would be--nay, I _will_ be!--like the Ancient Gods of the land.
I read in my youth, in a Hebrew manuscript I found in a Spanish
monastery, that there is a moment after the Sun has entered the Ram
and before he has passed the Lion, which trembles with the Song of
the Immortal Powers, and that whosoever finds this moment and listens
to the Song shall become like the Immortal Powers themselves; I came
back to Ireland and asked the fairy men, and the cow-doctors, if they
knew when this moment was; but though all had heard of it, there was
none could find the moment upon the hour-glass. So I gave myself to
magic, and spent my life in fasting and in labour that I might bring
the Gods and the Fairies to my side; and now at last one of the
Fairies has told me that the moment is at hand. One, who wore a red
cap and whose lips were white with the froth of the new milk,
whispered it into my ear. Tomorrow, a little before the close of the
first hour after dawn, I shall find the moment, and then I will go
away to a southern land and build myself a palace of white marble
amid orange trees, and gather the brave and the beautiful about me,
and enter into the eternal kingdom of my youth. But, that I may hear
the whole Song, I was told by the little fellow with the froth of the
new milk on his lips, that you must bring great masses of green
boughs and pile them about the door and the window of my room; and
you must put fresh green rushes upon the floor, and cover the table
and the rushes with the roses and the lilies of the monks. You must
do this to-night, and in the morning at the end of the first hour
after dawn, you must come and find me.'

'Will you be quite young then?' said the boy.

'I will be as young then as you are, but now I am still old and
tired, and you must help me to my chair and to my books.'