We’ll stretch in Red Dan Sally’s ditch, And drink in Tubber fair, Or poach with Red Dan Philly’s bitch The badger and the hare. ON AN ANNIVERSARY _After reading the dates in a book of Lyrics._ With Fifteen-ninety or Sixteen-sixteen We end Cervantes, Marot, Nashe or Green: Then Sixteen-thirteen till two score and nine, Is Crashaw’s niche, that honey-lipped divine. And so when all my little work is done They’ll say I came in Eighteen-seventy-one, And died in Dublin.... What year will they write For my poor passage to the stall of night? TO THE OAKS OF GLENCREE My arms are round you, and I lean Against you, while the lark Sings over us, and golden lights, and green Shadows are on your bark. There’ll come a season when you’ll stretch Black boards to cover me: Then in Mount Jerome I will lie, poor wretch, With worms eternally. A QUESTION I asked if I got sick and died, would you With my black funeral go walking too, If you’d stand close to hear them talk or pray While I’m let down in that steep bank of clay. And, No, you said, for if you saw a crew Of living idiots pressing round that new Oak coffin--they alive, I dead beneath That board--you’d rave and rend them with your teeth. DREAD Beside a chapel I’d a room looked down, Where all the women from the farms and town, On Holy-days and Sundays used to pass To marriages, and christenings, and to Mass. Then I sat lonely watching score and score, Till I turned jealous of the Lord next door.... Now by this window, where there’s none can see, The Lord God’s jealous of yourself and me. IN GLENCULLEN Thrush, linnet, stare and wren, Brown lark beside the sun, Take thought of kestril, sparrow-hawk, Birdlime and roving gun. You great-great-grand-children Of birds I’ve listened to, I think I robbed your ancestors When I was young as you. I’VE THIRTY MONTHS I’ve thirty months, and that’s my pride, Before my age’s a double score, Though many lively men have died At twenty-nine or little more. I’ve left a long and famous set Behind some seven years or three, But there are millions I’d forget Will have their laugh at passing me. 25, IX, 1908. EPITAPH A silent sinner, nights and days, No human heart to him drew nigh, Alone he wound his wonted ways, Alone and little loved did die. And autumn Death for him did choose, A season dank with mists and rain, And took him, while the evening dews Were settling o’er the fields again. PRELUDE Still south I went and west and south again, Through Wicklow from the morning till the night, And far from cities, and the sights of men, Lived with the sunshine, and the moon’s delight.