He listened for a little, and, says he, ’I am myself the poorest, for I have travelled the bare road, and by the edges of the sea; and the tattered doublet of particoloured cloth upon my back and the torn pointed shoes upon my feet have ever irked me, because of the towered city full of noble raiment which was in my heart.  And I have been the more alone upon the roads and by the sea because I heard in my heart the rustling of the rose-bordered dress of her who is more subtle than Aengus, the Subtle-hearted, and more full of the beauty of laughter than Conan the Bald, and more full of the wisdom of tears than White-breasted Deirdre, and more lovely than a bursting dawn to them that are lost in the darkness.  Therefore, I award the tithe to myself; but yet, because I am done with all things, I give it unto you.’

So he flung the bread and the strips of bacon among the beggars, and they fought with many cries until the last scrap was eaten.  But meanwhile the friars nailed the gleeman to his cross, and set it upright in the hole, and shovelled the earth in at the foot, and trampled it level and hard.  So then they went away, but the beggars stared on, sitting round the cross.  But when the sun was sinking, they also got up to go, for the air was getting chilly.  And as soon as they had gone a little way, the wolves, who had been showing themselves on the edge of a neighbouring coppice, came nearer, and the birds wheeled closer and closer.  ’Stay, outcasts, yet a little while,’ the crucified one called in a weak voice to the beggars, ’and keep the beasts and the birds from me.’  But the beggars were angry because he had called them outcasts, so they threw stones and mud at him, and went their way.  Then the wolves gathered at the foot of the cross, and the birds flew lower and lower.  And presently the birds lighted all at once upon his head and arms and shoulders, and began to peck at him, and the wolves began to eat his feet.  ‘Outcasts,’ he moaned, ‘have you also turned against the outcast?’

OUT OF THE ROSE.

One winter evening an old knight in rusted chain-armour rode slowly along the woody southern slope of Ben Bulben, watching the sun go down in crimson clouds over the sea.  His horse was tired, as after a long journey, and he had upon his helmet the crest of no neighbouring lord or king, but a small rose made of rubies that glimmered every moment to a deeper crimson.  His white hair fell in thin curls upon his shoulders, and its disorder added to the melancholy of his face, which was the face of one of those who have come but seldom into the world, and always for its trouble, the dreamers who must do what they dream, the doers who must dream what they do.