Behold! Where in the spaces of the morning world The sunrise shines my harbinger, the hills Leap up, the young winds sing, the rivers dance, The leaving forests laugh, the eagles scream; For I am one with them, a mate, a brother, Bound by nature to the human soul That thro' the accidents of nature runs. And wherefore do they leap and laugh and sing, And dance like vestals on a holyday? Because their hearts are glad, and mænad-like, They fain would share the frenzied cup they drink With me, the man-child glorious.
I am he, Even he, the master-mould, the paragon! Behold me in my nonage, child and man: The ripest grape on beauty's procreant vine, The reddest apple of ingathering: Perfect in form, of peerless strength, and free As Caoilte when he roamed the primal hills (Those "wildernesses rich with liberty"), A hero that the shocks of chance might strike, But never tame, a giant druid-ringed, A god-like savage of the golden days Ere service shackled action: free itself As Oisin when he strayed in Doire-cairn, His hand upon the mountain top, his feet Fixt in the flowing sea, his holy head Crowned by a flight of birds, acclaiming him The singer of the dawn.
I stand upon the summit now: The falcon, flying from the heath, Trails darkly o'er the mountain brow And drops into the gloom beneath. Night falls, and with it comes the wind That blew on Fionn time out of mind, When weary of love-feasts and wars He left his comrades all behind To dream upon the quiet stars. Here on the lonely mountain height Is ecstasy and living light-- The living inner light that burns With magic caught from those white urns That wander thro' the trackless blue Forever, touching those they know With beauty, and the things that come Of beauty. Earth lies at my feet, A dumb, vast shadow, vast as dumb.
At the whitening of the dawn, As I came o'er the windy water, I saw the salmon-fisher's daughter, Nuala ni Cholumain. Nuala ni Cholumain, Nuala ni Cholumain, Palest lily of the dawn Is Nuala ni Cholumain.
In the dark of evendown I went o'er the quiet water, Dreaming of the fisher's daughter And her bothy in the town. And I made this simple rann Ere the whitening of the dawn, Singing to the beauty wan Of Nuala ni Cholumain.