you for ever.'

There was a bush beside him to the left, flowering like the rest, and
a little gust of wind blew the white blossoms over his coat. 'May
blossoms,' he said, gathering them up in the hollow of his hand, 'you
never know age because you die away in your beauty, and I will put
you into my rhyme and give you my blessing.'

He rose up then and plucked a little branch from the bush, and
carried it in his hand. But it is old and broken he looked going home
that day with the stoop in his shoulders and the darkness in his
face.

When he got to his cabin there was no one there, and he went and lay
down on the bed for a while as he was used to do when he wanted to
make a poem or a praise or a curse. And it was not long he was in
making it this time, for the power of the curse-making bards was upon
him. And when he had made it he searched his mind how he could send
it out over the whole countryside.

Some of the scholars began coming in then, to see if there would be
any school that day, and Hanrahan rose up and sat on the bench by the
hearth, and they all stood around him.

They thought he would bring out the Virgil or the Mass book or the
primer, but instead of that he held up the little branch of hawthorn
he had in his hand yet. 'Children,' he said, 'this is a new lesson I
have for you to-day.

'You yourselves and the beautiful people of the world are like this