / Until the pillared dark began to stir / With shouting and the clang of unhooked arms.

She told them of the many-changing ones; / And all that night, and all through the next day / To middle night, they dug into the hill.

At middle night great cats with silver claws, / Bodies of shadow and blind eyes like pearls, / Came up out of the hole, and red-eared hounds / With long white bodies came out of the air / Suddenly, and ran at them and harried them.