The Forge in the Forest

For Padraic Colum

Faint through the whisper of a sea of leaves
On overtones of bird-song came the clink
And chime-tones of the speaking metal cast
On clanking iron by that sooty smith
Whose hammer tossed the echoes down the glades
Where hawks sprang up and circled, when they heard
The iron song of anvils through the hills,
Those dark, dark hills that hid in mist away
The forge amid the forest. Leagues of bogs,
And furious rivers where the fords were few,
And weedy, and forgotten, hedged it round,
And a dim forest full of still and glassy light,
And silences no traveler cared to hear
From mossy cities gaping at the moon —
From altars that the fierce wolf staled upon.

Yet such the art of him who was the smith
Of that rude smithy, half a cavern
And half a cabin leaning to the hill,
That kings came there, leading war horses lamed
By sorry smiths in towns, and bringing gold
To bribe the sweat-streaked muscles of that smith
To shoe their stallions with old-peoples' iron,
Stripped from the bones of temples; melted down
Amid the ruins of a magic time,
Between that world and this — and while the fire
Was plied by stolen urchins, and the glow
Of black, infernal charcoal lit the place,
Glinting upon coat armor and the shields —
Those mighty ones stood muttering Christian prayers
Off-shaking sparks that singed their royal beards,
Looking askance upon the limping smith
At times he raised the stallions' hairy hoofs
To fit the iron that sizzled on the bone.
For these were magic horseshoes, never cast
At times inopportune, they bore a horse
Through shield-walls to the banner of the foe,
And it was said by clerks who dwelt far-off
And read the names of devils with their eyes,
This smith was one " King Vulcan " come upon
An evil day for him, and forced to shoe
The animals of Christians at his forge,
Or starve for lack of something in his veins.
But those who rode to victory on his art
Smiled when they heard this cloister-talk, and said,
" The holy hermits call him Wayland Smith;
Kings' heads are on the gold he gets for wage. "