Marah Ellis Ryan (1860–1934)

THE DRUID PATH

PHADRAIG,
son of Nihil of the Ua Dinan,
held silent his white hound on the hill
of Cromm Cru, and looked down the far
valley of blue mists where the sea of the
west rolled in.

Back beyond the sweet-smelling reaches of the
heather he could hear the bay of the hounds of his uncle
Kieran, Tiern over North Tormond. He could no longer
hear the clink of their silver bridles, nor the laughter of
their ladies, nor the scream of hawk on dove.

But the hill of the ancient god was a sweet place in the
silence, and he rested there, and made him a pillow of fern
-and listened to the soft breath of the wind in the rowan
tree. Its sigh of love for the green earth was a sweet song.
and he slept there to that music, while the sun rushed
beyond the wide seas of the west, and soft-footed dusk
crept after, filling all the hollows with the gray web in
which the night is held.

A curious dream of white birds came to him there; the
dream had come to him before, yet not with clearnessand
in the dream was a dusk path in an ancient wood,
and a well there-a well rising and sinking with the tide,
and a vision of a maid moving before him into the shadows
-a vision swathed in a white cloud, with hidden face
but a voice in which was held all the music of beauty of
life in all the world. His soul was as a harp on which that
music played, and his body was but as a shell left behind… (mais)