Mongan Thinks of his Past Greatness

I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young / And weep because I know all things now: / I have been a hazel tree and they hung / The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough / Among my leaves in times out of mind: / I became a rush that horses tread: / I became a man, a hater of the wind, / Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head / Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair / Of the woman that he loves, until he dies;

Although the rushes and the fowl of the air / Cry of his love with their pitiful cries.