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Introductory Rhymes
| ‘In dreams begins responsibility.’ | | —Old Play |
| ‘How am I fallen from myself, for a long time now | | I have
not seen the Prince of Chang in my dreams.’ | | —Khoung-fou-tseu |
| Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain | | Somewhere in ear-shot for the story’s end, | | Old Dublin merchant ‘free of the ten and four’ | | Or trading out
of Galway into Spain; | | Old country scholar, Robert Emmet’s friend, | | A hundred-year-old memory to the
poor; | | Merchant and scholar who have left me blood | | That has not passed through any huckster’s loin, | | Soldiers that gave, whatever die was cast: | | A Butler or an Armstrong that withstood | | Beside the brackish
waters of the Boyne | | James and his Irish when the Dutchman crossed; | | Old merchant skipper that leaped
overboard | | After a ragged hat in Biscay Bay; | | You most of all, silent and fierce old man, | | Because the
daily spectacle that stirred | | My fancy, and set my boyish lips to say, | | ‘Only the wasteful virtues earn the
sun’; | | Pardon that for a barren passion’s sake, | | Although I have come close on forty-nine, | | I have no child,
I have nothing but a book, | | Nothing but that to prove your blood and mine. | | January 1914 |
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By PanEris
using Melati.
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