You promised me a thing that was hard for you, a ship of gold under a silver mast; twelve towns with a market in all of them, and a fine white court by the side of the sea. You promised me a thing that is not possible, that you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish; that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird, and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland. O Donall og, it is I would be better to you than a high, proud, spendthrift lady: I would milk the cow; I would bring help to you; and if you were hard pressed, I would strike a blow for you. O, ochone, and it's not with hunger or with wanting food, or drink, or sleep, that I am growing thin, and my life is shortened; but it is the love of a young man has withered me away. It is early in the morning that I saw him coming, going along the road on the back of a horse; he did not come to me; he made nothing of me; and it is on my way home that I cried my fill. When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness, I sit down and I go through my trouble; when I see the world and do not see my boy, he that has an amber shade in his hair. It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you; the Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday. And myself on my knees reading the Passion; and my two eyes giving love to you for ever. O, aya! my mother, give myself to him; and give him all that you have in the world; get out yourself to ask for alms, and do not come back and forward looking for me. My mother said to me not to be talking with you to-day, or to-morrow, or on the Sunday; it was a bad time she took for telling me that; it was shutting the door after the house was robbed. My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe, or as the black coal that is on the smith's forge; or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls; it was you put that darkness over my life. You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me; you have taken what is before me and what is behind me; you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me; and my fear is great that you have taken God from me! _A Lament for Fair-Haired Donough that Was Hanged in Galway_ It was bound fast here you saw him, and wondered to see him, Our fair-haired Donough, and he after being condemned; There was a little white cap on him in place of a hat, And a hempen rope in the place of a neck-cloth. I am after walking here all through the night, Like a young lamb in a great flock of sheep; My breast open, my hair loosened out, And how did I find my brother but stretched before me! The first place I cried my fill was at the top of the lake; The second place was at the foot of the gallows; The third place was at the head of your dead body Among the Gall, and my own head as if cut in two. If you were with me in the place you had a right to be, Down in Sligo or down in Ballinrobe, It is the gallows would be broken, it is the rope would be cut And fair-haired Donough going home by the path.