His place he chose Beside that blighted ash, fronting those towers Palled with red smoke, and muttered low, “So be it! Worse to be vassal to the man I hate,” With hueless lips. His whole white face that hour Was scorched; and blistered was the dead tree’s bark; Yet there he stood; and in that fiery light His life, no more triumphant, passed once more In underthought before him, while on spread The swift, contagious madness of that fire, And muttered thus, not knowing it, the man, “The mighty flame into itself takes all,” Mechanic iteration. Not alone Stood he that hour. The Demon of his House By him once more and closer than of old, Stood, whispering thus, “Thy game is now played out; Henceforth a byword art thou—rich in youth— Self-beggared in old age.” And as the wind Of that shrill whisper cut his listening soul, The blazing roof fell in on all his wealth, Hard-won, long-waited, wonder of his foes; And, loud as laughter from ten thousand fiends, Up rushed the fire. With arms outstretched he stood; Stood firm; then forward with a wild beast’s cry He dashed himself into that terrible flame, And vanished as a leaf.
Upon a spur Of Sleemish, eastward on its northern slope, Stood Patrick and his brethren, travel-worn, When distant o’er the brown and billowy moor Rose the white smoke, that changed ere long to flame, From site unknown; for by the seaward crest That keep lay hidden. Hands to forehead raised, Wondering they watched it. One to other spake: “The huge Dalriad forest is afire Ere melted are the winter’s snows!” Another, “In vengeance o’er the ocean Creithe or Pict, Favoured by magic, or by mist, have crossed, And fired old Milcho’s ships.” But Patrick leaned Upon his crosier, pale as the ashes wan Left by a burned out city. Long he stood Silent, till, sudden, fiercelier soared the flame Reddening the edges of a cloud low hung; And, after pause, vibration slow and stern Troubling the burthened bosom of the air, Upon a long surge of the northern wind Came up—a murmur as of wintry seas Far borne at night. All heard that sound; all felt it; One only know its import. Patrick turned; “The deed is done: the man I would have saved Is dead, because he willed to disbelieve.”