bright steel of your King; strong as the rocks of my land, that
meet the storm with joy, and stretch their dark pines to the
wind.'

"Like autumn's dark storms, pouring from two echoing hills,
towards each other approached the heroes. Like two deep streams
from high rocks meeting, mixing, roaring on the plain; loud,
rough and dark in battle meet Lochlin and Innis-fail. chief
mixes his strokes with chief, and man with man; steel clanging
sounds on steel. Helmets are cleft on high. Blood bursts and
smokes around. Strings murmur on the polished yews. Darts rush
along the sky, spears fall like the circles of light which gild
the face of night. As the noise of the troubled ocean when roll
the waves on high, as the last peal of thunder in heaven, such is
the din of war. Though Cormac's hundred bards were there to give
the fight to song, feeble was the voice of a hundred bards to
send the deaths to future times. For many were the deaths of
heroes; wide poured the blood of the brave."

Then above the clang and clamor of dreadful battle we hear the
mournful dirge of minstrels wailing o'er the dead.

"Mourn, ye sons of song, mourn! Weep on the rocks of roaring
winds, O mad of Inistore! Bend thy fair head over the waves,
thou lovelier than the ghost of the hills, when it moves, in a
sunbeam at noon, over the silence of Morven. He is fallen! thy
youth is low! pale beneath the sword of Cathullin. No more shall
valor raise thy love to match the blood of kings. His gray dogs
are howling at home, they see his passing ghost. His bow is in
the hall unstrung. No sound is on the hill of his hinds."