The Song of the Stone

 (From The Stone of Destiny)

 

Beyond the wall of sea and sky,

Where hopes and fears and sorrows die

And cast-off dreams slip gently by

To join the day’s descending,

An island green laughs in the light

Of golden sun and silvery night,

Unveiling to the Second Sight

A joy that’s never ending.

 

There, where the sun goes down to sleep

Below the cellars of the deep

And fairy folk and angels keep

A vigil o’er its fires;

Out past the waves, beyond the pale

Of Circling Stream, where white ships sail,

Under the shade of Inisfail

End all the heart’s desires.

 

A piece of heaven touched the ground

At Heaven’s Gate, where Jacob found

A Pillow Stone, and to the sound

Of Seraphs on the stair

He laid him down and watched his dreams

Fly up to where the starlight gleams;

But when he woke, those golden beams

Had vanished into air.

 

Bold Gathelus, King Cecrops’ son,

In Egypt’s land where rivers run

Stretched out his hand to seize the Stone

From Israel in Goshen.

With Scota, his betrothed bride,

He dragged it over deserts wide

To Spain, far over the heaving tide

Of the dividing ocean.

 

There on Brigantium’s sea-swept coast

He built a kingdom on the boast

That he must reign to uttermost

Who claimed as his possession

This ancient talisman of power;

But in a late and evil hour

An enemy flung down his tower:

He fled with his obsession.

 

Then over the deeps in ships they flew,

Gathelus’ Danaan crew,

Breaching boundaries old and new,

Seeking the final shore;

From Falias and Gorias

To Finias and Murias,

And last to Eire’s sea of grass

Beyond the great Muir Mor.

 

They landed on the mountain’s head

In clouds and smokes of fiery red

And filled the Fomor with a dread

Of all that’s bright and fair.

On Tara’s plain they set the Stone,

And over it they raised a throne,

That it might roar and shriek and moan

Beneath the king’s true heir …

 

(To be continued)