THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN
 
 A CURSING rogue with a merry face,
 A bundle of rags upon a crutch,
 Stumbled upon that windy place
 Called Cruachan, and it was as much
 As the one sturdy leg could do
 To keep him upright while he cursed.
 He had counted, where long years ago
 Queen Maeve's nine Maines had been nursed,
 A pair of lapwings, one old sheep,
 And not a house to the plain's edge,
 When close to his right hand a heap
 Of grey stones and a rocky ledge
 Reminded him that he could make.
 If he but shifted a few stones,
 A shelter till the daylight broke.
 But while he fumbled with the stones
 They toppled over; "Were it not
 I have a lucky wooden shin
 I had been hurt'; and toppling brought
 Before his eyes, where stones had been,
 A dark deep hollow in the rock.
 He gave a gasp and thought to have fled,
 Being certain it was no right rock
 Because an ancient history said
 Hell Mouth lay open near that place,
 And yet stood still, because inside
 A great lad with a beery face
 Had tucked himself away beside
 A ladle and a tub of beer,
 And snored, no phantom by his look.
 So with a laugh at his own fear
 He crawled into that pleasant nook.
 "Night grows uneasy near the dawn
 Till even I sleep light; but who
 Has tired of his own company?
 What one of Maeve's nine brawling sons
 Sick of his grave has wakened me?
 But let him keep his grave for once
 That I may find the sleep I have lost."
 What care I if you sleep or wake?
 But I'Il have no man call me ghost."
 Say what you please, but from daybreak
 I'll sleep another century."
 And I will talk before I sleep
 And drink before I talk.'
 And he
 Had dipped the wooden ladle deep
 Into the sleeper's tub of beer
 Had not the sleeper started up.
 Before you have dipped it in the beer
 I dragged from Goban's mountain-top
 I'll have assurance that you are able
 To value beer; no half-legged fool
 Shall dip his nose into my ladle
 Merely for stumbling on this hole
 In the bad hour before the dawn."
 Why beer is only beer.'
 "But say
 ""I'll sleep until the winter's gone,
 Or maybe to Midsummer Day,''
 And drink and you will sleep that length.
 "I'd like to sleep till winter's gone
 Or till the sun is in his srrength.
 This blast has chilled me to the bone.'
 "I had no better plan at first.
 I thought to wait for that or this;
 Maybe the weather was accursed
 Or I had no woman there to kiss;
 So slept for half a year or so;
 But year by year I found that less
 Gave me such pleasure I'd forgo
 Even a half-hour's nothingness,
 And when at one year's end I found
 I had not waked a single minute,
 I chosc this burrow under ground.
 I'll sleep away all time within it:
 My sleep were now nine centuries
 But for those mornings when I find
 The lapwing at their foolish dies
 And the sheep bleating at the wind
 As when I also played the fool.'
 The beggar in a rage began
 Upon his hunkers in the hole,
 "It's plain that you are no right man
 To mock at everything I love
 As if it were not worth, the doing.
 I'd have a merry life enough
 If a good Easter wind were blowing,
 And though the winter wind is bad
 I should not be too down in the mouth
 For anything you did or said
 If but this wind were in the south.'
 "You cty aloud, O would 'twere spring
 Or that the wind would shift a point,
 And do not know that you would bring,
 If time were suppler in the joint,
 Neither the spring nor the south wind
 But the hour when you shall pass away
 And leave no smoking wick behind,
 For all life longs for the Last Day
 And there's no man but cocks his ear
 To know when Michael's trumpet cries
 "That flesh and bone may disappear,
 And souls as if they were but sighs,
 And there be nothing but God left;
 But, I aone being blessed keep
 Like some old rabbit to my cleft
 And wait Him in a drunken sleep.'
 He dipped his ladle in the tub
 And drank and yawned and stretched him out,
 The other shouted, "You would rob
 My life of every pleasant thought
 And every comfortable thing,
 And so take that and that." Thereon
 He gave him a great pummelling,
 But might have pummelled at a stone
 For all the sleeper knew or cared;
 And after heaped up stone on stone,
 And then, grown weary, prayed and cursed
 And heaped up stone on stone again,
 And prayed and cursed and cursed and bed
 From Maeve and all that juggling plain,
 Nor gave God thanks till overhead
 The clouds were brightening with the dawn.