When we died there was no lasting unbreakable quiet about us,
and the bitterness of the battles we brought into Ireland turned to
our own punishment. We go wandering together for ever, but Dermot
that was my lover sees me always as a body that has been a long time
in the ground, and I know that is the way he sees me. Ask me more,
ask me more, for all the years have left their wisdom in my heart,
and no one has listened to me for seven hundred years.'
A great terror had fallen upon Hanrahan, and lifting his arms above
his head he screamed out loud three times, and the cattle in the
valley lifted their heads and lowed, and the birds in the wood at the
edge of the mountain awaked out of their sleep and fluttered through
the trembling leaves. But a little below the edge of the rock, the
troop of rose leaves still fluttered in the air, for the gateway of
Eternity had opened and shut again in one beat of the heart.
THE DEATH OF HANRAHAN.
Hanrahan, that was never long in one place, was back again among the
villages that are at the foot of Slieve Echtge, Illeton and Scalp and
Ballylee, stopping sometimes in one house and sometimes in another,
and finding a welcome in every place for the sake of the old times
and of his poetry and his learning. There was some silver and some
copper money in the little leather bag under his coat, but it was
seldom he needed to take anything from it, for it was little he used,
and there was not one of the people that would have taken payment
from him.
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