In the Seven Woods: Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age

, . Set up, electrotyped, and published August, 1903.

I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods

Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees

Hum in the lime tree flowers; and put away

The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness

That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile

Upon the throne and crying about the streets

And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,

Because it is alone of all things happy.

Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart

Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer,

Who but awaits His hour to shoot, still hangs

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,

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

That’s all but gone; for the proud heart is gone

And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all

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,

Why do you praise another, praising her,

As if there were no tale but your own tale