"But at last Oisin began to feel that he cared less for all these
things than he had done at first. The grass and the flowers and the
woods did not seem so fair to him as they had seemed; the sunshine was
not such pure gold; he wished that the silver streams would not blow
away in spray and mix with the mists; he wanted to see them come down
yellow with the earth of the mountains and plunge into caverns with
great rushing and roaring; he felt that the warm air was taking his
strength from him; he no longer liked the rich feasts that were spread
before him every day; he longed to follow the deer through the woods,
with his old friends, to kill it and to cook it and eat it in the
woods, and then to sleep there, under the trees and the stars; these
trees and these gardens were beautiful, it was true, but they were too
beautiful; a hard way through a rough forest would have pleased him
better now; he did not love the Princess less, but he longed to see
his father and his men again; her singing was no less sweet to him
than it had ever been before, but he wished that he could be again
where the Fenians, after a hard day's hunt or a hard day's fight, sat
about the fire in their stronghold, and listened to one of
them--perhaps himself, for he was the best singer of them all--while
he sang songs of great heroes and of great fights.
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