Baile and Aillinn by William Butler Yeats (part 2)

He had puddle-water in his shoes;
He had half a cloak to keep him dry,
Although he had a squirrel’s eye.

O wandering hirds and rushy beds,
You put such folly in our heads
With all this crying in the wind,
No common love is to our mind,
And our poor kate or Nan is less
Than any whose unhappiness
Awoke the harp-strings long ago.
Yet they that know all things hut know
That all this life can give us is
A child’s laughter, a woman’s kiss.
Who was it put so great a scorn
In thegrey reeds that night and morn
Are trodden and broken hy the herds,
And in the light bodies of birds
The north wind tumbles to and fro
And pinches among hail and snow?

That runner said: ‘I am from the south;
I run to Baile Honey-Mouth,
To tell him how the girl Aillinn
Rode from the country of her kin,
And old and young men rode with her:
For all that country had been astir
If anybody half as fair
Had chosen a husband anywhere
But where it could see her every day.
When they had ridden a little way
An old man caught the horse’s head
With: ‘You must home again, and wed
With somebody in your own land.’
A young man cried and kissed her hand,
‘ lady, wed with one of us’;
And when no face grew piteous
For any gentle thing she spake,
She fell and died of the heart-break.’

Part 1 | Part 2| Part 3