In the Seven Woods. William Butler Yeats

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      '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.

       The Maines' children dropped their spades, and stood

       With quaking joints and terror strucken faces,

       Till Maeve called out 'These are but common men.

       The Maines' children have not dropped their spades

       Because Earth crazy for its broken power

       Casts up a show and the winds answer it

       With holy shadows'. Her high heart was glad,

       And when the uproar ran along the grass

       She followed with light footfall in the midst,

       Till it died out where an old thorn tree stood.

       Friend of these many years, you too had stood

       With equal courage in that whirling rout;

       For you, although you've not her wandering heart,

       Have all that greatness, and not her's alone.

       For there is no high story about queens

       In any ancient book but tells of you,

       And when I've heard how they grew old and died

       Or fell into unhappiness I've said;

       'She will grow old and die and she has wept'!

       And when I'd write it out anew, the words,

       Half crazy with the thought, She too has wept!

       Outrun the measure.

       ​I'd tell of that great queen

       Who stood amid a silence by the thorn

       Until two lovers came out of the air

       With bodies made out of soft fire. The one

       About whose face birds wagged their fiery wings

       Said, 'Aengus and his sweetheart give their thanks

       To Maeve and to Maeve's household, owing all

       In owing them the bride-bed that gives peace'.

       Then Maeve, 'O Aengus, Master of all lovers,

       A thousand years ago you held high talk

       With the first kings of many pillared Cruachan

       O when will you grow weary'.

      They had vanished.

       But out of the dark air over her head there came

       A murmur of soft words and meeting lips.